Science-based Educational Research: Includes initiatives addressing education reform in science classrooms, questioning skill development, program evaluation, personal attribute identification, student/teacher interaction analysis, and teaching effectiveness. Dr. Ron Bonnstetter.
Storytelling as Self- and Cultural Affirmation: Exploring the roles of fictional memoir, a novel, a book of short stories, and a play written in verse, in confronting self-understandings and teaching identity. Working manuscripts include: 1) a bilingual (Spanish-English) children's book of fables,2) a collection of poems, and 3)an outline for a novel. This work has also resulted in a Family Literacy program with young families, bilingual and/or monolingual English, and storytelling programs: The Art & Practice of Hispono Storytelling, and Vaqueros to Buckaroos-Trails from Mexico. Dr. Ricardo Garcia
Transnational Students in Mexico Study (Officially titled "MIGRACIÓN INTERNACIONAL, TRAYECTORIAS ESCOLARES Y POBREZA: inclusión/exclusión en las escuelas mexicanas y trasnacionalismo de los menores migrantes mexicanos") A mixed methods study in the Mexican states of Nuevo León and Zacatecas to identify and learn about the school and life experiences of students there who previously have attended school in the United States. Having visited 391 schools and having found 450 students who previously attended school in the U.S., we project that there are 18,000 such students in these two states and as many as 485,000 across the country. Dr. Ted Hamann in collaboration with Dr. Víctor Zúñiga, who is a sociologist the Universidad de Monterrey (in Nuevo León Mexico), and with funding from CONACYT (Mexico's national science foundation).
U.S. Teachers Learning in Mexico: An examination of what Midwestern teachers experienced and made sense of in a summer training program in Mexico intended to raise awareness about Mexico and Mexican education for purposes of helping participants better respond to Mexican newcomer students and families in the U.S. Dr. Ted Hamann With Dr. Beth Doll (in UNL's Dept. of Educational Psychology).
Schooling in Demographically Transitioning Communities: Mainly an undergraduate curriculum development and piloting effort using the Initiative on Teaching and Learning Excellence (ITLE) project to study the experiences of graduate student mentors and undergraduate mentees paired to consider the teacher professional development implications of Nebraska's demographically changing public school enrollment. (Since 1990-91 Nebraska's white non-Hispanic K-12 public school enrollment has declined by 24,379 (-10%); its Hispanic enrollment has grown by 25,648 (+359%); its African American enrollment has grown by 6,980 (+48%), its Asian/Pacific Islander enrollment has grown by 2,602 (+100%), and its American Indian/Alaskan Native enrollment has grown by 1,707 (+57%).) Dr. Ted Hamann and Dr. Jenelle Reeves.
Urban High School Reform through Content Area Literacy Instruction for First and Second Language Learners: A pending funding proposal to the Institute of Educational Sciences to work with ESL, science, and dual language program teachers at two high schools to embed literacy instruction in their content area teaching. The hoped for outcomes include improved science and literacy outcomes for ELLs, exited-ELLs, below-grade-level readers, and other students and a new hybrid summer/academic year teacher professional development protocol. Dr. Ted Hamann with Dr. Jenelle Reeves, Dr. Katherine Richardson Bruna (of Iowa State University), Dr. Rebecca Callahan (of the University of Georgia), and Chris Schaben and Shari Koch (of Omaha Public Schools).
Race, Place, and Educational Policy Development in Metro Omaha: In April 2006, metro Omaha schooling garnered national press attention when a new state law, LB 1024, promised to break Omaha Public Schools into three smaller, racially distinct subunits, a possible violation of Brown v. Board of Education. The same law promised equal funding and standard setting across all of the urban and suburban districts in the region. This not-yet-funded project examines newspaper records and will include interviews, focus groups, and other research strategies to make sense of how metropolitan Omaha school districts and community members are negotiating race, class, and educational rights and responsibilities. Dr. Ted Hamann.
Math in the Middle: This major, federally funded project, explores the relationships among teachers’ increased understanding of mathematical content knowledge, their teaching practices, and the effects of those practices on students’ mathematics learning. This 5-year initiative will influence the teaching of approximately 125 Nebraska middle school teachers and their students. Dr. Ruth Heaton and Dr. Tom McGowan.
