PreK-12 Students Research Articles

Defining Systemic Change in School Counseling: A Delphi Study

ABSTRACT Systemic change is regarded as a key component of professional school counseling practice for increasing positive, equitable outcomes for PreK-12 students. Although related constructs like leadership and advocacy have been thoughtfully explored, systemic change requires consultation and collaboration with educational and community partners. To date, there has been a lack of clarity around how systemic change looks in practice for school counselors. The purpose of this study was to explore the foundational components of systemic change in school counseling. Using Delphi methodology, an expert panel of 22 participants consisting of professional school counselors, counselor educators, and school counseling supervisors developed a consensus list of 130 items describing the core beliefs, knowledge, dispositions, and skills necessary for school counselors to conduct systemic change. The findings suggest future implications for school counseling research, preparation, and consultation.

Editorial: Systematic screening to support well-being with PreK-12 students

Editorial: Systematic screening to support well-being with PreK-12 students

A Framework for Approaching AI Education in Educator Preparation Programs

In recent years, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has fostered an urgent need to better prepare current and future educators to be able to integrate AI technologies in their teaching and to teach AI literacy to PreK-12 students. While many organizations have developed professional learning opportunities for inservice educators, a gap remains for resources specifically designed for those facilitating and enrolled in Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs). In response to this gap, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) launched its first AI Explorations for EPPs Faculty Fellowship. As a result of the Faculty Fellows’ collaboration, this paper articulates a framework of seven critical strategies with the potential to address the urgent need EPPs have in preparing preservice teachers to effectively integrate AI-powered instructional tools and to teach this new area of content knowledge in PreK-12 classrooms. In addition, we provide a review of literature and an overview of the emerging needs for integrating AI education in EPPs. We demonstrate why support for preservice teachers’ critical examination and application of AI, including a focus on the issues of equity, ethics, and culturally responsive teaching, is essential to their later success in PreK-12 classrooms. Recommendations for further research and learning are also provided to promote community-wide initiatives for supporting the integration of AI in education through Educator Preparation Programs and beyond.

Understanding and responding to the effects of trauma in the classroom: A primer for educators

Although nearly half of U.S. students have experienced a potentially traumatic event (Bethell et al., 2017), educators are not routinely trained in trauma or trauma-informed practices (Hobbs et al., 2019; Koslouski & Stark, 2021; National Council of State Education Associations, 2019). Yet, trauma can have profound negative impacts on students’ social, emotional, and behavioral needs. Thus, this primer introduces educators to the prevalence of trauma in PreK-12 students’ lives, the effects of trauma on students’ development, and proactive and responsive strategies that adults can use to support students who have experienced trauma. We provide several vignettes to help educators understand varied presentations of trauma and the range of trauma-informed practices that can benefit students. We also address educators’ relationships with caregivers and describe strategies for mitigating the toll secondary traumatic stress (Figley, 1995) can take on educators. Throughout, we aim to build educators’ understanding, empathy, and agency for their work supporting students affected by trauma.

Antecedents of faith integration self-efficacy in PreK-12 Mennonite schools in North America

ABSTRACT Private Christian schools in North America endeavour to provide an educational experience that integrates religious and academic training for their preK-12 students. The integration of faith and academics has been studied in higher education institutions in North America, but not substantially in preK-12 schools. This study uses the lens of teacher self-efficacy to examine Christian school teachers’ confidence to integrate faith into their instructional practices. A survey was conducted that drew responses from 390 educators from 18 Mennonite-affiliated schools across North America. Responses indicated generally high levels of faith integration self-efficacy for all teachers; however, teachers felt least confident in drawing parents into the process. Regression analysis showed that individual factors did predict faith integration self-efficacy. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Partnerships Keep Children Learning During COVID-19

While Zoom classes may work at the college level, they don’t work for all students. For PreK-12 students, educators quickly realized a dramatic and disruptive digital divide among families and students in economically-stressed urban and rural communities across the country. At the start of the 20-21 school year, with COVID-19 continuing, it is imperative to resolve the technology challenge to connect with all families and help all students keep learning.

Scaffolding Development of Clinical Supervisors: Learning to be a Liaison

Teacher education as a field has embraced the idea that clinically-based teacher education will better support teacher candidate learning and the learning of their future preK-12 students (AACTE, 2018; NCATE, 2010). Likewise, teacher education scholars have emphasized the importance of learning to teach well in clinical practice (Darling-Hammond, 2014). We five women teacher educators engaged in a collaborative self-study to investigate our different perspectives and our institution’s hope for mentoring and preparing new liaisons. Our collaborative self-study focused on the research question: What are the key factors that play a part in influencing the developmental trajectory of a liaison? Through a collaborative self-study of our clinical supervision work as university liaisons, we identified the importance of community toward developing agency as teacher educators. Our year-long self-study involved journaling about our liaison experiences and our developmental trajectory in becoming teacher educators across time and multiple contexts.

