American Classrooms Research Articles

“I Understand the Struggle”: Leveraging the Lived Experiences of African American Teachers in TESOL

Although TESOL in-service teacher education committed to culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) has underscored the critical role of teachers' professional subjectivities for student achievement, relatively few studies have attempted to capture the perspectives of African American classroom teachers working with English language learners in U.S. contexts. The authors bring qualitative data from a participatory study to argue that the vivencias of Ellie Washington, an African American first-grade teacher born and raised in the segregated southern United States, was the lens through which she understood the TESOL in-service development in which she had participated 5 years earlier, her advocacy for Latino transnationals, and her hesitations about the exclusivity of ESL programming. Extending contemporary conversations about teacher quality in the “aftermath of scripted curriculum policies” (Maniates & Mahiri, 2011, p. 10), this article centers on how Washington's lived experiences shaped her interactions with Latino immigrant schoolchildren in rural North Carolina. The authors argue that, in spite of a needed emphasis on developing classroom teachers' sociocultural competencies for working with children of immigration, too often there is an erasure of the lived experiences of teachers of color and the funds of knowledge (Moll, 2014) those experiences potentially represent for highly qualified teaching.

An Officer and a Scholar: Nineteenth-Century West Point and the Invention of the Blackboard

Over two centuries after the invention of blackboards, they still feature prominently in many American classrooms. The blackboard has outlasted most other educational innovations and technologies, and has always been more than anaide memoire. Students and teachers have long assumed inscriptions on its surface made mental processes visible. As early as 1880, in fact, the A.H. Andrews & Co. catalog described the blackboard as a “mirror reflecting the workings, character, and quality of the individual mind.” The blackboard's ultimate origins are unclear but in North America one institution, the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, played a particularly important role in establishing the device within classrooms. The blackboard's use at West Point in the first years of the nineteenth century garnered the novel tool notice and by the Civil War, the blackboard's place had been so firmly established in American schools as to be easily overlooked in importance; it was simply part of the physical and intellectual architecture of the classroom, Subsequent changes in construction and production have affected cost and appearance, but the basic idea of a vertical surface on which erasable inscriptions are made has remained.

Strategies for Adopting Children's Refugee Literature in the Multicultural Classroom

Although many studies currently detail refugee experiences about famine, war, and frightening events like the holocaust, little research about the portrayal of the refugee experience in children’s literature exists ( Hope, 2008 ). This lack of research or gap creates a problem of understanding for educators and students in the multicultural classroom. These refugee children have had little or no formal education and this has created a major learning block for them in American classrooms. This study seeks to answer the question: what are examples of refugee children’s literature and effective strategies to help children better understand and appreciate one another and their cultures? A book review of selected refugee children’s literature and an analysis of pedagogy of effective instructional strategies were the methodologies used in the study. Study findings indicate four refugee children’s books represent similarities and the uniqueness of the literature and identify effective instructional strategies and activities to enhance greater understanding of the refugee experience. Policy implications from the study suggest strategies that educators may employ to adopt children’s refugee literature in the multicultural classroom. The path to embrace, to enhance, and to celebrate the life experiences of refugee children may be accomplished through the implementation of these effective instructional strategies in the multicultural classroom to help children better understand and appreciate one another and their cultures.

Chinese language teachers' expectations and perceptions of American students' behavior: Exploring the nexus of cultural differences and classroom management

Abstract This paper reports on six Chinese language teachers' experiences and perceptions of their classroom management in the United States of America. The analysis revealed that the teachers experienced cultural mismatches between their Chinese cultural expectations and American students' actual classroom behavior and struggled with challenges of understanding the demands of American classroom management, lack of effective strategies for managing American classroom, and language barriers. However, the teachers were able to adopt strategies commonly used by American teachers to manage their American students while retaining some of their Chinese practices. The findings suggest that cultural differences in classroom management play a significant role in affecting Chinese language teachers' classroom instruction and must be addressed in Chinese language teachers' preparation programs as well as their continued professional development in the U.S. and similar contexts.

