The role of the humble school bus in transforming education in America Everyone knows the yellow school bus. It’s been invisible and also omnipresent for a century. Antero Garcia shows how the U.S. school bus, its form unaltered for decades, is the most substantial piece of educational technology to ever shape how schools operate. As it noisily moves young people across the country every day, the bus offers the opportunity for a necessary reexamination of what “counts” as educational technology. Particularly in light of these buses being idled in pandemic times, All through the Town questions what we take for granted and what we overlook in public schooling in America, pushing for liberatory approaches to education that extend beyond notions of school equity. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
A speculative framework that imagines how we can use education data to promote play, creativity, and social justice over normativity and conformity. Educational analytics tend toward aggregation, asking what a “normative” learner does. In The Left Hand of Data, educational researchers Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia start from a different assumption—that outliers are, and must be treated as, valued individuals. Berland and Garcia argue that the aim of analytics should not be about enforcing and entrenching norms but about using data science to break new ground and enable play and creativity. From this speculative vantage point, they ask how we can go about living alongside data in a better way, in a more just way, while also building on the existing technologies and our knowledge of the present. The Left Hand of Data explores the many ways in which we use data to shape the possible futures of young people—in schools, in informal learning environments, in colleges, in libraries, and with educational games. It considers the processes by which students are sorted, labeled, categorized, and intervened upon using the bevy of data extracted and collected from individuals and groups, anonymously or identifiably. When, how, and with what biases are these data collected and utilized? What decisions must educational researchers make around data in an era of high-stakes assessment, surveillance, and rising inequities tied to race, class, gender, and other intersectional factors? How are these complex considerations around data changing in the rapidly evolving world of machine learning, AI, and emerging fields of educational data science? The surprising answers the authors discover in their research make clear that we do not need to wait for a hazy tomorrow to do better today.
A year in the life of a ninth-grade English class shows how participatory culture and mobile devices can transform learning in schools. Schools and school districts have one approach to innovation: buy more technology. In Good Reception, Antero Garcia describes what happens when educators build on the ways students already use technology outside of school to help them learn in the classroom. As a teacher in a public high school in South Central Los Angeles, Garcia watched his students' nearly universal adoption of mobile devices. Whether recent immigrants from Central America or teens who had spent their entire lives in Los Angeles, the majority of his students relied on mobile devices to connect with family and friends and to keep up with complex social networks. Garcia determined to discover how these devices and student predilection for gameplay, combined with an evolving “culture of participation,” could be used in the classroom. Garcia charts a year in the life of his ninth-grade English class, first surveying mobile media use on campus and then documenting a year-long experiment in creating a “wireless critical pedagogy” by incorporating mobile media and games in classroom work. He describes the design and implementation of “Ask Anansi,” an alternate reality game that allows students to conduct inquiry-based research around questions that interest them (including “Why is the food at South Central High School so bad?”). Garcia cautions that the transformative effect on education depends not on the glorification of devices but on teacher support and a trusting teacher-student relationship.
What counts as professionalism for teachers today? Once, teachers who knew their content area and knew how to teach it were respected as professionals. Now there is an additional type of competency required: in addition to content and pedagogical knowledge, educators need advocacy skills. In this groundbreaking collection, literacy educators describe how they are redefining what it means to be a teaching professional. Teachers share how they are trying to change the conversation surrounding literacy and literacy instruction by explaining to colleagues, administrators, parents, and community members why they teach in particular research-based ways, so often contradicted by mandated curricula and standardized assessments. Teacher educators also share how they are introducing an advocacy approach to preservice and practicing teachers, helping prepare teachers for this new professionalism. Both groups practice what the authors call “everyday advocacy”: the day-to-day actions teachers are taking to change the public narrative surrounding schools, teachers, and learning.
