Sarah E. Montgomery

iPads and Teacher Education: Exploring a 1:1 Initiative in a Professional Development School Partnership.

Abstract This study explores the experiences of elementary education teacher candidates in a Professional Development School Partnership that included a 1:1 iPad initiative. The teacher candidates in the year-long cohort were each given their own iPad to use in their coursework and field experience. Observation, survey, and interview data were collected to explore how the teacher candidates integrated the iPad into their teaching and learning. Using Rogerss (2003) Diffusion of Innovation framework, it was found that teacher candidates experienced a developmental process in their use of the iPad that resulted in some candidates reinventing their teaching approach and others remaining stagnant in regard to technology integration.

Critical Democracy Through Digital Media Production in a Third-Grade Classroom

Abstract This article explores the ways that alternative digital media production by elementary students can support education for critical democracy. The article centers on a collaborative, qualitative study in which students in a 3rd-grade class at a Title One school created and disseminated podcasts about issues of historical injustice rooted in the key tenets of critical literacy. Producing this counter-hegemonic digital media supported students becoming a community of active citizens dedicated to promoting social justice. The students used their podcasts as a public forum to educate others about historical injustice and take action for social change.

Using Cartoons to Teach about Perfectionism: Supporting Gifted Students' Social-Emotional Development.

Cartoon interpretation and production are teaching strategies that can assist students in a deeper understanding of concepts and practice of higher level thinking skills while motivating them through humor. This article presents an extended example of graduate students in an introductory course in gifted education creating humorous cartoons to explore major ideas and different types of perfectionism. General concepts of adaptive (positive) and maladaptive (negative) perfectionism, along with causes and mitigations, are discussed and illustrated with student-made cartoons. Students reported that creating cartoons was intrinsically motivating, promoted deeper levels of content learning, facilitated application of concepts, and aided self- and overall reflection on the topic. The process of the cartoon project and examples of student-generated cartoons are provided to promote practicing educators and teacher educators with ways of adapting this teaching strategy.

The emergence of elementary citizenship education: Insights from Iowa‘s rural schools, 1910–1935

ABSTRACT This study examined how U.S. entry into World War I and related pedagogical reforms of the early twentieth century impacted elementary social education at a local level. Analysis of state curriculum guides, records from the collection of a rural school educator, report cards, and daily attendance registers for four counties indicated that elementary citizenship education emerged as a stand-alone subject area in Iowa’s rural schools following World War I. While the “Civics of Iowa” was taught as part of the history curriculum prior to World War I, after the war civics became part of a larger framework for citizenship education. However, at a time of increasing nationalism, Iowa’s rural schools taught citizenship in a way that privileged a local, relational approach centered on the home, school, and community. Findings from the study illustrate how rural schools kept pace with national trends in social education despite not yet embracing the integrated field of “social studies.”