Lori Czop Assaf

BALL STATE UNIVERSITY A Teachers College Publication Volume 47 2012 Official Journal of the Indiana Association of Teacher Educators Editors: Gregory Marchant and Sharon Paulson ... Editorial Advisory Board David C. Berliner Emeritus, Arizona State University Marilyn Cochran-Smith Boston College Linda Darling-Hammond Stanford University Sheliah Dorton Association of Teacher Educators—Indiana Sharon Feiman-Nemser Brandeis University Robert Floden Michigan State University Roger T. Johnson University of Minnesota John ...

Abstract In this qualitative case study, we examine South African teachers' generative learning after participating in a professional development project focused on writing and describe how the teachers enacted writing instruction in their classrooms six months after the project. Building on generative change theories, we explored how teachers used free writing to become metacognitive of their writerly identities and create time and space for their students to do the same. The teachers shifted in their beliefs and understanding of different writing discourses and the importance of using themselves and culturally relevant texts to mediate their students' writing.

This text creates the rationale for the various sections and chapters of the book, thus laying the foundation for flourishing the purpose and objectives of the book. The idea is to lay down possible link up intersecting disability, inclusion, and culture as explored through the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural lens of the authors from various origins. This text establishes the rationale for various sections of the book, beginning with the voices of people with disabilities as they explore the evolution or shaping of their identities through the barriers and abilities in the way diversity is understood in various cultural contexts to see how our communities are progressing toward an inclusive society. Through a socio-cultural lens from which the structures within society all contribute to inform the attitudes and beliefs that are held about persons with a disability and how they may access services such as education, employment, and social engagement/independent living or a life ...

With the nation's shifting ethnic and cultural texture, multicultural education has become imperative in the 21st century. As an outcome of the shifting diversity in our country, more than 6.3 million students with English as their second language and as many as 13 million students living in poverty are enrolled in pre-K through 12th grade public schools (Children's Defense Fund, 2005). In contrast to student diversity in the U.S., most of the current teaching force, those coming into teaching, and those who teach prospective teachers are White females who have been raised in middle class homes in rural and suburban communities (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/minoritytrends/ind_1_1.asp). With such dramatic changes in our nation's cultural landscape, it is not surprising that one major goal of many teacher education programs is to better prepare a mostly White, female monolingual teaching force to work effectively with students from culturally and linguistically diverse back...

Research on the sociocultural processes of writing and its impact on writing instruction in the middle grades has gained increased attention in educational research (Prior, 2006). Less attention has been devoted to research on writing with middle grade English learners (henceforth EL) who are mainstreamed into English only classrooms. National assessment data, reports, and literature reviews indicate that this is an area that is sorely in need of exploration (Fitzgerald, 2006; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012; National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges, 2003; Samway, 2006). The focus of this paper is to examine how one teacher created and used third spaces in her middle school classroom to support her EL's academic writing abilities.Research on the writing process approach has influenced writing instruction in the middle grades (Prior, 2006), yet researchers argue that this approach assumes familiarity with White middle class discourse pat...

Following the developed countries, an increasing number of countries including the developing ones have shown their agreeableness to adapt to changes in legislations, administration and practice, aiming participation of individuals with disabilities for an inclusive environment. Unfortunately, agreeableness does not necessarily ensure full participation or social acceptance or inclusion. This chapter summarizes the diversities of culture and inclusion as brought forward by various authors across countries, cultures and disciplines with critical reflections bridging the gap of diversities and inclusion building a universal model of inclusion from the learnings derived from each chapter. In this text, we share our understandings of disability and the global nature of the cultural features that impinge on quality of life to help establish what is universally true about disability and what may be unique to specific cultures or countries and individuals. The future directions lies in exp...

... history of the test ing movement in Texas and then report the findings from our study. ... The main part of this accountabil ity system is the TAAS (Texas Assessment of ... in TAAS performance are examined carefully in relation to patterns on this broader set of accountability measures. ...

