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Teachers’ Talk about Children’s Texts
No full textUsing a framework for discourses about writing, the qualitative study investigates teachers’ discussions about student texts during focus group sessions. The setting was a small, private school with a diverse student population and teachers who shared an approach to teaching. Their discussions focused on aspects of student writing including word choice and voice; learning to write within genres such as narrative, opinion, and poetry; and writing for an audience. Teachers valued multimodality by emphasizing how pictures and text can support one another throughout the writing process. The data reflect teachers’ knowledge of the students as writers and their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The teachers shared underlying discourses of writing included creativity, genre, process, and social processes. The study provides a counter example to previous work that identified teachers using deficit discourse about students’ texts, and demonstrates how focus groups in which teachers talk about texts can be a model for professional development
Editor’s Note: Toward a Transgressive Communication Pedagogy: Reflections and Directions in/for Dark Times
No full textThis essay introduces a special section marking the 30th anniversary of bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress, exploring its relevance within the current sociopolitical climate marked by intensified assaults on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education. Grounded in hooks’s vision of education as a practice of freedom, this essay proposes a framework of transgressive communication pedagogy— an approach that champions radical love, political agency, and open dialogue to resist hegemonic educational structures. The featured contributions in this section examine transgressive practices across diverse contexts: community-based intercultural teaching, intersectional identity work, support for Black students in minority-serving institutions, decolonial approaches to media history, and culturally sustaining public speaking pedagogy. Together, these essays offer a dynamic constellation of transgressive strategies aimed at disrupting dominant norms of knowledge, language, and power
Transgressive Body, Open Mind, and Perceptive Spirit for Nurturing Soul: A Reflection on Teaching to Transgress
No full textIn this reflection essay, I discuss my journey into the liberatory pedagogy bell hooks champions. As a foreign-born Japanese woman, who speaks English as her second language, being in the classroom itself can be seen as a transgressive act. Positioning myself as an educator who strives to creates an environment that is liberatory for me and my students, I discuss my specific experience and relationship to theories surrounding critical feminist pedagogy and how I practice these theories in my own classroom
Centering Sponsorship and Mentorship in Central, Bringing Coherence to Our Future
No full textPresidential Spotlight from 2025
“We Are Not Robots”: Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Focus Group Talk About Problems of Practice Around Literacy Instruction
No full textThe purpose of this study was to examine the nature of elementary preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) problems of practice around literacy instruction and to explore how the PSTs framed/talked about such problems. The study comprised qualitative analysis of data collected from focus group interviews with 21 PSTs from five teacher education institutions across the United States. Analysis of the PSTs’ talk about problems of practice in the focus groups yielded three themes about the nature of their problems and how they defined and discussed strategies or solutions to problems. PSTs expressed concerns about (1) meeting the needs of students below expected literacy levels, (2) feeling unprepared for aspects of literacy instruction, and (3) conflicting and constricting demands limiting literacy instruction
Communicating Environmental Sustainability in Business for Global Audiences
No full texthttps://scholarworks.wmich.edu/open_books/1005/thumbnail.jp
Interview with Arlena Jones and Melvin Bates
No full textArlena Jones and Melvin Bates were interviewed as part of SHARE’s Reparations in the Black World oral history collection which was developed in partnership with the students in a Black Reparations course at Western Michigan University. Ms. Jones and Mr. Bates were interviewed by Sydney McCarrall and Sareniti Wallace-Lawson, students in the aforementioned course. During the interview, Ms. Jones and Mr. Bates discussed the following topics: Melvin’s childhood on a plantation in Mississippi; His journey to the north; Coaching tennis; His testimony of his faith; His welding career; His views on reparations; Arlena’s views on financial and spiritual reparations; The Willie Lynch Letter; Her response to the idea that reparations are unfair, and; What’s next?https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reparations/1002/thumbnail.jp
The Perception of Occupational Therapists and Their Use of Therapeutic Use of Self When Interacting with Clients and Fieldwork Students
Get PDFThe therapeutic use of self is an essential instrument in every occupational therapists\u27 toolbox. Fieldwork is vital to a student’s transition to clinician and the student and fieldwork educator relationship is a critical component of the fieldwork experience. The researchers employed a phenomenological design to explore perceptions of 12 fieldwork educators regarding the similarities and differences in the way they use the therapeutic use of self with clients and students. How one develops their therapeutic use of self begins and evolves throughout fieldwork, impacting a clinician’s practice long-term. Results indicated that while the therapeutic use of self is readily used to meet individual client and student needs, the occupational therapist\u27s responsibility to the client sometimes overrides student needs. Fieldwork educators’ expectations of students are far greater than those of clients, thus impacting how the therapeutic use of self is applied. Results indicated that occupational therapists are often unprepared to manage students with negative behaviors related to professionalism, work ethic, communication, and more. Study conclusions highlight the need to develop continuing education specific to fieldwork supervision and the management of challenging students. Providing fieldwork educators with resources to manage complicated student relationships may reduce fieldwork educator stress and improve the student’s fieldwork experience
Promoting Sense of Belonging Among First-Generation Students in Occupational Therapy
Get PDFFirst-generation students in occupational therapy programs face unique challenges that can impact their sense of belonging and academic success, potentially hindering efforts to diversify the profession. There is limited data on occupational therapy students who identify as first-generation students. However, the literature has noted improved efforts toward a sense of belonging in higher education among students leads to feeling a sense of connectedness with their peers and faculty, aiding in overall well-being, academic performance and retention. In contrast, a lack of these efforts can lead students to experience a diminished sense of belonging to the institution. This article examines the experiences of first-generation occupational therapy students through Bourdieu\u27s theory of field, habitus, and capital, exploring how differences in habitus and capital affect students\u27 ability to navigate academia and connect with peers and faculty. Paid peer mentorship, faculty support initiatives, culturally responsive pedagogies, inclusive and welcoming syllabi, increasing knowledge, access to the available academic support services on campus, and concerted efforts to celebrate first-generation students are ways to improve their sense of belonging. By fostering an inclusive environment, occupational therapy programs can enhance student retention and academic performance, ultimately contributing to a more diverse workforce better equipped to address health disparities and serve varied populations