Echoes from the past: Podcasting in the African American studies classroom

Podcasting has been used to deliver lectures in traditional face-to-face, hybrid, and distance-learning classrooms. However, an increasing amount of research has explored the educational benefits of student-created podcasts. Jarvis and Dickie (2010) have noted that podcasting can allow access to deeper modes of learning. In addition to digital literacy skills, podcasting has been shown to promote confidence and provide greater motivation for participating in the course (Lee et al, 2008). When implementing technology in the classroom my primary goal as an educator is to use it in service of the core content. As a result, this podcasting project firmly places African American Culture at the center at both phases of the project: learning how to use the podcasting software and creating a podcast to share with the class. This quick hit describes the use of podcasting using Audacity, a free audio-editing software program, as implemented in an African American Culture class made up of 35 students. The ethnography podcast replaced a typical research paper with the aim to achieve this greater motivation and engage deeper modes of learning by asking students to explore their connections to the African American communities around them. Making It Work

English as gatekeeper: linguistic capital and American schools

Purpose – This paper aims to progress the dialogue on language rights in the urban classroom. Research has evidenced how language can serve as a powerful tool in mainstream ideologies; more specifically, the preferred and dominant use of Standard Written English in the American classroom has demonstrated how language serves as a gatekeeper for student success. This paper calls for a more democratic notion of language usage that denies the “gatekeeper” of English into specific educational tracks. Design/methodology/approach – By framing the issue of linguistic diversity through a theoretical analysis of cultural reproduction theory, this paper demonstrates how language serves as a bridge in building and negotiating cultural identities for students. In addition, an examination of how language serves as a stratification tool in educational contexts provides credence for reform initiatives. Findings – In the field of linguistics, the shift in verbal and language repertoires has provided a new paradigm for rethinking what constitutes as an acceptable and innovative language use. However, structures such as schools have remained static in their vision of linguistic success in the classroom, assessing students’ language abilities in the specifics of standard written English. Originality/value – This analysis encourages recommendations for examining current curriculum with regards to the promotion of language diversity, encouragement for teachers to reexamine their individual perceptions about language difference and the realignment of assessment and academic measurement tools to better accommodate students with linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Teacher Use of Creativity-Enhancing Activities in Chinese and American Elementary Classrooms

The purpose of these exploratory studies was to examine Chinese and American elementary teachers’ perceptions of how various classroom activities contribute to student creativity, and how often teachers report engaging their students in these activities. Third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers in the Midwestern United States (N = 51) and in Shaanxi Province, China (N = 51) were surveyed about their classroom activities and their perceptions of these activities on student creativity. Results of independent sample t-tests indicated that Chinese teachers believed routine and fun classroom activities contributed more to student creativity than American teachers. In addition, Chinese teachers indicated that their students more often participated in fun classroom activities than American teachers. Results call into question assumptions about differences between Chinese and American classrooms and instruction.

Peacebuilding Dialogue Pedagogies in Canadian Classrooms

Constructively critical and inclusive dialogue about conflictual issues is one necessary ingredient of both democratic citizenship and peacebuilding learning. However, in North American classrooms populated by heterogeneous and non-affluent students, pedagogies involving discussion of conflicts are rarely fully implemented, sustained, or inclusive of all students’ voices. This article reports the results of a study describing contrasting ways in which teachers actually did implement (or attempt) dialogic pedagogies on difficult issues in Canadian public school classrooms. Based on a series of observations and interviews in 11 public elementary, intermediate, and secondary classrooms (linked to three different professional development initiatives), the article examines key elements—in the content of the conflicts discussed; in the processes and task structures for classroom discussion; in the norms, skills, and relationships established; and in the school contexts—that make such dialogic classroom activities more (or less) feasible to implement and sustain, more (or less) inclusive of previously marginalized voices, and more (or less) constructive for democratic and peacebuilding education.

Metaphors that teachers live by: a cultural model of literacy in the era of new literacies

Bridging home literacy practices and school has been a key theme for many New Literacy Studies researchers, yet there is no clear consensus on the impact of multiple or new literacies in K-12 classrooms. American classrooms remain book-centric. Multiple literacies represent a fundamental paradigm shift in the ways we understand and enact literacy and learning, but most teachers continue to respond to literacy instruction in ways that inadequately address the complexities of twenty-first century literacy needs. While the existing structures and policies of education make schools problematic sites for enacting multiple and new literacies, one important explanation can be found in the metaphors that constitute teachers’ cultural model of literacy. This study provides a metaphorical analysis of interview excerpts from classroom teachers in order to reconstruct their cultural model of literacy that I presuppose underlies their talk about bookishness. But membership in this category is determined by an ideal exemplar. Teachers’ metaphors reveal a moral model that draws upon a conceptual category where bookishness serves as a cognitive prototype. Understanding teachers’ cultural model of literacy and its associated metaphors offers opportunities to reframe critical conversations about twenty-first century classroom literacy pedagogy.

