Select Frameworks for 21st Century Skills

Presentation given at the Focus on Assessment Conference, August 18, 2016. Includes handout

Smoke in a Bottle: Adolescent Literacies and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in an Urban Catholic High School

Title from PDF of title page viewed June 13, 2018Dissertation advisors: Kindel Nash and Nora PetermanVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 366-416)Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Education. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2018Increased standardization within adolescent literacy education leads to dehumanization of students who become a demographic label, statistic, or problem to fix (Blackburn, 2013; Freire, 1996; Gordon, 2009; Paris & Alim, 2017; Paris & Winn, 2013). This is particularly true in urban contexts where cultural and linguistic diversities are essentialized, viewed as neutral, or erased from the curriculum (Alim & Paris, 2017; Alvermann, 2011b; Christenbury, Bomer, & Smagorinsky, 2011; Gadsden & Dixon-Roman, 2016; Gutiérrez & Penuel, 2014), responses that neglect the impact of culture on learning (Hollins, 2015). This study uses a humanizing, critical ethnographic perspective (Paris & Winn, 2013; Street, 1984) and participant observer methods (Spradley, 1980) to investigate the adolescent literacy instructional practices at an urban Catholic high school. Catholic schools have historically been sites of academic achievement for students from marginalized groups, demonstrating opportunity and potential for highly effective adolescent literacy practices (Gabert, 1973; Greeley, 1982; Horning, 2013). Using a critical sociocultural theoretical orientation (Moje, Lewis, Encisco, 2007) and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim 2014, 2017) as a framework, this research asked the questions: How does the framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies inform teachers’ understandings of effective literacy instruction in a religious high school? and What practices are highly effective urban religious school teachers using to support adolescent students’ literacy achievement? Findings provide localized information to support adolescent literacies instruction and leadership at the urban Catholic school site, expand the body of literature surrounding culturally sustaining pedagogies, and complicate understandings of highly effective literacy instruction in an era of increasingly standardized schooling.Introduction to the study -- Review of related research -- Research methodologies -- Findings and interpretations -- Implications, recommendations and conclusion -- Appendix A. Interview protocol for administrators -- Appendix B. Resources for teaching native American literature -- Appendix C. Curriculum validatio

Engaging Children and Families in Culturally Relevant Literacies

This article offers theoretical and practical strategies for engaging families, communities, and young children in culturally relevant and responsive early literacies. The authors highlight findings from data collected in their own classrooms and with families and communities for the Professional Dyads in Culturally Relevant (PDCRT) teaching project,[1] a collaborative research partnership (2013-2015) between teacher educator-teacher dads [2] aimed at generating, investigating, and documenting culturally relevant/responsive practices for early childhood contexts. [1]The PDCRT was initiated by Affirmative Action Committee of the Early Childhood Education Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). [2]University-School Partner

No Textbook, No Problem: Using Goodreads as a Multimodal Text

This describes how the social book review site Goodreads may be harnessed for online learning

Dim Screens: Fighting Burnout in Online Instruction

This work describes how to avoid burnout in online teaching, from both institutional and individual perspectives

A Multimodal and Multidisciplinary Conversation about Online Instruction

The co-authors hold a conversation about online instruction in a creative and multimodal way, switching off between being an interviewer and interviewee

Critical Memetic Analysis to Grow Youth Understanding and Meaning Making

For this study, we wondered what benefit studying memes would have on traditional markers of literacy. Memes are compact units of cultural transmission, a multimodal design that imitates society and culture (Dawkins, 2006; New London Group, 1996). Memes’ intertextual layers of images, words, and design reflects popular culture and society, thus reading a meme is a complex meaning making process that demands language, literacy skills, and connections to global issues and themes (Duff & Zappa-Hollman, 2013). Further, memes are composed by creators who leverage design to “package a message for a target culture” (Beskow, Kumar, & Carley, 2020, p. 2) which, when examined, can raise sociopolitical consciousness (Brikich & Barko, 2013). This presentation reports the findings from a mixed methods multiple case study of a virtual critical memetic analysis intervention used with adolescents to support comprehension and meaning making. The interventions focused on the, “ability to engage with and question all parts of the meme (re)production and consumption cycle” (Harvey & Palese, 2018). Findings include the elements of the intervention that supported students’ meaning making from memes and how meme composition is an act of resistance for youth during a time of social isolation and racial unrest (Arlington, 2018)