Garcia and Morrell discuss ways to keep teaching practice relevant to the evolving needs of today's students through embracing youth culture, creative listening, and revolutionary love"--
This book proposes a pedagogical model called “Pose, Wobble, Flow” to encapsulate the challenge of teaching and the process of growing as an educator who questions existing inequities in schooling and society and frames teaching around a commitment to changing them. The authors provide six different culturally proactive teaching stances or “poses” that secondary ELA teachers can use to meet the needs of all students, whether they are historically marginalized or privileged. They describe how teachers can expect to “wobble” as they adapt instruction to the needs of their students, while also incorporating new insights about their own cultural positionality and preconceptions about teaching. Teachers are encouraged to recognize this flexibility as a positive process or “flow” that can be used to address challenges and adopt ambitious teaching strategies like those depicted in this book. Each chapter highlights a particular pose, describes how to work through common wobbles, incorporates teacher voices, and provides questions for further discussion. Pose, Wobble, Flow presents a promising framework for disrupting the pervasive myth that there is one set of surefire, culturally neutral “best” practices. Book Features: A structure for career-long growth for ELA teachers, including ways to adapt pedagogy from one year to the next. A focus on culturally proactive positions within ELA classrooms to ensure criticality in how we teach and how we advocate for the teaching profession. Six different poses that are standards-aligned, critical, and expand the possibilities of what takes place in school. Guidelines for creating original poses beyond the scope of the book, discussion questions for courses, and resources for classroom teachers. “In Pose, Wobble, Flow, Garcia and O'Donnell-Allen remind all of us that teaching is not about following directions: it’s about listening to our students and paying attention to the social forces that shape their lives; about learning how to navigate department, school, district, and federal rules to benefit our students so we can keep a job while we continue to honor our core beliefs about education.” —Linda Christensen, Director, Oregon Writing Project, Lewis & Clark College “Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen have written a book about teaching that I’ve been hoping someone would write. They deftly provide a clear and insightful framework from which any thoughtful teacher can build a vital practice, while also inserting a wealth of examples to ground the framework in working classrooms. It’s a must-have for preservice and inservice teachers who care about their teaching.” —Bob Fecho, Professor and Department Head, University of Georgia
Young Adult literature, from The Outsiders to Harry Potter, has helped shape the cultural landscape for adolescents perhaps more than any other form of consumable media in the twentieth and twenty-first century. With the rise of mega blockbuster films based on these books in recent years, the young adult genre is being co-opted by curious adult readers and by Hollywood producers. However, while the genre may be getting more readers than ever before, Young Adult literature remains exclusionary and problematic: few titles feature historically marginalized individuals, the books present heteronormative perspectives, and gender stereotypes continue to persist. Taking a critical approach, Young Adult Literature: Challenging Genres offers educators, youth librarians, and students a set of strategies for unpacking, challenging, and transforming the assumptions of some of the genre's most popular titles. Pushing the genre forward, Antero Garcia builds on his experiences as a former high school teacher to offer strategies for integrating Young Adult literature in a contemporary critical pedagogy through the use of participatory media.
Pose, Wobble, Flow presents an exciting, liberatory framework for disrupting the pervasive myth that there is one set of surefire, culturally neutral best practices. In this new edition, the authors update and expand their pedagogical model to support lifelong success for teachers of all subject areas and grade levels. Providing six different teaching stances or “poses” that teachers can use to meet the needs of all students, this popular resource offers guidance for teaching and learning in today’s challenging sociopolitical climate. The authors describe how teachers can expect to “wobble” as they adapt instruction to the needs of their students, while also incorporating new insights about their own positionality and preconceptions of teaching. Readers are encouraged to recognize this flexibility as a positive process or “flow” that can be used to address challenges and adopt ambitious teaching strategies like those depicted in this book. Each chapter highlights a particular pose, describes how to work through common wobbles, incorporates teacher voices, and provides discussion activities for collective teacher inquiry. PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION— “In Pose, Wobble, Flow, Garcia and O’Donnell-Allen remind all of us that teaching is not about following directions: it’s about listening to our students and paying attention to the social forces that shape their lives; about learning how to navigate department, school, district, and federal rules to benefit our students so we can keep a job while we continue to honor our core beliefs about education.” —Linda Christensen, director, Oregon Writing Project, Lewis & Clark College “Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen have written a book about teaching that I’ve been hoping someone would write. They deftly provide a clear and insightful framework from which any thoughtful teacher can build a vital practice, while also inserting a wealth of examples to ground the framework in working classrooms. It’s a must-have for preservice and inservice teachers who care about their teaching.” —Bob Fecho, professor and department head, University of Georgia
Doing Youth Participatory Action Research offers an unprecedented, in-depth exploration of the pragmatics and possibilities of youth-driven research. Drawing upon multiple years of experience engaging youth in rigorous, critical inquiry about the conditions impacting their lives, the authors examine how YPAR encourages the educational community to re-imagine the capabilities of young people and the purposes of teaching, learning, and research itself. Much more than a "how-to" guide for those interested in creating their own YPAR projects, this book draws upon the voices of students and educators, as well as the multiple historical traditions of critical research, to describe how youth inquiry transforms each step of the traditional research process. From identifying research questions to collecting data and disseminating findings, each chapter details how YPAR revolutionizes traditional conceptions of who produces knowledge, how it is produced, and for what purposes. The book weaves together research, policy, and practice to offer YPAR as a practice with the power to challenge entrenched social and educational inequalities, empower critically aware youth, and revolutionize pedagogy in classrooms and communities. For researchers, educators, community members, and youth who want to connect, question, and transform the world collectively, Doing Youth Participatory Action Research is a rich source of both pragmatic methodological guidance and inspiration.
