Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Research and Publications

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Open Access
Let The Chips Fall Where They May: An Analysis of a Discussion Strategy
(2017-11-01) Burenheide, Bradley; bburen; Burenheide, Bradley
This article explores a discussion strategy utilized in a research-based classroom to help promote participation of all students in classroom discussion. The article will establish why the strategy was employed, how best to establish the strategy, the outcomes of the strategy’s use, and finally a commentary of best practices in classroom discussions as noted from the implementation of the pedagogical strategy.
Open Access
Engaged At Cabin Creek: The First Kansas Colored Infantry’s First Action of the American Civil War
Burenheide, Bradley; bburen; Burenheide, Bradley
“Wherever [B]lack regiments were engaged in battle during the Civil War, they acquitted themselves in a manner which fully justified the policy of the Government in enlisting their services” (p. 52, Fox’s Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1889). This quote aptly describes the First Kansas Colored Infantry of the United States Army in the American Civil War. Their story involves loss, sacrifice, and tragedy and serves as a microcosm of the American experience of the Civil War. The regiment started as an unapproved presidential experiment as Kansas Senator James Lane started efforts to recruit fugitive slaves, free African-Americans, and slaves who had been “liberated” by marauding Jayhawkers into Missouri in 1862. Liberated being the operative term as they were often coerced into the regiment once brought across the state boundary.
Open Access
Visual-Spatial Ability: Important in STEM, Ignored in Gifted Education
(2014-12-03) Andersen, Lori; landersen
Visual–spatial ability is a multifaceted component of intelligence that has predictive validity for future achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations. Although identification and development of STEM talent is a national priority, visual–spatial ability is rarely measured and relatively neglected in gifted education. Quantitative and verbal reasoning abilities are favored over nonverbal abilities in talent searches and gifted programs, which causes some high-spatial, gifted students to be overlooked. Creative production in STEM requires visual–spatial ability, and this ability must be developed in gifted education. Theories of intelligence and testing have advanced to provide methods for identification of specific cognitive abilities, such as visual–spatial ability. However, for these students to be successful in gifted programs, gifted-education services must be modified to accommodate gifted spatial learners and develop spatial talents.
Open Access
Expectancy-value models for the STEM persistence plans of ninth-grade, high-ability students: a comparison between Black, Hispanic, and White students
(2014-11-06) Andersen, Lori; Ward, Thomas J.; landersen
Group differences in the effects of the expectancies and values that high-ability students have for science and mathematics on plans to persist in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) were investigated. A nationally representative sample of ninth-grade students, the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS: 2009; n = 21,444) was used. The analytic sample was 1,757 (48% female, 52% male) Black (13.8%), Hispanic (26.7%), and White (59.6%) students who scored in the top 10% of their race group on the mathematics achievement test. Hierarchical logistic regression models were developed for each race/ethnicity group to examine the relationships of demographic and expectancy-value variables with STEM persistence status. Science attainment value, science intrinsic value, and STEM utility value were predictive of STEM persistence, but these variables operated differently in groups of Black, Hispanic, and White students. Implications for educators include the need for ways to improve perceptions of science identity and awareness of the utility of science and mathematics courses.
Open Access
Understanding how to use the methods of history: the training of pre-service educators
(2014-10-17) Burenheide, Bradley; bburen
To explore what students know about utilizing primary sources in instruction and offer methods of how to use it, Project History Methods was a workshop instituted at Kansas State University during the Spring 2009 semester. Through a grant sponsored by the Midwest Center for Teaching with Primary Sources at Illinois State University and the Library of Congress, the Kansas State University College of Education’s Center for Social Studies Education created the workshop to train students how to utilize the digital archives of the Library of Congress to teach basic historical concepts and use these sources to engage students in the study of historical phenomena. The college students who participated in the workshop explored strategies of teaching history, received instruction from an academic historian, and created a product that could be used in their teaching. These products were built as lesson plans for use, subjected to the review of workshop participants, and utilized primary sources from the digital archives. In doing so, not only were the participants exposed to the issues of teaching and exploring history, but were engaged in the development of skills to understanding how the discipline of history functions. The remainder of this paper explores how the workshop affected pre-service teaching understanding of historical thought, as well as the implications for training future teachers of history.
Open Access
Rethinking teacher action research as Bildung: a phenomenological approach to professional development
(2013-11-07) Kim, Jeong-Hee; jhkim
In this article, I engage in exploring how teacher action research can be theorized as professional development that contributes to the teacher’s ongoing, ontological growth as a being and a professional. I approach teacher action research from an interpretive phenomenological perspective to understand the meaning of teachers’ lived experiences of conducting action research. The purpose of this research is to rethink teacher action research as Bildung, a phenomenological approach to professional development that explores the process of the teacher’s growth that is constantly evolving and becoming. By focusing on five teachers’ lived experiences of conducting action research in their classrooms, I delve into how teacher action research contributes to the teacher’s Bildung, the human way of cultivating process of the self as a teacher.
