Advancing Creativity
The Seal of Biliteracy for High School Students: Bilingual Parents as Role Models - An Illinois Showcase
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joaquin Villegas, Maria J. Vargas
The State of Illinois is among thirty-three states implementing the Seal of Biiteracy to embrace and value the diversity of languages and cultures of high school graduates. The Seal is awarded to students who have reached level of competency in one or more languages as well as the English language. This seal takes the form of a gold seal that appears on students’ transcripts or diplomas of graduating seniors as a statement of accomplishment for future employers and college admission. School districts have created pathways to biliteracy from primary grades to high school. This paper intends to address how parents who learned English as a second language in a bilingual college serve as role models to their children in creating pathways at home to reach a level of biliteracy in their home and target (English) languages.
Telling Our Education Story Across Borders: A Narrative of our Educational Experience Through PhotoVoice
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kate Wittrock
This paper explores the educational experiences of refugees and immigrants at a rural school in Florida. Through PhotoVoice, students use photography and storytelling to provide narratives and tell their story as an English Language Learner in an American School. PhotoVoice puts a camera in the hands of individuals often excluded from the decision-making process in order to capture their voices about their lives, community, and concerns (Wang, Burris, & Xiang, 1996). PhotoVoice challenges the established politics of representation by shifting control over the means for documenting lives from the powerful to the powerless, the expert to the lay person, the professional to the client, the bureaucrat to the citizen, and the observer to the observed (Booth & Booth, 2003). Having participants share stories in their own voice provides meaning and context for the images (Wang, Yi, Tao, & Carovano, 1998) and enriches language learning by ensuring participant involvement in meaningful communicative activities (Gallo, 2001). Cortazzi and Jin (2007) argue that expressing intended meaning and understanding others’ meanings is what drives language development. Three main questions are investigated in this paper through the use PhotoVoice (1) How does my school help me navigate cultural differences? (2) What does my school do to help me learn? (3) How does my school help me connect to my community? Pre-service teachers working with the English Language Learners in the after-school program also provide their reflections on working with the students and discuss their experience.
Lights, Cameras, (and Hopefully) Action: Harnessing Diversity in a Community-University Partnership to Address the History of Racial Oppression and Persistent Inequality through Multi-Media Applications
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jeffry Will
Jacksonville Florida has a long and often sordid history of race relations, stretching from the pre-civil war establishment of Florida as a state, to the present struggles over Black Lives Matter, and debates over the presence of Confederate monuments and dedication. While a few famous icons from the African American community, as well as a few of the more notorious racial confrontations, are well known in local and academic circles, discussions of the depths of the inequality, brutality, and disenfranchisement are often neglected. Local accounts often focus on historical figures who overcame the odds (e.g. James Weldon Johnson), or confrontations that made national news. Less examined is the impact of historical and current discrimination and inequality on black residents. Educating the public about Conferare monuments, or renaming public buildings, bridges and roads named after “city fathers” who were slave owners, openly racist and KKK leaders, as well as on-going structural inequality in the community is virtually non-existent. In this paper, we explore the work of the Race and Injustice in Jacksonville Research Group, a Community-University partnership documenting the social and economic effects of racism and institutional racism. The partners include a diverse collection of faculty and students from the University of North Florida and Local Community Activists addressing racial inequality and race relations. The goals of the Research Group include developing a series of educational and illuminating films, social media outlets, and public presentations to challenge the community to address the long-term impact of the its racial history.
Is the Fashion World Finally Getting Diversity?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lourdes Susaeta, Isabel Garcia Hiljding
This paper identifies the main challenges of diversity management faced by the fashion industry today and introduces diversity management research in the fashion industry. We want to provide to fashion scholars with suggestions to advance knowledge in diversity management. The issue of diversity is a hot topic in the fashion industry at the current moment. From embracing plus-size models to including various cultures, many fashion designers are developing open minds and progressing towards inclusiveness, rather than the exclusive stigma the fashion industry has evolved. For the moment, the academic world has paid little or no attention to research on the subject. It is striking how in other sectors, such as the tourism sector, exists solid research on the topic (Manoharan and Singal, 2017) and diversity fashion academic research remains unexplored. Firstly, we explore the existing central debates in the fashion industry using secondary sources of information. Then, we review the existing diversity management literature in the general business, deeply grounded in sociological, psychological, social-psychological, and management theories. We identify what theoretical debates lie behind these movements around diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry. This study’s results provide insight into areas of exploration that can significantly enhance the scholarship on diversity management in the fashion literature.