Help students use their voices to build an equitable and just society. Years of political violence and protests against injustice have revived interest in teaching civics in schools. The problem? Civic education—as it currently exists—privileges systems, not students. It promotes incremental change within a broken democracy rather than responding to the youth-led movements that call for the abolition of inequitable social structures. What will it take to prepare young people for the just future they are fighting for? Civics for the World to Come offers educators a framework for designing the critical civic education that our students deserve. Synthesizing perspectives on democratic life from critical race theory, ethnic studies, Afrofuturism, and critical literacy, the book presents key practices for cultivating youth civic agency grounded in equity and justice. The authors explore five world-building civic skills (Inquiry, Storytelling, Imagination, Networking, and Advocacy) and introduce readers to real learning communities where students and educators are transforming themselves and society.
Learn how to develop and sustain multimodal, project-based learning (PBL) instruction in secondary English Language Arts classrooms. National standards encourage authentic forms of reading, writing, and communication that can support college and career readiness, and this book highlights PBL as a powerful way to harness students’ interests and engage them in academically rigorous learning. The authors provide specific, research-informed curricular approaches and instructional guidance for classroom teachers, as well as an overview of the dimensions of PBL that are often overlooked in the broad expectations of inquiry-based teaching. Instead of “quick fix” lessons, Compose Our World explores how core dimensions of equitable teaching—such as social and emotional support, universal design for learning, and cultivating classroom community—function as the bedrock for student success in PBL contexts and beyond. Book Features: Based on the authors’ extensive experience developing and studying a PBL curriculum.Brings PBL to life through classroom vignettes and teacher and student voices.Provides classroom resources that facilitate customization to unique contexts. Shares ideas for developing teacher communities around PBL practices.Offers additional curriculum materials online.Appropriate for ELA teachers new to PBL, as well as veterans.
Social studies education over its hundred-year history has focused predominantly on white and male narratives. This has not only been detrimental to the increasingly diverse population of the U.S., but it has also meant that social studies as a field of scholarship has systematically excluded and marginalized the voices, teaching, and research of women, scholars of color, queer scholars, and scholars whose politics challenge the dominant traditions of history, geography, economics, and civics education. This is increasingly no longer the case. Teachers and scholars have the power -- through pedagogy, curriculum, and community activism - and use it to actively resist injustice while also working towards a more radically just world. It is of great importance to the discipline--and to the children who are being educated now and will be in the future--that the work of these pioneers be collected and shared. Insurgent Social Studiesdisrupts the current state of social education by highlighting those whose work has often been deemed "too radical." The contributions cover voices marginalized by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, political and socio-economic status. They honor the different viewpoints while building solidarity via a shared call to change. Theoretically grounded and abounding in examples of practice, this book is essential reading to all researchers and practitioners in social studies, and is perfect as an adopted text in the social studies curriculum at Colleges of Education.
What counts as professionalism for teachers today? Once, teachers who knew their content area and knew how to teach it were respected as professionals. Now there is an additional type of competency required: in addition to content and pedagogical knowledge, educators need advocacy skills. In this groundbreaking collection, literacy educators describe how they are redefining what it means to be a teaching professional. Teachers share how they are trying to change the conversation surrounding literacy and literacy instruction by explaining to colleagues, administrators, parents, and community members why they teach in particular research-based ways, so often contradicted by mandated curricula and standardized assessments. Teacher educators also share how they are introducing an advocacy approach to preservice and practicing teachers, helping prepare teachers for this new professionalism. Both groups practice what the authors call “everyday advocacy”: the day-to-day actions teachers are taking to change the public narrative surrounding schools, teachers, and learning.