Open Access
A new laboratory for the classroom: the graphic novel as a research field for students
(2011-10-10) Burenheide, Bradley; bburen
Open Access
Literacy on the move: a journal for the journey
(2013-03-29) Curtis, Laurie J.; ljcurtis
Travel provides students with multiple opportunities to learn about people, places, and the world around them. At times, students are given opportunities to travel causing them to be absent from the classroom. This manuscript provides a practical model to engage students in learning while on the journey. Students are asked to share and expand upon their experiences through narrative writing, creative illustrations, and the reading of print resources (menus, maps, brochures, etc). Authentic reading and writing experiences help students connect curriculum within the classroom to the contexts in which they see literacy used outside the classroom. In this project students return to their classroom to share their new learning while teachers can use their writing as a form of authentic assessment. Connections to the Common Core State Standards are provided to demonstrate the curricular content of this project.
Open Access
Understanding the lived experience of a Sioux Indian male adolescent: toward the pedagogy of hermeneutical phenomenology in education
(2012-07-24) Kim, Jeong-Hee; jhkim
Currently, there is a resurgence of interests in phenomenology in education. This article sheds light on the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology in teaching and learning based on the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy, elicited from an ethnographic case study conducted at an alternative high school in the US.Employing narrative inquiry, this article seeks phenomenological ways of understanding students’ lived experiences and explores the meaning of the pedagogical practice of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. I delve into how hermeneutical understanding of the phenomena of students’ lived experience can catapult both students and teachers into the personal growth and development in a reciprocal way. It is my hope that such an understanding will facilitate an educational aim that focuses on the ontology of being and becoming while students’ existence is brought to the center of teaching and learning.
Open Access
Investing in the curricular lives of educators: narrative inquiry as pedagogical medium
(2012-07-20) Latta, Margaret Macintyre; Kim, Jeong-Hee; jhkim
This paper draws on the experiences of two graduate level curriculum theory classes taught at different teacher education institutions in the United States. As teacher educators and curriculum theorists, we invest in creating reflexive spaces for teachers to explore the complex terrain of lived curriculum. Narrative inquiry is chronicled as acting as an important pedagogical medium toward this aim. The purpose of the paper is to explore what practicing teachers’ narratives reveal about their curricular roles in relation to theory and practice. As participating educators consider their associated teaching identities, phenomenological notions of place are found to be fitting as they navigate understandings of lived curriculum as situated, thoughtful, and intentional. Insights generated through reflexive analysis manifest three thematic intersections: 1) Teachers confronting dissonance between theory and practice as teaching identity displacement; 2) Teachers negotiating greater implacement; and 3) Teachers moving toward embodying the creative space for teaching and learning. Renewed roles surface for teacher educators and curriculum theorists, challenging all involved to purposefully foster contexts for professional learning rather than subservience, and claim the responsibilities to provide the intellectual, emotional, and pragmatic spaces where teachers’ lived curriculum efforts can be developed and nurtured.
Open Access
The invasive Lespedeza cuneata attracts more insect pollinators than native congeners in tallgrass prairie with variable impacts
(2012-06-05) Woods, Teresa Marie; Jonas, Jayne L.; Ferguson, Carolyn J.; twoods; ferg
Invasive plant species can potentially exert competitive or facilitative effects on insect pollination services of native species. Factors that influence these effects include the degree of shared pollinator species, synchronous flowering phenology, similar flower morphology and color, relatedness of invasive and natives, and showiness and densities of flowers. We investigated such plant-pollinator dynamics by comparing the invasive Lespedeza cuneata and three native congeners, all sympatric with synchronous flowering, using in situ populations over two years during peak floral displays. Insect visitation rates of the invasive were significantly higher per plant in both years than on the native species. The invasive exerted a competitive effect on visitation of two native species, and a facilitative effect on visitation of the native species with the highest degree of shared insect visitors. Positive correlations were found between floral density and visitation rate per plant in all the native species. Although no such correlation was found for the invasive, floral density in L. cuneata was at least twenty times higher than in the native species and likely saturated the pollinator community. Analyses of insect visitor taxonomic data indicated the insect communities visiting each of the Lespedeza species were generally similar though with species-specific differences. The main exception was that the common honeybee, Apis mellifera, was a primary visitor to the invasive plant species, yet was never observed on the native Lespedeza species.
Open Access
Bringing all the baggage together: Teaching history with a new paradigm
(2011-10-20) Burenheide, Bradley; bburen
This article proposes a new paradigm for the implementation of historical thought and historical inquiry into classroom teaching. Where most of the teaching in advanced level classes centers upon teaching content at the historical macrostructure level, the authors suggest that much is to be gained from exploring the discipline of history at the levels of the historical microstructure and individual consciousness. Each of these cultural levels is defined and an example of its use in the classroom is provided with a concluding discussion of the implications of this paradigm and the potential it holds. This paper served as a foundational paper for future research and serves the purpose of a “white paper” in the field of history education.
