Patricia H. Hinchey

Introducing Diversity: We Don't Have to Wait for a Program.

Because 92 percent of education students are white and nearly 85 percent of them had at least a middle-class income during their K-12 years, most of todays preservice teachers unavoidably have a white, middle-class perspective and cannot imagine teaching in a multicultural urban school. Americas schoolchildren, however, are increasingly diverse and need teachers willing to work in schools unlike the ones they attended and sensitive to the possibilities of all children in all schools. In this article, six education students describe their experiences during a one-day visit to a Harlem school, demonstrating that even a brief visit to an urban school can prompt students to critically examine their implicit beliefs about urban schools and students. Teacher educators need not wait for a program to begin preparing their students for urban schools: a one-day visit can make a difference in students thinking and is within reach for many teacher educators.

Corporal Punishment: Legalities, Realities, and Implications

or some time now, I have been talking to practitioners about corporal punishment in schools, especially middle and high schools. Practitioner responses to my questions about the legal status of paddling and other physical discipline in their states have fallen into two categories: surprise that I would ask about the subject as if practices such as paddling still existed anywhere, and surprise that I would ask about the topic as if paddling werent common in every school in the country. Most teachers appear to assume that the status of corporal punishment in their own school or state is a national standard-a perception that is far from contemporary reality. The following quiz will help readers determine the reliability of their own perceptions relating to this topic.

Professors and Teachers as Collaborators in Classroom Change.

t is no secret-least of all among university facultythat classroom practitioners often find advice from university professors as welcome as a severe case of poison ivy. Historically, there are good reasons for such an attitude. Many professors of education have never taught children in real-world classrooms; among those who have, many have not been back to a classroom for decades. Moreover, because professors are educated to be specialists in a single field, they often view the world from an extraordinarily limited perspective. The language specialist, for example, may know volumes about language pedagogy and resources, but may also lack any understanding of the impact of current state mandates, of vocal parents whom some politically active conservatives have warned not to trust teachers, of administrators who dont have the luxury of thinking about anything except budgets because their schools are horrifically underfinanced and so must struggle daily to provide even the most minimal of services. Too often, professors have confidently assumed they knew everything worth knowing, while colleagues in the field have equally confidently dismissed them as knowing absolutely nothing worth knowing. Although such mutual disrespect may remain distressingly common, in recent years awareness has been growing-on both sides-that everyone might benefit from new and different kinds of relationships between university and school faculty. Over a decade ago (1983), for example, this observation appeared in research literature:

A Crash Course in Media Literacy

tory before stepping into the classroom. Appropriately, because media literacy hinges largely on the visual, an easy and effective way to get some sense of essential issues is by viewing some of the many excellent videos on crucial topics including gender and race stereotyping, violence, news, and rampant consumerism. There are several ways to get a quick survey of the terrain, all of which I have used with both undergraduate and graduate classes. Watching the following halfdozen videos would provide a sound introduction to some core issues and require a total viewing time of less than five-and-one-half hours. I have found that each

Promoting Engaged Citizenship and Informing Public Debate: A Two-Fold Argument for Contemporary Issues in Education as a Social Science Elective.

A course in contemporary education issues is proposed as a valuable general education vehicle for citizenship education. Such a course offers the advantages of being inherently political and interdisciplinary, and relevant to students’ life experience. Moreover, such a course would help satisfy the academys responsibility to inform public debate about privatizing public education, an issue of national concern.

First Things First: Clarifying Intention.

Two decades ago, novelist Robert Pirsig (1974) noted the confusion about what constitutes education. He began with an anecdote about a country church that had been sold and was being used as a bar. Dismayed by the electric beer sign hanging over the buildings front entrance, many people complained to church officials-but rather than being outraged, the priest who responded to the criticism was irritated by their misunderstanding of what constitutes a church:

Educating English Language Learners in an Inclusive Environment

Weâ€TMre the leading free PDF for the world. Platform is a high quality resource for free Kindle books.Give books away. Get books you want. You have the option to browse by most popular titles, recent reviews, authors, titles, genres, languages and more.Books are available in several formats, and you can also check out ratings and reviews from other users.Open library edreversersecret.com has many thousands of free and legal books to download in PDF as well as many other formats. From romance to mystery to drama, this website is a good source for all sorts of PDF.

Contemporary Issues in Education as a Vehicle For Citizenship Education

Abstract In light of sustained and bitter partisanship in the political arena as well as widespread voter apathy, especially among young people, many leading voices in higher education have been calling for increased attention to citizenship education. One significant result of this interest is the Carnegie Foundations Political Engagement Project (PEP), which has led to a framework for citizenship education in higher education. This article demonstrates that an elective course in contemporary educational issues is a natural vehicle for citizenship education as defined in the Carnegie work, and it argues that such a course should be made widely available as a general education elective. A secondary rationale for this argument is that an educational issues course has the potential to help raise public awareness of several critically important, national education issues—including high stakes testing and privatization. To make the case for this proposal, one section of a typical education issues course is analyzed to demonstrate alignment between typical course content and the PEP citizenship education framework. In addition, student self-reports of learning are analyzed, detailing alignment between student outcomes and the frameworks instructional goals. Although specific to the United States, the curricular suggestion made here applies broadly to other democratic countries lamenting a largely unengaged and passive citizenry and experiencing similar challenges to public schools.

Toward Sustainable Educational Changes through School-Based Professional Development on ELL Assessment for New Teachers

Developing teachers knowledge about assessing English language learners (ELLs) is critical for achieving intended policy outcomes of improving teaching under Race to the Top policy and Common Core State Standards. In addition to teachers expressed concerns about teaching Common Core State Standards to ELLs in a national survey published in Education Week (Gewertz, 2013), the formation of two assessment consortiums (i.e., Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC, and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC) indicates the urgency for teachers to demonstrate their assessment knowledge and for schools to provide meaningful professional development opportunities in that area. In this article, we detail the rationale for school-based professional development targeting assessment, especially for new teachers, and outline a proposed procedure for providing such training.