Doing Their Best: How Teachers in Urban Social Studies Classrooms Integrate Culturally Relevant Pedagogy with Historical Literacy Instruction

What occurs when teachers in urban social studies classrooms want to do their best by incorporating culturally relevant pedagogy into their historical literacy instruction? While culturally relevant pedagogy and historical literacy are complementary in theory and a few scholars have demonstrated how teachers have integrated the two approaches in practice, I questioned the ease or seamlessness of the integration within an urban context. This dissertation examined how three teachers in an urban high school managed the tensions and possibilities of teaching historical literacy and culturally relevant pedagogy in U.S. and global history classes. In this case study, I explored how each teacher’s lived experiences affected their conceptions and enactments of historical literacy and culturally relevant pedagogy, and its effects on student perceptions of instruction and their academic achievement. In recent years, educators have promoted teaching social studies and other subjects using culturally relevant pedagogy as a means to promote the academic achievement, cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness of urban youth of color. In addition, many states have enacted Common Core Learning Standards that in the case of history, require students to develop historical literacy skills or the ability to interpret primary and secondary historical sources and make historical claims or arguments based on evidence from the sources. In theory, culturally relevant teaching and instruction in historical literacy can be seen as complementary. Teachers can instruct students to interpret evidence and make claims by employing historical texts and stimulating historical discussions that use counter-narratives to connect students’ cultures and experiences to historical events and develop young people’s political consciousness. However given the contemporary contexts of schooling in urban spaces, I found that teachers faced challenges in trying to integrate both approaches. Findings suggest teachers are cultural beings whose lived experiences influenced their perception of students and approaches to instruction. The two teachers of color in the study broadened the purpose of historical literacy instruction as a means to build positive student academic identity and self-empowerment. They also exhibited a social justice orientation towards history and offered alternative ways of knowing and doing history that questioned the historical literacy research stance on what counts as evidence and contextualization. All three teachers struggled with the systematic integration of historical literacy instruction and culturally relevant pedagogy. Overall when attending to the context and academic needs of students, the teachers focused mostly on providing students with general literacy rather than historical literacy skills. Exploring the tensions teachers faced and the ways in which they resolved them provides knowledge of ways to manage the obstacles that teachers may encounter in attempting to integrate the two approaches in the teaching of history to students of color in urban spaces

Distribution and Frequency of Salivary Gland Tumours: An International Multicenter Study

Background Salivary gland tumours (SGT) are a relatively rare group of neoplasms with a wide range of histopathological appearance and clinical features. To date, most of the epidemiological studies on salivary gland tumours are limited for a variety of reason including being out of date, extrapolated from either a single centre or country studies, or investigating either major or minor glands only. Methods This study aimed to mitigate these shortcomings by analysing epidemiological data including demographic, anatomical location and histological diagnoses of SGT from multiple centres across the world. The analysed data included age, gender, location and histological diagnosis from fifteen centres covering the majority of the world health organisation (WHO) geographical regions between 2006 and 2019. Results A total of 5739 cases were analysed including 65% benign and 35% malignant tumours. A slight female predilection (54%) and peak incidence between the fourth and seventh decade for both benign and malignant tumours was observed. The majority (68%) of the SGT presented in major and 32% in the minor glands. The parotid gland was the most common location (70%) for benign and minor glands (47%) for malignant tumours. Pleomorphic adenoma (70%), and Warthin’s tumour (17%), were the most common benign tumours whereas mucoepidermoid carcinoma (26%) and adenoid cystic carcinoma (17%) were the most frequent malignant tumours. Conclusions This multicentre investigation presents the largest cohort study to date analysing salivary gland tumour data from tertiary centres scattered across the globe. These findings should serve as a baseline for future studies evaluating the epidemiological landscape of these tumours