Although there are a few other titles related to project based learning in ELA, they are no books that focus specifically on the ways that the design principles of project based learning, universal design for learning, and social and emotional learning can be used to anchor an ELA curriculum and the learning experiences that students engage in throughout the school year. Other PBL books focus almost exclusively on implementing and designing PBL Projects, whereas this book centers around a set of design principles that can be used to teach existing projects (which we share), to create new ones, or to create authentic learning experiences that are project enhanced. Our book brings PBL to life through classroom vignettes and teacher and student voices. Whether you are new to PBL or a PBL veteran, this book provides classroom resources that facilitate customization to educator's unique instructional contexts. We share ideas for developing teacher communities that hold a space for collaborating around PBL practices and that revitalize teachers and teaching"--
Doing Youth Participatory Action Research offers an unprecedented, in-depth exploration of the pragmatics and possibilities of youth-driven research. Drawing upon multiple years of experience engaging youth in rigorous, critical inquiry about the conditions impacting their lives, the authors examine how YPAR encourages the educational community to re-imagine the capabilities of young people and the purposes of teaching, learning, and research itself. Much more than a "how-to" guide for those interested in creating their own YPAR projects, this book draws upon the voices of students and educators, as well as the multiple historical traditions of critical research, to describe how youth inquiry transforms each step of the traditional research process. From identifying research questions to collecting data and disseminating findings, each chapter details how YPAR revolutionizes traditional conceptions of who produces knowledge, how it is produced, and for what purposes. The book weaves together research, policy, and practice to offer YPAR as a practice with the power to challenge entrenched social and educational inequalities, empower critically aware youth, and revolutionize pedagogy in classrooms and communities. For researchers, educators, community members, and youth who want to connect, question, and transform the world collectively, Doing Youth Participatory Action Research is a rich source of both pragmatic methodological guidance and inspiration.
Young Adult literature, from The Outsiders to Harry Potter, has helped shape the cultural landscape for adolescents perhaps more than any other form of consumable media in the twentieth and twenty-first century. With the rise of mega blockbuster films based on these books in recent years, the young adult genre is being co-opted by curious adult readers and by Hollywood producers. However, while the genre may be getting more readers than ever before, Young Adult literature remains exclusionary and problematic: few titles feature historically marginalized individuals, the books present heteronormative perspectives, and gender stereotypes continue to persist. Taking a critical approach, Young Adult Literature: Challenging Genres offers educators, youth librarians, and students a set of strategies for unpacking, challenging, and transforming the assumptions of some of the genre's most popular titles. Pushing the genre forward, Antero Garcia builds on his experiences as a former high school teacher to offer strategies for integrating Young Adult literature in a contemporary critical pedagogy through the use of participatory media.
The role of the humble school bus in transforming education in America Everyone knows the yellow school bus. It’s been invisible and also omnipresent for a century. Antero Garcia shows how the U.S. school bus, its form unaltered for decades, is the most substantial piece of educational technology to ever shape how schools operate. As it noisily moves young people across the country every day, the bus offers the opportunity for a necessary reexamination of what “counts” as educational technology. Particularly in light of these buses being idled in pandemic times, All through the Town questions what we take for granted and what we overlook in public schooling in America, pushing for liberatory approaches to education that extend beyond notions of school equity. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
Pose, Wobble, Flow presents an exciting, liberatory framework for disrupting the pervasive myth that there is one set of surefire, culturally neutral best practices. In this new edition, the authors update and expand their pedagogical model to support lifelong success for teachers of all subject areas and grade levels. Providing six different teaching stances or “poses” that teachers can use to meet the needs of all students, this popular resource offers guidance for teaching and learning in today’s challenging sociopolitical climate. The authors describe how teachers can expect to “wobble” as they adapt instruction to the needs of their students, while also incorporating new insights about their own positionality and preconceptions of teaching. Readers are encouraged to recognize this flexibility as a positive process or “flow” that can be used to address challenges and adopt ambitious teaching strategies like those depicted in this book. Each chapter highlights a particular pose, describes how to work through common wobbles, incorporates teacher voices, and provides discussion activities for collective teacher inquiry. PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION— “In Pose, Wobble, Flow, Garcia and O’Donnell-Allen remind all of us that teaching is not about following directions: it’s about listening to our students and paying attention to the social forces that shape their lives; about learning how to navigate department, school, district, and federal rules to benefit our students so we can keep a job while we continue to honor our core beliefs about education.” —Linda Christensen, director, Oregon Writing Project, Lewis & Clark College “Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen have written a book about teaching that I’ve been hoping someone would write. They deftly provide a clear and insightful framework from which any thoughtful teacher can build a vital practice, while also inserting a wealth of examples to ground the framework in working classrooms. It’s a must-have for preservice and inservice teachers who care about their teaching.” —Bob Fecho, professor and department head, University of Georgia