Teaching/Learning for Aesthetic Experience: Foregrounds the role and integral place of aesthetic considerations such as attentiveness to personal learning processes, participatory thinking, emotional commitment, felt freedom, dialogue and interaction, speculation, and greater self-consciousness within the acts of teaching and learning. I put forth (along with others) that these are neglected epistemological assumptions elemental to learners and learning. I am documenting and addressing the underestimated consequences these pose to the ethical realm of teaching and learning, to the possibility of genuine concerted action, to the growth of self-understanding, and to the development of contextually sensitive teaching/learning practices. Finding ways to evidence and articulate these lived consequences permeates this research work through case studies with individual teachers, professional development initiatives, and interpretive theoretical studies. Dr. Margaret Macintyre Latta.
Embodiment & Education: 12-15 participating teachers are participating in a self-study research group focused on elucidating theory/practice relations. Reflexively reading, writing, examining, and using theory as working notions to negotiate individually and collectively within the realities of classroom practices, offers greater insights into the body’s role in teaching and learning. A pedagogy of embodiment brings thinking, feeling, seeing, and acting into a vital relationship that is integral to the work of learning. As national/international teacher education reform initiatives are being considered, the body’s role needs to be foregrounded in this conversation, and this project provides concrete evidence revealing embodiment’s implications for connected knowledge, empowering learners and teachers, and fostering the work of learning. Dr. Margaret Macintyre Latta.
Teaching and Learning Spanish: 5 year longitudinal study with K-12 Spanish learners designed to determine what students know and are able to do after one year, two years, three years, four years and five years of language instruction. Funded by Teacher Quality Grants and the U.S. Department of Education, this research project provides professional development for practicing teachers of Spanish by offering a Summer Immersion Program during the summer that is preceded and followed up by workshops and Blackboard participation. Participating schools and teachers introduce the Nebraska LinguaFolio designed to build self-assessment skills and ultimately self-efficacy among students to increase student achievement. Additional aspects of this research project include: teacher effect on student learning, the role of feedback on student learning, and related qualitative investigations of research related to the integration of the LinguaFolio in the language classroom. Dr. Ali Moeller.
English as a Second Language (ESL) Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge: The purpose of this multi-year qualitative study is to examine monolingual English as a second language (ESL) teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge to identify 1) whether or not monolinguals have gaps in their content knowledge and 2) if so, to document the nature of those gaps. Pedagogical content knowledge is teachers’ knowledge not only of subject (in this case the English language) but also their knowledge of how their subject can / should be taught to students in ways that facilitate language acquisition. In other words, monolingual teachers of ESL have a native-speaker’s knowledge of the language, yet they may not have the knowledge of the language needed to effectively teach English as a second language. Dr. Jenelle Reeves.
Finding a Place: Rethinking School Markets, Student Marginalization and Rural Community Survival: A study in local rural education policy that examines how one small rural public school district has used extant policy environments to create a market alternative for out-district area students who are at-risk academically and socially. By crafting course and academic programs to support these students, the district has been able to maintain student enrollments in the face of declining community population, lower district tax levies, and ensure district sustainability. Dr. Steve Swidler.
Affinity Learning Authoring Tool Evaluation: Graphical vs. Non-Graphical:
The Affinity Learning System is similar to, but distinguishable from, other electronic tutor development efforts. Many educational simulation, electronic tutor or virtual classroom programs, such as the IMMEX system (http://www.immex.ucla.edu) developed at UCLA, provide opportunities for students to participate in active learning. Affinity can accommodate these types of presentations and assessments. In addition, Affinity adds customized support to help students overcome misconceptions, missing knowledge, or missing skills.
Dr. Leen-Kiat Soh, Dr. David Fowler, Dr.Roger Feese, & Dr. Art Zygielbaum.
Arts LINC: A federally-funded research project investigating how visual art and music integrated with English literacy and language development will increase student achievement. Arts LINC is a collaborative project of teachers in Nebraska and California, local artists, universities, and professional organizations. Arts LINC has three goals:
1) To increase language and literacy skills by improving vocabulary and fluency for all students focusing on at-risk students. We will do this by linking language development to art (Yrs 1&2) and music/movement (Yrs. 3&4). Dr. Guy Trainin.
The Silent Reading Fluency Study: Because much of the reading that students do in school and out of school is done silently, we intend to determine the acceptable range for silent reading fluency rates for fourth grade students. We focus on fourth grade students because it is the first grade assessed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This work will position our research group to begin a line of research to set benchmarks for silent reading fluency in elementary and middle school children and determine how silent reading fluency impacts reading comprehension in a wide range of students. Secondly, we will test a series of web-based reading materials for use in silent reading fluency monitoring and future studies. We will examine the effectiveness of the web-based passages for determining silent reading fluency rates and levels of reading comprehension for elementary school children.Dr. Kathleen Wilson – (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), Dr. Guy Trainin – (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), and Dr. Elfrieda Hiebert (University of California, Berkeley.