Prevention of preK-12 School Employee Sexual Misconduct and Abuse

ABSTRACT The abuse of preK-12 students by school personnel is a pervasive, understudied topic that has behavioral, psychological and monetary consequences for victims, their families, and their communities. This special issue is the second of a two-part series and focuses on studies of school employee sexual misconduct prevention training programs and prevention issues and frameworks. This compilation of articles presents evidence that effective training can lead to improved awareness and behavior changes, concerns about policy implementation that may contribute to continued prevalence, and presents strategies and guidelines for prevention. These articles provide considerations for prevention including training, loopholes, and frameworks.

Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of PreK-12 Students by School Personnel

ABSTRACTThe abuse of students by PreK-12 school personnel continues to be a multifaceted issue that affects students, staff, parents, and communities at an alarming rate. This two-part special issue builds on the dated and limited literature in this topic area and includes qualitative and quantitative research on prevalence, victim and offender characteristics, barriers to prevention, and frameworks and standards for prevention. Together these articles highlight the need for systematic data collection, policy implementation, accountability, and training and awareness. The findings from these articles provide specific practices that schools can adopt and follow to prevent school employee sexual misconduct.

The Student as Teacher Educator in Service-Learning

To prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to work with diverse populations of PreK-12 students, teacher educators are incorporating a variety of field-based experiences into teacher preparation. Service-learning courses can provide PSTs with additional field experiences beyond formal student teaching. This study is concerned with the experiences of a group of undergraduate PSTs as they tutor in an alternative school as part of a service-learning course. To make sense of their experiences at the alternative school, these PSTs compared their own PreK-12 experiences and those of the students they tutored. In this study, the students at the alternative school served as the most influential contributors to PSTs’ developing conceptions of teaching and of schools—a finding that has implications for teacher preparation.

Toward a Pedagogy of Sociopolitical Consciousness in Outside of School Programs

Outside of school time (OST) programs are playing an increasingly prominent role in the lives of youth, particularly Black children. Because many schools are not meeting the social, cultural, and academic needs of Black students, the ability of OST programs to support students in these areas is essential. Ladson-Billings (The dreamkeepers: successful teachers of African American children, 2nd edn. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2009) conceptualized three central tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy, a theoretical framework designed to describe instructional practices inside of school that are relevant to, aligned with, and responsive to Prek-12 students. In this paper, the authors build on a tenet of Ladson-Billings’ (2009) culturally relevant pedagogy framework, sociopolitical consciousness (SPC), to make sense of how OST programs can develop instructional practices that build students’ knowledge and understandings of injustices in their communities and work to change them. The authors discuss how youths’ development of SPC can be fostered and operationalized through pedagogy in OST programs. The authors conclude with recommendations that could potentially contribute to a pedagogy of SPC in OST programs.

The Intersection of Inquiry-Based Science and Language: Preparing Teachers for ELL Classrooms

As teacher educators, we are tasked with preparing prospective teachers to enter a field that has undergone significant changes in student population and policy since we were K-12 teachers. With the emphasis placed on connections, mathematics integration, and communication by the New Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (Achieve in Next generation science standards, 2012), more research is needed on how teachers can accomplish this integration (Bunch in Rev Res Educ 37:298–341, 2013; Lee et al. in Educ Res 42(4):223–233, 2013). Science teacher educators, in response to the NGSS, recognize that it is necessary for pre-service and in-service teachers to know more about how instructional strategies in language and science can complement one another. Our purpose in this study was to explore a model of integration that can be used in classrooms. To do this, we examined the change in science content knowledge and academic vocabulary for English language learners (ELLs) as they engaged in inquiry-based science experience utilizing the 5R Instructional Model. Two units, erosion and wind turbines, were developed using the 5R Instructional Model and taught during two different years in a summer school program for ELLs. We analyzed data from interviews to assess change in conceptual understanding and science academic vocabulary over the 60 h of instruction. The statistics show a clear trend of growth supporting our claim that ELLs did construct more sophisticated understanding of the topics and use more language to communicate their knowledge. As science teacher educators seek ways to prepare elementary teachers to help preK-12 students to learn science and develop the language of science, the 5R Instructional Model is one pathway.

