Perceptions of Technology, Curriculum, and Reading Strategies in One Middle School Intervention Program

In an effort to provide intervention for struggling adolescent readers, schools are turning increasingly toward computer-assisted reading intervention programs. This case study analyzes the perceptions, and contradictions, that exist between students, teachers, and administrators of the intervention tools used at one urban middle school. The research questions are (1) what are the cultural perceptions related to tools that exist within administrator, teacher, and student systems in one urban middle school using a computer-assisted reading intervention program and (2) in what ways do these systems’ perceptions contradict in relation to these tools? Contradictions emerged within and among the groups in how they perceived tools related to reading comprehension strategies, technology, and instructional curriculum

(RE)LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING: USING CASES FROM POPULAR MEDIA TO EXTEND AND COMPLICATE OUR UNDERSTANDINGS OF WHAT IT MEANS TO LEARN AND TEACH

This article utilizes sociocultural and socio-constructivist learning theories to analyze incidents of learning, and by extension teaching, in six different popular media selections. The authors describe their shared theoretical framework and the nature of the original analyses, which were completed as part of a doctoral course assignment. Each of the six excerpts is then described and discussed employing unique theoretical perspectives. The use of popular culture as the context for examining learning and teaching provides a space untethered from traditional notions of schooling through which typically accepted assumptions about pedagogy are revealed, re-examined, and reframed. Keywords: Sociocultural, Socio-constructivist, Learning, Teaching, Popular Culture, Media Studies, Pedagogy, Education, Communities of Practic