Our Zoo-to-You Writing Project. (Museums for America Grant), a collaboration with the UNL, Folsom Childrens Zoo and the Lincoln Public Schools: This project’s purpose is to examine the science writing of first graders to determine changes that are made in the quality and quantity of writing over an academic year after the class’s involvement with the Our-Zoo-to You Project. A comparison of writing samples from District classrooms with and without opportunities to observe the behavior of live animals is being made.
Principal Investigator: Mimi Wickless. Co-Investigators: Dr. David Brooks, Dr. Kathleen M. Wilson, Dr. Guy Trainin, Dr. Tiffany Heng-Moss, Lois Mayo.
Coursetaking in Six Decades: A Transcript Study of Nebraska High Schools, 1953-2003:The purpose of this study is to describe changes in course-taking patterns of high school students in one state across a 50-year span. Through a transcript analysis of graduating seniors in 17 schools for the years 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993 and 2003 we offer a view of Nebraska high schools and the courses their graduates completed. We identify constants and changes over time in courses, course complexity, and grades. The analysis suggests what various communities have valued as necessary and important for young people to learn as well as trends in beliefs and ideas about what comprises a quality education. Dr. Jim Walter and Dr. Susan Wunder.
From Student to Teacher: Teacher knowledge of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms:In this study, I am examining the experiences of undergraduate teacher education students as they move from student to student teacher, to explore the challenges of planning and implementing curriculum for an increasingly diverse student population. Dr. Elaine Chan
Faculty Leadership for Writing Initiative:Through an initiative supported by the Program of Excellence in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a group of faculty in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education are examining the systematic use of writing, with particular attention to peer review and multi-draft efforts, as core features of undergraduate teacher education courses. We are documenting and reflecting upon the process of planning, implementing, and evaluating opportunities for teacher education students to develop academic writing skills. Engaging students in peer-review of reflective writing about their classroom experiences provides an example of the kinds of practices to be encouraged in the teacher education programs within the department that are currently under revision. Dr. Elaine Chan
Immigrant Narratives Intersecting on a School and Community Landscape in Transition:This study is a preliminary examination of issues contributing to the academic development and social adaptation of immigrant and minority students in an American city. This school-based study will address the unique challenges of educating immigrant and minority students attending diverse schools in previously less diverse communities. This study is an examination of these school contexts from the perspective of the students and their teachers to identify the kinds of knowledge teachers need to acquire about the intricacies of their students’ ethnic communities in order to support their academic performance and social adaptation. Dr. Elaine Chan
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 'Ethnic identity of first generation Canadians: Intersection of culture and curriculum on school landscapes:In this study, I examine in greater detail the experiences of teachers and students as they live a culturally sensitive curriculum on a multicultural school landscape. I explore ways in which curriculum events have the potential to shape the ethnic identity of the students by highlighting how beliefs and values of individuals may be challenged through the implementation of curriculum events valued by some members of the school community and judged as inappropriate by others.
I focus more specifically on teacher experiences of the inclusion of culture in the curriculum to explore the challenges and complications associated with the development and implementation of a culturally sensitive curriculum. I examine teachers' experiences that intersect with those of immigrant parents whose perceptions of the role of school are shaped by cultural and social narratives very different from those that guide teachers and students in North American schools. I also examine the tensions involved when students' sense of affiliation to both their home and school cultures is challenged as they shift back and forth between cultures, such as when students have different expectations for behavior depending on whether they are in school or at home, and depending on with whom they are interacting. This understanding of the role of curriculum in shaping a sense of ethnic identity contributes to the field of Curriculum Studies by enhancing the ability of educators to meet the needs of their increasingly diverse student populations. Dr. Elaine Chan
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Research Project, 'Intersecting Narratives: Cultural Harmonies and Tensions in Inner-City Canadian Schools.:In this study, we focus on the family and generational narratives of experience in which present-day narratives of experience are embedded and on the place of school in those narratives. We are gaining a sense of the temporally longer generational stories to describe, understand, and improve the experience of schooling in inner-city contexts. The stories to live by told to us by children and their parents are embedded in cultural narratives of experience, narratives which reach back across generations to homeland stories of other times.
Seeing ourselves as developing a viable methodology and interpretive framework for conducting school-based research, in this study, we will expand our working notion of educational landscapes to include the imaginative, ideological, and narrative web of generational purposes and goals and continue to refine the idea of narrative inquiry as both method and phenomena. Dr. Elaine Chan