Capturing the Experiences of International Teaching Assistants in the US American Classroom

This chapter presents findings from a qualitative study which investigated the perceptions of twenty‐five ITAs toward US American undergraduates. The participant cohort comprised fourteen PhD and eleven master's students, of which, three were male and twenty‐two were female ITAs teaching oral communication or a communication course requiring at least two graded assignments. The responses gathered via an online survey were content analyzed using Leximancer, a text analytic software program. We found that the master's students reflected more about issues pertaining to their own public speaking and confidence, while the PhD students were more concerned with the preparation and presentation of the course material. In addition to discussing these findings, one coauthor of this study adds her reflexive voice to the experience of being a nonnative English speaker teaching American students.

The familiar observer: seeing beyond the expected in educational research

Reflection on subjectivity in the qualitative research process is fundamental to the methodology. Although much attention is paid to what to do (identify subjectivities), there is much less emphasis on how one should do this. Furthermore, a researcher engaged in an intimately familiar setting, such as a typical American classroom, faces the unique challenge of sifting through vast stores of prior knowledge and beliefs that influence perceptions of observed instruction, including experiences as a K-12 learner and classroom teacher. As a novice qualitative researcher and former special educator drawn to questions involving instructional practice in reading comprehension, I struggled to balance my emotional responses to observed instruction with my need to understand teachers' decision-making. I begin by sharing my own experiences as a novice researcher, brought forward from artefacts of that time. Moving to the present, I reflect on my early misperceptions, and conclude with recommendations for working with subjectivity in the research process.

CODA: Moving toward Collaborative Cultures: Remixing Classroom Participation

This commentary explores how the digital world encourages a move away from the information transmission teaching models that have dominated American classrooms. Likewise, the next generation of standards worldwide (e.g., the Common Core in the US) and assessments (e.g., SBAC and PARCC) require this move away from purveying information and toward a remixed sociocultural, community-of-practice–based apprenticeship model of teaching. This apprenticeship model is robustly supported by the last half-century of research in cognitive science and is all about cultures of collaboration: between teachers and students, students and students, and students and the wider environment, including a remixing of and with the digital environment.

Teaching with Tocqueville: Assessing the Utility of Using “Democracy” in the American Government Classroom to Achieve Student-Learning Outcomes

There is a debate in Political Science concerning how best to teach American Government courses. We investigate whether students learn more effectively with texts from the great tradition or from textbooks and other secondary sources. Which medium better guides students toward becoming better citizens? We examine how teaching “The Great Tradition” may increase success in student-learning outcomes. We examine four categories of learning outcomes in the Introduction to American Government classroom: general knowledge, knowledge of current events, civic engagement, and civic virtue. These outcomes were pretested and posttested with a quasi-experimental design. The experimental group studied Tocqueville's Democracy in America, while the control group studied traditional textbooks. The purpose of this project is to see if reading Tocqueville increases success in student-learning outcomes over classes that do not. We test two main sets of hypotheses. The first set concerns group/overall class improvement, and the second set deals with individual student improvement. Our results demonstrate that students’ mean improvement scores pre- to posttest increase more in the experimental sections than in the control sections for the general knowledge, civic engagement, and civic virtue learning components. This research suggests a return to the “classics” as a pedagogical innovation.

Beyond equality in the American classroom: the case for inclusive education

Introduction Part I. Establishing the Historical Perspective of Exceptionality Chapter 1: Conceptions of Exceptionality: Biblical Times through the Middle Ages Chapter 2: The Educational Development of Children with Exceptionalities: 18th Century and Beyond Chapter 3: Social and Legislative Histories of People with Exceptionalities Chapter 4: Legitimizing the Field through Formal Thinking: The Development of Studies in Exceptionality Part II. Establishing the Philosophical Perspective of Exceptionality Chapter 5: The Western Philosophers Chapter 6: Exploring Concepts of Justice Chapter 7: Contextualizing Social Justice within Exceptionality Part III. Establishing the Polemic for Inclusive Education Chapter 8: The Development of the Concept of Inclusion Chapter 9: Implementing Inclusive Education in Schools with a Positive Trajectory Chapter 10: Addressing the Challenges of the Treatise