ABSTRACT The book examines some theoretical and empirical aspects about complexities of inclusion and culture as they apply to education and specifically to the area of disability or special educational needs (SEN). This book argues that concepts of disability and inclusion are culturally constructed. Disability and inclusion are not a global agenda in the sense that one size fits all, rather they are completely context dependent and they should be deconstructed according to the suitability of each context. The book also argues that ‘inclusion’ relates to a wider understanding of inclusion beyond disability (relating to wider cultural issues like religion and difference). Additionally, the book is based on the premise that Egyptian teachers’ understanding of and attitudes towards inclusion are set within a cultural context different from many other contexts especially the western ones. Through the journey of the book, the study attempts to problematize these issues so it may contribute in filling this gap. Moreover, it has been argued that the complexities of inclusion, SEN, and teachers’ beliefs and attitudes should be studied within a framework that recognises the influence of culture and context. Therefore, the theoretical claims proposed in this book are further supported by the results of a case study of the inclusion of children with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream schools in the Egyptian context, with a particular focus on teachers’ understanding of and attitudes towards inclusive education according to the sociocultural model.

The purpose of this study was to explore how preservice teachers (PST) became aware of literacies in global and local contexts and to understand how PST conceive of literacy after experiencing an international service learning (ISL) study abroad program in rural South Africa. For this qualitative grounded theory study, we used critical literacy and humanizing pedagogy as theoretical frames for designing the program and analyzing data. Findings show PST experienced a “literacy awakening.” They became more aware of nuanced and complex ways literacies function in a community and imagined how their understandings would shape future teaching.

Research on literacy tutoring such as working in an after-school reading or writing club, situated as a service-learning project, suggests that such work can foster culturally responsive teaching for prospective teachers by increasing additive perspectives toward students from diverse backgrounds and transforming views of diversity. The purpose of this qualitative study was to document the value of participating in a semester long, field-based university course combined with a service-learning program to enhance prospective teachers’ generative learning of culturally responsive pedagogy. Building on generative learning theories, we identified the ways prospective teachers became more metacognitive of their past experiences and beliefs, developed caring relationships, and gained confidence about the positive impact they were having on students’ literacy learning.

ABSTRACT Initially the aim of this qualitative study was to examine how one reading specialist taught character development using series books with ten bilingual students. However, some very surprising issues evolved during this project. First, I discovered that the teacher used very few series books in her reading instruction than previously self-reported. Instead, she mainly relied on testing materials to help her students pass the state mandated test. This shift was caused by a change in the schools’ mid-year test scores, lowing the school’s rank from a top level of achievement to the lowest level of achievement. Because of this change, this study was expanded to look at how one teacher responded to the testing pressures so deeply engrained in Texas schools. As a participant observer, I spent over 192 hours over 4 months conducting ethnographic research in the teacher’s school, collecting field notes and artifacts (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995), as well as conducting informal and formal interviews with the teacher, her colleagues, and her students. The teacher was purposefully selected (Patton, 1990/2001) because she was experienced (taught for more than 30 years) considered exemplary by their peers and administrators, and described using series books and teacher-led discussion groups with her students as her main reading instruction. Using grounded theory methodology (Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993), I examined the teacher’s talk and the students’ discussions during their reading instruction. I found that the teacher in this study responded to testing pressures by surviving, struggling, and resisting the effects of high-stakes testing and that her responses had much to do with contextual factors of teaching in a low-income urban school. She survived by finding ways to help her students get through the tests without losing their enthusiasm for reading. She struggled with ways to integrate skills-based instruction while reading quality literature. She resisted by creating opportunities to give students free books, have authentic book discussions, and encourage students to become “real readers” instead of “test takers.” Implications for this study are that high-stakes testing pressures forced this teacher to change her reading instruction. Instead of focusing on the individual literacy needs of her Bilingual students, she scaled down her instruction to basic skills and testing strategies in order to pass the test and raise the school’s rank causing her to question her knowledge and experience as an expert reading teacher.

