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Community-Based Participatory Research as a Tool for Improved Understanding and Practice of Newcomer Integration
Get PDFCommunity-based participatory research (CBPR) is used as a community-engaged research practice because of its inclusion of community perspectives. The participatory approach enhances validity of community-engaged research, facilitates effective work with communities, and acknowledges accurate understanding of community characteristics. We sought to understand CBPR within the field of immigrant integration. For this study, we conducted three focus groups with immigration researchers and practitioners at two international conferences held in the United States in 2016. These venues were selected for their inclusion of both practitioners and researchers interested in or actively working on immigrant integration policies and practices. They also provided a sample inclusive of researchers from academic, public, nonprofit, and private institutions and practitioners from nonprofit and public sectors. The findings yielded information on challenges, opportunities, and best practices for university–community partnerships to utilize CBPR in improving immigrant integration
A Handwashing Educational Toolkit: The Product of a Dynamic Partnership Among a Student, Faculty Member, and Community Organization
Get PDFPesticide exposure represents a significant occupational health hazard for farmworkers, and handwashing is one strategy to reduce exposure via the dermal route. After learning about recent research findings regarding the lack of handwashing utilized by North Carolina farmworkers in the field, the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program approached the student and faculty member who conducted the research to partner and improve handwashing education, with the goal of reducing pesticide exposure among farmworkers. The resulting handwashing educational toolkit was the product of a participatory development project that engaged farmworker health outreach workers with university partners in every stage—from needs assessment to method and message selection and, ultimately, educational material development and evaluation. This promising project serves as a model for a sustainable partnership among a student, faculty member, and community organization and underscores the importance of respect, equality, and distributed power in collaboratively responding to a community-identified need
A Case of Service-Learning and Research Engagement in Preservice Teachers’ Education
Get PDFThis article describes a service-learning program developed at the University of Verona, Italy. This community service research learning (CSRL) program involves preservice and in-service teachers and incorporates learning, community service, and research. We detail the program’s theoretical basis and then present the results of a research project conducted with 45 students (preservice teachers) involved in the program during the academic year 2017–2018. The aim of the research was to identify the enrichments students’ believe they achieved through their program participation and what they considered most relevant from program participation for their professional improvement
Action Cards as Means into Second Graders’ Metacognition During Mathematics Problem Solving
No full textDespite the important role that metacognition plays in school mathematics, only recently has attention turned to primary grades. The aim of this exploratory qualitative study was to find out to what extent six second graders engage in metacognitive behaviors during mathematics problem solving. The analysis was based on the adaptation of the multi-method interview approach, whose core idea lies upon using action cards consisting of metacognitive cues. The results show that even young children engage in different metacognitive actions. However, the use of action cards revealed some drawbacks with respect to studying young children’s metacognition during mathematics problem solving, which are discussed at the end
Generalization, Assimilation, and Accommodation
No full textGeneralization is critical to mathematical thought and to learning mathematics. However, students at all levels struggle to generalize. In this paper, I present a theoretical analysis connecting Piaget’s assimilation and accommodation constructs to Harel and Tall’s (1991) framework for generalization in advanced mathematics. I offer a theoretical argument and empirical examples of students generalizing graphing from R2 to R3. The work presented here contributes to the field by (a) drawing attention to particular cognitive activities that underpin generalization, (b) explaining empirical findings (my own and others’) occurring as a result of particular cognitive activities, and (c) providing implications for influencing student cognition in the classroom
The Effect of Additional Math in High School on College Success
No full textMethods of causal inference are not widely used by education researchers, even though they can be extremely useful tools for eliminating selection bias and confounding factors in empirical studies. For example, researchers have established that taking additional math classes in high school is strongly correlated with success in college and higher earnings. More recent research seeks to show that taking additional math in high school actually causes success in college. Such analyses are difficult because researchers must draw meaning from naturally occurring data, rather than through experimentation. Researchers have employed a few different methods of causal inference with varying levels of success. Studies using the best methods suggest that taking additional courses in high school mathematics does, in fact, cause an increase in college enrollment and future wages. Education researchers should recognize the power of causal inference methods more widely in evaluating treatment effects
Cooperative Extension Competencies for the Community Engagement Professional
Get PDFThe community engagement professional (CEP) plays a critical role in engaging faculty, staff, and students with communities. In order to do this in the most effective way, this essay advocates for CEPs to become familiar with the Cooperative Extension system and develop competency for engaging Extension personnel, even when those personnel are not a part of the CEP’s home institution. The essay extends the work of Dostilio et al. (2017) on preliminary competencies for the community engagement professional by identifying additional competencies, organized as knowledge, skill, and dispositions, that can help CEPs work with the Cooperative Extension system to maximize engagement opportunities for faculty, staff, and students. This essay also includes ideas for implementing competency training for CEPs. Conclusions include thoughts on preparing the community engagement professional to learn and collaborate with Cooperative Extension to enrich the academic experience and benefit the communities they serve
Institutionalizing Community Engagement in Higher Education: A Case Study of Processes Toward Engagement
Get PDFThis qualitative single-case study examined the institutionalization of community engagement at a selected land-grant university by melding individual and organizational perspectives and examining the process as an adaptive challenge. Specifically, the study applied Holland’s (1997) assessment matrix for institutionalizing community engagement and Weerts and Sandmann’s (2010) boundary-spanning framework. Thematic analysis and constant comparison were used to examine data from transcripts from open-ended survey questions, focus groups, and semistructured interviews. Findings showed that institutionalizing community engagement represented an adaptive challenge that required a critical mass of boundary spanners enacting a variety of roles inside the university. Three conclusions resulted: (1) The case institution created conditions for personnel to safely experiment with community engagement; (2) the university engaged in strategic thinking and planning around the sustainability of community engagement; and (3) in its institutionalization efforts, the case institution fostered an “adaptive braid” model encompassing organizational and individual actions and motivations
Service-Learning in Courses of Psychology: An Experience at the University of Turin
Get PDFInterest in the implementation of service-learning (SL) in university courses in psychology has risen in recent years. SL allows the students not only to read and talk about social problems, but also to act upon them and thus to learn from practice as well. The aim of this work is to present the service-learning experienced in psychology courses at the University of Turin, Italy. The experiences—named “The Volunteer\u27s Helpdesk” and “Service Learning: Urban Area Analysis and Proposals for Action”—were analyzed following the Comprehensive Action Plan for Service Learning (CAPSL) model proposed by Bringle and Hatcher (1996) for implementing SL in higher education. The work presented is intended to contribute to laying the foundation for a broader reflection on how to implement SL in university courses in psychology