Preparing Inclusive Educators

We heartily thank the editors of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) for publishing a special issue of the journal on a most significant educator preparation matter: the need to prepare teachers skilled in supporting and educating the diverse individuals enrolled in America's schools. The rapid rise in the ethnic and diversity of the PreK-12 school population, as well as in the number of students with disabilities who spend most of their time in general classrooms, compels us all to reconsider how their teachers are prepared. We particularly appreciate the depth of knowledge and range of perspectives offered by the articles' contributors and their frank, tell-it-like-it-is presentation style. We urge readers to engage with the ideas presented in the articles, as each adds unique insights to understanding the complexity of preparing educators for the multifaceted diversity of today's PreK-12 students. Readers will appreciate how the complex intersections of race, social class, gender, culture, and disability are conceptualized and addressed through varying educational philosophies and strategies for preparing educators to teach such diverse students. As the contributors to this volume remind us, navigating these complexities has been fraught with decades-old tensions, enduring fissures, and cultural misunderstandings. But in today's world, teacher educators must not be hindered by these distractions. More than 90% of teachers in a recent major survey (MetLife, 2011) said supporting diverse learners with the highest needs should be a priority, and nearly 60% said it should be among the highest priorities. Preparing teachers who can successfully support the learning of every student requires that teacher educators remain open to new ideas and continue to develop preparation programs that respond to the nation's diverse learning communities. American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is strongly committed to assuring that its members are equipped to reach this goal. The thoughtful articles and recommendations made by the contributors to this special issue will be invaluable to AACTE's member institutions and leadership in setting policies and future direction for the Association. We must work together to advocate for appropriate legislative, regulatory, judicial, and fiscal supports to align with our efforts. Each of the contributors to this issue has offered insights to progress, limitations, and future challenges. Collectively, they have framed a vision of teaching that is inclusive--a vision that incorporates the responsibility for the learning of all students within the role of the general education teacher in collaboration with specialists. The articles speak to this vision as a way of fulfilling an ethical obligation to serve all learners. Specific examples of this approach are offered in Florian's article on Scotland's Inclusive Practice Project and in Pugach and Blanton's article discussing collaborative, dual-certification programs. Suggestions to Colleges of Education Teacher educators will find much to consider in this special issue. Irvine urges that culturally responsive pedagogy be considered foundational to the curriculum for all educators-which would help assure the common ground called for by Cochran-Smith and Dudley-Marling and would likely soften ideological positions on all sides. Irvine also suggests structural changes in preparation programs to enhance dialogue around curriculum, field experiences, research methodology, pedagogy, and assessments, and thus to help close the divide between multicultural and special education. She recommends coteaching between special and general education faculty, inclusion of PreK-12 teachers in planning new models for teacher training, and professional development programs for teacher educators. Irvine points out that many educator preparation programs enroll too few students of color--given that 38% of students with disabilities are culturally and linguistically diverse, but only 14% of special education teachers share these students' ethnic backgrounds. …

The Learning Economy

There is an increasing consumer value on personal growth that is driving a diverse market for educational and learning products ranging from food, toys, and games to housing and travel. Think about it. We eat specific kinds of food or take supplements that will help sharpen our minds. We buy toys for new-borns that enhance their developmental and cognitive skills and games to enhance learning for children and even adults. More often than in the past, many of us book travel and social opportunities that expand our learning, whether it's about food, history, literature, wine, or any niche interest. Because we live in the knowledge is the crucial resource. pervasive use of technology, the Internet, and social networking makes it cost-effective to serve niche markets with learning opportunities. number of informal learning opportunities that will be available for an adult, yet less those for school-aged children, will be enormous. This will easily translate into a formalized system of production and exchange of multiple learning resources that will make up a learning economy. As a result, individuals and organizations from inside and outside of the formal public education system will be part of a diverse market of personalized, diverse, and niche learning opportunities for students. Organizations that once weren't considered part of the public education market now offer concrete benefits that are evaluated alongside the formal school system. In the learning economy, school, particularly the brick and mortar version, owns only one part of the learning economy. This isn't hard to imagine. Parents are already exploring alternative educational and learning opportunities for their children. For instance, homeschooling has been one of the fastest growing education trends in the United States. Homeschooling provides an alternative form of education that allows parents to bypass the public school system by teaching their children at home. Online learning, or virtual schools, is another growing trend and is even being used by homeschoolers. According to T.H.E. Journal, more than 2 million preK-12 students take some form of schooling online right now--whether attending a virtual school for all their classes or just taking one or more courses through the Internet. The number of students taking courses online will jump to more than 10 million by 2014, claims this article (Nagel 2009). Online schools provide enormous flexibility in scheduling and the type of courses offered--core curriculum classes, credit recovery classes, accelerated learning opportunities, and more rigorous classes or enrichment courses (Nagel 2009). Parents who want a public school option also are enrolling their children in charter schools. While more than 4,900 charter schools serve more than 1.5 million students (www.chartergrowthfund.org), this is still a small sector of public schools. Consider the array of enrichment services being offered directly to consumers--parents and students. Some were designed for enhanced or cultural learning and others for students with learning challenges. Numerous supplemental education services, such as Sylvan Learning Services, originally used to help students with learning challenges, are now being marketed as entities that can accelerate learning. Some product developers have suggested that has been outsourced as a result of the increase in tutoring companies across India that are helping American children complete their homework and prepare for tests (Rai 2005). Open source courseware, shared curriculum repositories, home-school community networks, and many other bottom-up activities are unbundling education from the traditional system and providing children and families with new ways to experience learning. A growing system of free and easily accessible online learning resources is supporting students, educators, and parents. Education companies, with over $80 billion in annual revenues, already constitute a large sector in the education arena. …