Building Curriculum
Oxford Brookes University (Gipsy Lane Campus)
Collaborative Professional Development Centered Around Innovative Curriculum Materials View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cory Callahan
Here the author synthesizes findings and implications from two research studies that comprise a continuing line of inquiry into the potential of an innovative professional development program to help in-service teachers understand and implement a complex model of social studies instruction. The paper specifically explores the question: To what degree can a collaborative professional development program centered around innovative curriculum materials help social studies teachers understand and implement a powerful social studies approach? Findings suggest the teachers increasingly incorporated substantive thinking (i.e., second-order historical domain knowledge) into their respective practice and they facilitated students’ use of historical photographs as evidence to begin to answer a compelling question. The teachers also began to effectively support students’ abilities to make claims about the past. Implications include the foregrounding of high-quality questions during planning and the need for explicit guidance in the form of structures and procedures (i.e., scaffolds) to help teachers systematically review students’ work products. The work shared here contributes to scholarship that posits explanations for why teacher-support is routinely ineffectual and suggests ways to provide substantive collaborative support for in-service social studies teachers.
Featured Racial Melancholia - Understanding Literary Forms and Student Experiences: Improving Educational Outcomes View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jennifer Arias Sweeney
I explore the intersections among melancholia and transoceanic journeys and how these concepts are situated in the Black Atlantic and Asian Pacific cultural conversations. The trope of melancholy is a symptom of problematic race and cultural relations and operates as protest against the hegemony. I address how these literary tropes help us understand and create opportunities for students to explore racial melancholia. The ethnic canon must not become a homogenized “difference” of neutralized conflict. My study considers how melancholy operates as a refusal by ethnic subjects and texts to be co-opted into a center that represents a manageable and ultimately silenced “other.” Like these scholars who refuse the category of victimhood, I assert that the trope of melancholy is a force for restitution. This recursive structure is a melancholic trope that refuses to give closure to racial grievance. Because the melancholic subject mourns the loss of the American ideal of a promising future, and in this study, the failure of multiculturalism to create cultural revolution, the melancholic figure reattaches itself to the past. However, the connection to the past is ruptured through violence and lost histories. Thus, the protagonist claims ownership of the temporal space of memory. Exploring these themes in literature provides venues for students to understand racial melancholia in their lived experiences. The outcomes of well-developed curriculum include students' ability to express, negotiate identity and meaning in a diverse community. I share various activities to establish a learning community that understands diversity and learns from it.
Find Professional Understanding through Visual Self Study Practices: Meaningful Teacher Growth View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Karen Tardrew
This paper addresses the complexities of experienced teachers constructing new understandings through visual narrative self-study projects. These visual projects include the use of multimodal and self-study practices that explored visual ethnographic theory. The research has two purposes: (a) to examine how experienced teachers working in co- construction develop new contextual understandings as a result of reflection and collaborative dialogue related to visual ethnographic research, and (b) to identify ways in which these experiences support the development of impactful professional growth. This study discovered ways in which this experience supports the meaningful growth, wellness, and resiliency of teachers.