Revisiting the Relationship between Teacher Confirmation and Learning Outcomes: Examining Cultural Differences in Turkish, Chinese, and American Classrooms

This study investigates the relationship between teacher confirmation behaviors (i.e., responding to questions, demonstrating interest, interactive teaching style) and student learning outcomes (i.e., affective learning, student motivation) across three cultures: Turkey, China, and the United States. Results indicates the confirmation-learning relationship was significantly stronger in the United States and China than it was in Turkey. The findings from this study suggest that teacher confirmation is an effective teaching behavior that transcends cultures, yet the magnitude of its importance on student learning appears more relevant in America, and to a lesser extent in China, than it is in Turkey.

Adolescents and the Social Media: The Coming Storm

In her book Failure to Connect: How computers affect our Children’s Minds, [1] sounded the alarm to the educational community that computers would not impact the intellectual growth of children in the ways that had been anticipated by the Clinton Administration when they started the push to have the world-wide web integrated into American classrooms by passing the Classroom 2000 education initiative [1]. In a speech in April of 2013 [2], Clinton would follow-up by saying that the modern internet has forced a change in what we consider to be forms of good citizenship. The future will redefine how we should act and interact.

African Children in the American Classroom: The WebQuest as a Pedagogical Tool

African Children in the American Classroom: The WebQuest as a Pedagogical Tool

Lost in Non-Translation: Politics of Misrepresenting Arabs

Undergraduate college students in the USA often encounter the Arab Middle East through novels translated into English. These novels are often presented by instructors and understood by students as stylized but accurate depictions of Arab societies as they currently exist. This article argues that the extremely limited number of translated Arabic novels that have made their way into American classrooms perpetuate stereotypes about Arab societies. These novels present students with themes that are often ahistorical and infused with violence, misogyny, and religious fanaticism. Although students may be highly interested in learning about Arab societies, the literary content they come across encourages affective rather than critical or complex responses.

Involvement in University Classroom Discourse: Register Variation and Interactivity

Research on the linguistic characteristics of university classroom discourse highlights the salience, in this register, of non-informational and subjective aspects of discourse. This dimension of classroom discourse, however, has not been studied systematically. Taking a corpus-based approach, this study investigates the non-informational dimension of classroom discourse, focusing on the marking of emotions, affect, and the speaker’s ‘involvement’ (Chafe 1982) in the talk of university professors, in a large corpus of American university classroom discourse. It tracks the use of involvement markers across class sessions representing three situational factors that define the university setting: academic discipline, level of instruction, and class size. Surprisingly, these factors have relatively little influence on involvement in language, suggesting that involvement is pervasive in American classroom talk. However, involvement tends to be more common in small courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences, at the upper division and graduate level—courses that generally favor student participation, hence interactivity in discourse. Analyses of the relationship between involvement and interactivity reveal that while interactivity tends to predict involvement, involvement is not limited to interactive discourse.

Hot topics in architectural acoustics: Classroom acoustics and archaeoacoustics

When ASA members discovered that typical American classrooms were too noisy or reverberant for serious learning in 1988 they began a successful grassroots movement to fix them. By 2002, ASA volunteers produced the first-ever ANSI standard for classroom acoustics. The effort was led by ASA’s TCAA and supported by three other TCs, the S12 Standards Committee, courageous ASA staffers, and elected officers. ANSI Standard S12.60 was adopted fully or partly by school districts, states, and architectural authorities including the Green Building Council. Classroom acoustics research reporting remains active at ASA meetings. We show how this standard helps to make a better world. The new fields of archaeoacoustics and historical acoustics are “hot”. They employ scientific acoustics to study the past. Their novel hypotheses and discoveries attract young investigators to acoustical careers. Sound was more important in the quiet ancient world. Many are fascinated by the 1988 discovery of strong correlation between the locations of Paleolithic cave paintings and cave resonance. Why? A pyramid at Chichen Itza, Mexico, chirps like a bird revered in Mesoamerican cultures. The chirp is explained by applying the convolution theorem to pyramid architecture. Was it intentionally designed? Other archaeoacoustic and historical acoustic examples are addressed.