Global Education Review (Mercy College, New York)
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Teaching about World War I during Its Centennial
Get PDFReview of the book: “World War I for Kids: A History with 21 Activities.”  By R. Kent Rasmussen. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-161374556
Teaching with Stories as the Content and Context for Learning
Get PDFUndergraduate teacher education program students have the opportunity to work with diverse student populations in a local school district in the Four Corners Area in the Northwest part of New Mexico. The family oral history practicum is a way to connect theory and practice while recognizing the issue that language is not a neutral landscape. What better way to demonstrate this complementarity than through stories. The goal is to bring an awareness of respect for oral language in relationship to literate language and explore how to balance both perspectives in school culture as prospective teachers.Preservice teacher candidates become storytelling coaches and team up with third graders in semester long storytelling projects, collaborating with local elementary school teachers. Students\u27 family stories become the content and context for teaching and learning. With a diverse classroom population of Navajo, Hispanic, Mexican, and White students, family stories are the heart and central theme of the project. Storytelling coaches learn the nuances of diversity when theory is massaged with authentic experience of students as they share what they have learned beside their young storytellers and authors.(word count-181)┬
Mentorship\u27s Potential to Consider Sociocultural Realities: Perspectives from Guatemalan Rural Teachers in Indigenous Schools
No full textRural and Indigenous populations have the lowest educational achievement indicators and teachers with the least years of training. Global education movements have led to an increase in access to schooling by rural and Indigenous populations but high drop-out rates persist and education policies, curricular contents, and teacher trainings have progressively become urban-biased and insensitive to context. Using a case from Guatemala, this study offers policy knowledge on rural and Indigenous teacher professionalization by analyzing the potential of pedagogical mentorship as an in-service teacher training resource that can consider contextual and sociocultural realities. It also offers to improve our understandings of the challenges faced by teachers to provide quality education in rural and Indigenous settings. The data is drawn from a qualitative and multisite research study. Results demonstrate that main challenges faced by rural teachers include economic hardships, malnutrition, inadequate and superficial teacher training in intercultural bilingual education, and the persistent absence of basic government social programs. The data also reveal a positive demand for pedagogical mentorship on behalf of all the interviewed teachers; particularly to enhance their knowledge and skills on bilingual intercultural education. Pedagogical mentorship offers a powerful opportunity for governments to enhance quality and context-sensitive education; but it is not enough. Multi sectorial efforts are necessary to tackle poverty, hunger and education and move towards the implementation of the long overdue right for rural and Indigenous peoples to access quality education that includes healthy students and relevant curricula
Using Technology and Mentorship to Improve Teacher Pedagogy and Educational Opportunities in Rural Nicaragua
Get PDFThis study used ethnographic methods to understand factors influencing the implementation of an educational intervention combining short math content videos with teacher trainings and mentorship in high-poverty primary schools in Nicaragua with implications for rural school reform. Educators in rural schools in Latin American face serious obstacles to improve classroom instruction and pedagogy, including lack of resources and overcrowding. Research suggests an over-reliance on input-output models in which inputs (e.g. teacher salaries, textbooks, technology, computer labs, numbers of classrooms, etc.) are expected to produce particular outputs (student retention, lowering drop-out rates, increasing graduation rates, etc.); however, studies show that regardless of the resources, much depends on effective use of resources for successful teaching and learning (O\u27Sullivan, 2006; L. S. Shulman, 1987). While input/output models provide insights into an educational systems economic efficiency, they do not offer insight into what actually transpires inside of a classroom (O\u27Sullivan, 2006). Much depends on effective training and use of these very resources. Though systemic issues in the Nicaraguan educational system produced numerous obstacles for the eleven participating 3rd and 6th grade teachers, the educational intervention model supported teachersΓÇÖ ability to be innovative and grow their practice in four ways: a) increased pedagogical knowledge; b) opportunities to collaborate and support one another as a community of teachers; c) flexibility in adaptation of the intervention model to their specific classroom context; and d) use of videos as supportive resources for content knowledge
Confronting Challenges at the Intersection of Rurality, Place, and Teacher Preparation: Improving Efforts in Teacher Education to Staff Rural Schools
Get PDFRecruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers in rural schools is a persistent struggle in many countries, including the U.S. Salient challenges related to poverty, geographic isolation, low teacher salaries, and a lack of community amenities seem to trump perks of living in rural communities. Recognizing this issue as a complex and hard to solve fixture in the composition of rural communities, we sought to understand how teacher preparation programs might better prepare preservice teachers for successful student teaching placements and, ideally, eventual careers in rural schools. In this study, we explore teacher candidatesΓÇÖ perceptions of rurality while examining how specific theory, pedagogy, and practice influence their feelings of preparedness for working in a rural school. Using pre- and post- questionnaire data, classroom observations, and reflections, we assess the effectiveness of deliberate efforts in our teacher preparation program to increase readiness for rural teaching. In our analysis and discussion, we draw on critical and sociocultural theories to understand the experiences of a cohort of teacher candidates as they explore personal histories, the importance of place, expectations, and teaching strategies for rural contexts. While rural education researchers have long lamented the struggle to recruit and retain teachers, there is relatively little known about intentional efforts to prepare teachers specifically for rural classrooms. We conclude our article with recommendations for enhancing teacher preparation programs in ways that might result in significant progress toward the goal of staffing rural schools with the highly skilled teachers all students deserve
Inclusion in High-Achieving Singapore: Challenges of Building an Inclusive Society in Policy and Practice
Get PDFBuilding an inclusive society in which all people can participate effectively and live together requires understanding inclusive education and its impact on the social order.  As countries of different regions face the vast array of challenges unique to their educational systems, it becomes apparent that inclusive societies are intricately tied to social inclusion policy initiatives and developments in education.  Governments are becoming increasingly aware of the need to review their educational systems as they attempt to define what an inclusive society is and how to make inclusion truly effective.  Singapore is a unique example of a country that has the resources and the vision, but currently lacks an educational system designed to fully include individuals with special needs.  Although Singaporean students consistently score near the top in science, math, and reading achievement on international assessments, many students with special needs still receive their education in schools separated from their mainstream peers.  In 2004, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong discussed a new vision of Singapore becoming an inclusive society that embraces all individuals with special learning needs.  In this manuscript, the authors provide a brief history of Singapore and its education system and explore how PM Lee’s vision of an inclusive society has shaped practice and policy in Singapore schools in the last decade. Specific ideas and next steps for creating an inclusive Singapore for individuals with disabilities are discussed
Holocaust Studies in Austrian Elementary and Secondary Schools
Get PDFThis article presents arguments in support of teaching about the Holocaust and Nazism in Austria at an early age. To accomplish this, Austrian and German elementary school textbooks were analyzed for the amount of content dealing with the Holocaust and Jews; the results  showed that since 1980 the amount of content on the Holocaust increased in Germany, and to a lesser extent in Austria.  The article reviews some of the criticism in Europe of  the term Holocaust Education and explores some of arguments about why that is.  The author argues that moral education and teaching of Human Rights are important components of, but ought not be the main goal of teaching about the Holocaust.  The role of Austria after World War II, and exploration of the so called victim myth, prevalent until the 1990s are important to  understanding history and to how history textbooks were created. After a discussion of how the Holocaust can be taught to elementary and early secondary school aged children, some suggestions are made about approaches to teaching the Holocaust to students in these age groups