Five Coimbra Poets takes historical contingency—the accident—as a pretext that would seem to unify profoundly different poetical voices from diverse centuries. Its chronological range is ample, starting in late medieval Portugal with Dom Dinis and ending with Fernando Assis Pacheco in the last half of the 20th century. To this historical contingency a contingency of choices is added—an accident of choices. A dual opportunity, a dual purpose: firstly, to bring together certain poets who were either born or lived in Coimbra and who were touched in a way—more or less asymmetrically, more or less explicitly—by the city, by the surrounding countryside and the region; secondly, to offer up poets and poems, some more canonical than others, whose occasion here reflects a personal and subjective choice that is tailored towards both initiation and concision. Dom Dinis and Sá de Miranda are joined by the two 19th century poets who most marked the memory of literature which the city keeps alive and which the poems themselves keep alive of the city. Both Antero de Quental and Camilo Pessanha are, in this sense, crucial. The lyrical intensity of landscape and cityscape is alive as well in Fernando Assis Pacheco, who perhaps wrote the most penetrating and moving poems about Coimbra and its worlds, which were those of his childhood, adolescence and early manhood.
An introduction to annotation as a genre--a synthesis of reading, thinking, writing, and communication--and its significance in scholarship and everyday life. Annotation--the addition of a note to a text--is an everyday and social activity that provides information, shares commentary, sparks conversation, expresses power, and aids learning. It helps mediate the relationship between reading and writing. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an introduction to annotation and its literary, scholarly, civic, and everyday significance across historical and contemporary contexts. It approaches annotation as a genre--a synthesis of reading, thinking, writing, and communication--and offer examples of annotation that range from medieval rubrication and early book culture to data labeling and online reviews.
A year in the life of a ninth-grade English class shows how participatory culture and mobile devices can transform learning in schools. Schools and school districts have one approach to innovation: buy more technology. In Good Reception, Antero Garcia describes what happens when educators build on the ways students already use technology outside of school to help them learn in the classroom. As a teacher in a public high school in South Central Los Angeles, Garcia watched his students' nearly universal adoption of mobile devices. Whether recent immigrants from Central America or teens who had spent their entire lives in Los Angeles, the majority of his students relied on mobile devices to connect with family and friends and to keep up with complex social networks. Garcia determined to discover how these devices and student predilection for gameplay, combined with an evolving “culture of participation,” could be used in the classroom. Garcia charts a year in the life of his ninth-grade English class, first surveying mobile media use on campus and then documenting a year-long experiment in creating a “wireless critical pedagogy” by incorporating mobile media and games in classroom work. He describes the design and implementation of “Ask Anansi,” an alternate reality game that allows students to conduct inquiry-based research around questions that interest them (including “Why is the food at South Central High School so bad?”). Garcia cautions that the transformative effect on education depends not on the glorification of devices but on teacher support and a trusting teacher-student relationship.
A speculative framework that imagines how we can use education data to promote play, creativity, and social justice over normativity and conformity. Educational analytics tend toward aggregation, asking what a “normative” learner does. In The Left Hand of Data, educational researchers Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia start from a different assumption—that outliers are, and must be treated as, valued individuals. Berland and Garcia argue that the aim of analytics should not be about enforcing and entrenching norms but about using data science to break new ground and enable play and creativity. From this speculative vantage point, they ask how we can go about living alongside data in a better way, in a more just way, while also building on the existing technologies and our knowledge of the present. The Left Hand of Data explores the many ways in which we use data to shape the possible futures of young people—in schools, in informal learning environments, in colleges, in libraries, and with educational games. It considers the processes by which students are sorted, labeled, categorized, and intervened upon using the bevy of data extracted and collected from individuals and groups, anonymously or identifiably. When, how, and with what biases are these data collected and utilized? What decisions must educational researchers make around data in an era of high-stakes assessment, surveillance, and rising inequities tied to race, class, gender, and other intersectional factors? How are these complex considerations around data changing in the rapidly evolving world of machine learning, AI, and emerging fields of educational data science? The surprising answers the authors discover in their research make clear that we do not need to wait for a hazy tomorrow to do better today.
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