Open Access
Teaching history well: characteristics of high-quality secondary and middle level teachers of history
(2011-02-12) Burenheide, Bradley; bburen
This exploratory qualitative study serves as a beginning to the discussion of what teachers of history do well. This study involved the interviewing and reviewing of materials from secondary level teachers of history who have been identified by their peers as outstanding teachers of history. The study focused on the following three questions: 1. What are the methods employed by “good teachers of history?” 2. What are the core beliefs regarding the teaching of history possessed by “good teachers of history?” 3. Are the traits and characteristics of “good teachers of history” inherent or could they be learned and developed? The findings of the study show these high quality teachers of history have their students explore the discipline of history, believe strongly in the lessons gleaned from historical study, and provide hope that these characteristics can be learned and encouraged in young teachers in the training and induction phase of teacher education.
Open Access
Narrative inquiry into (re)imagining alternative schools: a case study of Kevin Gonzales.
(2011-06-16) Kim, Jeong-Hee; jhkim
Although there are many alternative schools that strive for the successful education for their students, negative images of alternative schools persist. While some alternative schools are viewed as “idealistic havens,” many are viewed as “dumping grounds,” or “juvenile detention centers.” Employing narrative inquiry, this article interrogates how a student, Kevin Gonzales, experiences his alternative education and raises questions about the role of alternative schools. Kevin Gonzales’s story is presented in a literary form of biographical journal to provide a “metaphoric loft” that helps us imagine other students like Kevin. This, in turn, provokes us to examine our current educational practice, and to (re)imagine ways in which alternative education can provide the best possible educational experiences for disenfranchised students who are increasingly underserved by the public education system.
Open Access
Narrative inquiry: seeking relations as modes of interactions.
(2011-06-16) Kim, Jeong-Hee; Latta, Margaret Macintyre; jhkim
Open Access
For whom the school bell tolls: conflicting voices inside an alternative high school.
(2011-06-16) Kim, Jeong-Hee; jhkim
This article is a study of conflicting voices inside an alternative high school in Arizona. Voices of alternative schools are, quite often, not included in the discourse of curriculum reform even though the number of alternative schools is growing every year. Bakhtinian novelness of polyphony, chronotope, and carnival are incorporated into an arts-based,storied form of representation to provoke empathic understanding among readers. Multiple voices (polyphony) of the school are juxtaposed within a certain time and space (chronotope) while all the different voices are valued equally (carnival) to represent conflicting views on public alternative school experiences. The purpose of the article is to provide readers with vicarious access to tensions that exist in an alternative school, so that they may engage in questioning the nature and purpose of these spaces. In so doing, the study aims to promote dialogic conversations about “best practice” for disenfranchised students who are subject to experiencing educational inequalities in the current era of accountability and standardization.
Open Access
Understanding student resistance as a communicative act
(2011-05-20) Kim, Jeong-Hee; jhkim
In the current era of “zero tolerance”, disciplinary practices including punishment, expulsion, physical and psychological surveillance, and confinement, are a major part of resistant students’ lived experiences. This article is an ethnographic study of student resistance that is observed in an alternative high school in the U.S., which serves students expelled from regular schools for their acts of resistance. The purpose of this study is to explore how understanding of the meaning of student resistance can be used as a theoretical and pedagogical medium with which teachers can create an equitable, educational milieu that upholds views and experiences of the marginalized students. The study also offers a new insight into resistance theory drawing upon Dewey’s transactional theory of resistance as a communicative act to further suggest what might be possible for the teachers and students to transcend conflicts in order to establish a more meaningful teacher-student relationship, moving beyond zero-tolerance policies.
Open Access
An alternative for whom? Rethinking alternative education to break the cycle of educational inequality and inequity
(2011-05-20) Kim, Jeong-Hee; Taylor, Kay Ann; jhkim; ktaylor
It seems that the growing number of alternative schools correlates to the growing population of disenfranchised students. The more disenfranchised students there are, the more alternative schools are being built. This correlation may be due to social, economic, and political issues that cause pervasive social injustice, which reinforces the cycle of educational inequality. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine one alternative high school from a critical perspective to determine whether or not the school is beneficial to the students to the extent that it works to break the cycle of educational inequality. Employing critical theory as a theoretical framework, we find that the school is successful in providing a caring environment for the students and gaining trust from the students. However, the school fails to offer a meaningful and equitable alternative education that benefits the students. This failure leads us to question for whom this school is truly an alternative.
Open Access
Narrative inquiry invites professional development: educators claim the creative space of praxis
(2011-03-14) Latta, Margaret Macintyre; Kim, Jeong-Hee; jhkim
The current educational context, particularly with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, calls for evidence-based measurable student learning outcomes. Increasingly, teachers feel that opportunities for their praxis are closed off to create, adapt, and discern within the act of teaching, leaving them with little felt agency in classrooms. In this paper, we explore how narrative inquiry used as a medium for professional development can create a needed space where teacher agency for praxis is fostered individually and collectively through understanding otherness. We conclude narrative inquiry invites participating educators to claim the creative space of praxis in their classrooms and fosters a culture of professional learning across participants that we see as the formative work necessary within professional development.