The purpose of this study was to explore how preservice teachers (PST) became aware of literacies in global and local contexts and to understand how PST conceive of literacy after experiencing an international service learning (ISL) study abroad program in rural South Africa. For this qualitative grounded theory study, we used critical literacy and humanizing pedagogy as theoretical frames for designing the program and analyzing data. Findings show PST experienced a "literacy awakening." They became more aware of nuanced and complex ways literacies function in a community and imagined how their understandings would shape future teaching.

... history of the test ing movement in Texas and then report the findings from our study. ... The main part of this accountabil ity system is the TAAS (Texas Assessment of ... in TAAS performance are examined carefully in relation to patterns on this broader set of accountability measures. ...

Initially the aim of this qualitative study was to examine how one reading specialist taught character development using series books with ten bilingual students. However, some very surprising issues evolved during this project. First, I discovered that the teacher used very few series books in her reading instruction than previously self-reported. Instead, she mainly relied on testing materials to help her students pass the state mandated test. This shift was caused by a change in the schools’ mid-year test scores, lowing the school’s rank from a top level of achievement to the lowest level of achievement. Because of this change, this study was expanded to look at how one teacher responded to the testing pressures so deeply engrained in Texas schools. As a participant observer, I spent over 192 hours over 4 months conducting ethnographic research in the teacher’s school, collecting field notes and artifacts (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995), as well as conducting informal and formal i...

Set in a graduate-level multicultural literacy course, this qualitative study draws on Bakhtin's theories of ideological becoming and a hybrid of critical discourse analysis (CDA) methods (Gee, 1996; Fairclough, 1995; 2003) to explore the complexities of learning to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students. We investigated how eight beginning teachers' ideologies were constructed and reconstructed by closely examining the struggles

ABSTRACT Building on Ball's (2009)5. Ball , A. 2009. Toward a theory of generative change in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 46(1): 45–72. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references model of generative change, we explored how two experienced literacy teachers, after completing a graduate-level multicultural literacy course, enacted the tenets of critical literacy. Ball defined teachers' generative thinking as “connecting their personal and professional knowledge with the knowledge that they gain from their students to produce or originate knowledge that is useful to them in pedagogical problem solving and in meeting the educational needs of their students” (2009, p. 47). We uncovered how teachers' generative thinking progressed over time; how they sanctioned critical literacy practices in their own classrooms; and how they continued to guide their students to question, dispute, and examine power relations. As the teachers' generative thinking grew over the two years, they continued to express tension and doubt, showing that teacher change is never linear or simple, but often situational and complex.

ABSTRACT Set in a yearlong, school-based tutoring program, designed as a community of practice, we use qualitative methodology to examine how 14 preservice teachers learned to become responsive teachers. We focus on one question: In what ways does participating in a yearlong, supervised tutoring program mediate preservice teachers' learning about responsive teaching? The preservice teachers described the ways they came to learn about their buddies and build caring relationships with them. They reported the importance of collaboration with their tutoring buddies, peers, families, and classroom teachers, and that through the yearlong tutoring experience, the preservice teachers gained confidence as teachers and a sense of efficacy as caring educators. This study is important because it uncovers how school-based tutoring programs, modeled as a community of practice, can provide opportunities for preservice teachers to grow professionally to become responsive educators.

... Paco noted, 'We won't have to work that much anymore because we won't have to take the TAKS… We don't have to do math or reading anymore…we get to have more fun in the classroom.' This mindset was exactly ... In WG Secada (Ed.),Review of research in education, Vol. ...

This qualitative study examined the perspectives of 4 student teachers who used computer‐mediated discussion (CMD) during their school‐based field practicum. Five types of data were collected for this study: interviews, focus group transcripts, concept maps, e‐mail correspondence, and archived online messages. Analysis of the data suggests that using an online discussion forum can give student teachers professional and personal support

... In Handbook of research on multicultural education , Edited by: Banks, JA and Banks, CA 747–761. ... When teachers come together in book clubs it can help to reduce isolation and provide a space for dialogue (Floria‐Ruane and Raphael 20019. Floria‐Ruane, S. and Raphael ...