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Transition to Kindergarten for Preschoolers with Multilingual Abilities: Do Parents and Professionals See Eye to Eye?
Get PDFMany traditional assessment approaches lack specific strategies for supporting preschoolers who are multilingual learners during their transition to kindergarten. Our mixed method study sought to understand parental and professional assessment collaboration during transition to kindergarten for preschoolers who are learning multiple languages. Specifically, we examined the congruency between teachers and families of children who speak Spanish at home who are enrolled in rural Head Start preschool and transitioning into kindergarten. Overall, parents and professionals had similar views on child development for adaptive, cognitive, fine motor, gross motor, literacy, and social emotional domains. However, there were meaningful discrepancies between parent and teacher ratings for math and social communication domains. Results of this reliability study have implications for creating positive and supportive transitions for preschoolers using an authentic and collaborative assessment approach with prioritizing individualized strategies for children, their families, and professionals during the move to kindergarten
Creating Inclusive Multilingual Spaces: A Literature-Based Framework for Supporting Young Emergent Bilinguals
Get PDFThis manuscript describes a summer literacy program designed to support emergent bilingual children ages 4 through 8 through a focus on culturally and linguistically diverse practices. Children engaged in literature-based activities, including read-alouds, art, music, and play, within an inclusive environment that celebrated bilingualism as an asset. The program used high-quality picturebooks to implement a three-pronged approach: interactive read-alouds, culturally relevant small-group re-engagements, and hands-on explorations. Findings underscore the importance of sensory-rich, play-based experiences, intentional collaboration among educators, and the strategic use of bilingual and translanguage picturebooks to foster meaningful connections and language development
Generative AI Tools Adopted by Higher Education Students
Get PDFTrack: Innovative Technologies and Learning Spaces
This study investigates the generative AI (GenAI) tools, models, and frameworks utilized by higher education students in their daily lives, along with their perceived experiences. Survey responses from 293 students were analyzed. These students provided open-ended responses about up to three GenAI tools they have used and their purposes. Students used a diverse range of tools, identifying 130 different GenAI tools, models, and frameworks. Among these, ChatGPT was the most popular tool, used by 45.1% of the students. Students reported using ChatGPT for various purposes, including educational assistance and entertainment. The findings provide useful data on students\u27 actual use of GenAI tools. This study highlights both the opportunities and challenges associated with the adoption of these technologies, emphasizing the need for educational institutions to foster an environment that encourages exploration, responsible use, and ethical engagement with AI
Building Inclusive Classrooms: How Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Can Empower Early Childhood Educators
Get PDFThis article explores the application of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in early childhood education (ECE) settings. It discusses the growing diversity of children and families in ECE programs and how UDL can serve as a framework for creating inclusive learning environments that cater to the varied needs of all learners. The article highlights the core principles of UDL and provides practical examples of their implementation in ECE classrooms.
Keywords: Universal Design for Learning, Inclusive Practices, Early Childhood Educatio
Practical Approaches for Implementing Play in Early Childhood Education Classrooms
Get PDFPlay is a fundamental component of early childhood development, yet it is being increasingly lost in educational settings due to children’s technology use and academic pressures to limit play in the classroom. This article describes the implications for teachers of a research study examining early childhood teachers’ perceptions of play and its alignment with actual classroom practices. Findings of the study highlight the need for integrating play into structured learning to support children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. Recommendations include reflective practice, classroom assessments, and embedded play during daily instruction. Addressing systemic barriers requires a shift toward play-based learning, ensuring that educational environments support children’s holistic development
The Effects of Health Locus of Control and Health Behavior on Teacher Stress and Life Satisfaction in Head Start Educators
Get PDFTeacher well-being plays a crucial role in creating effective learning environments for young children. The present study examined the relationship between health locus of control (HLOC), health behaviors, teacher stress, and life satisfaction among Head Start (HS) teachers. Results suggest that teachers with a high Internal HLOC report lower overall stress levels and greater satisfaction compared to those with a low Internal HLOC. In addition, having a high Internal HLOC was also associated with greater overall life satisfaction. We also investigated how health behaviors (e.g., a commitment to healthy eating, exercise) affected stress and life satisfaction. We found that a “health conscious orientation” was related to lower stress levels and higher life satisfaction. Understanding the dynamics of locus of control, stress, life satisfaction, and teacher health behaviors provides valuable insights for developing comprehensive interventions that benefit the teachers and the children they serve
Low stakes, high impact: How Wicked Problems, Wolfpack Solutions transforms the incoming student experience
No full textTrack: Student Success & Wellness
In the summer of 2024, the design team for the course Wicked Problems, Wolfpack Solutions (WPWS) realized that we had created something special. End-of-course surveys revealed that over 80% of the incoming first-year and transfer students who completed WPWS gained a “new perspective about learning at the undergraduate level,” “felt more connected” with the NC State University than before, and believed the course was “an effective bridge from [their] last school to learning” at NC State. One student commented, “The class taught me much more, such as to seek out truth, to not be caught up in stock stories, then use the real stories to bring justice to the world.”
We might hope to get these kinds of quotes from a student or two in a traditional first-year seminar, where small groups of students meet to discuss interesting topics in real time with a professor or mentor. But WPWS is a massive, online, asynchronous 5-week course taught by just 2 instructors and offered to thousands of students at a time. In this presentation, we will introduce the course to attendees and discuss with them the design elements that are key to the success of this endeavor.
WPWS is a 2-credit, fully online, largely self-paced course made available for free to all incoming students in the few weeks before they start their first semester at NC State. That amounts to 7000+ students who might complete the course prior to a fall term, and 1000+ students prior to a spring term. WPWS was originally created for students who would enter their first semester at NC State in the midst of a pandemic. We anticipated these students may experience less excitement about starting college and feel challenged to create a home at NC State, so we developed this course as a “virtual hug” to welcome them to our community as well as an exciting introduction to the innovative problem-solving being done by faculty and students at our university. We have continued to offer a version of this course for every incoming group of students since.
The content of WPWS centers around a global and multi-faceted “wicked problem." Since 2020 we’ve covered themes that include public health, pandemics, food supply, and climate change. Although the “wicked problem” we focus on changes, the overall course goals do not. They are:
Interdisciplinarity. We want students to explore how faculty and other experts from a wide variety of disciplines offer valuable, evidence-based perspectives and solutions to the wicked problems of the world, and envision the contributions they themselves can make.
Transition. We hope to help students discover and develop skills, strategies and relationships needed to thrive in college and beyond.
Intentionality. We encourage students to reflect on how to make informed, value- and goal-driven decisions about their own university experience to help guide decisions about majors, minors, courses, and co-curricular experiences.
Community. We want students to see themselves and others as valuable, contributing and cared-for members of the university family and identify where and how they can connect with experiences and with other people to develop their own sense of belonging.
Session goals
Attendees to this session can expect to:
Explore how Universal Design for Learning principles contribute to the success of WPWS
Consider how low-stakes but meaningful assessment strategies make the course feasible for instructors and also meaningful for students
Investigate the course structure for ways to interweave stand-alone content from multiple disciplines and student-focused content into a cohesive whole
Review student survey results and analyze how course design helps successfully accomplish our four course goals.
Audience participation
Those who attend our session will receive anonymous guest access to a version of the course in our learning management system. Attendees will enter a guided exploration of the course as a student and experience and discuss the design principles that we believe have made the course a success. We hope to encourage generation of ideas that may be applicable to other courses, universities, and student populations relevant to attendees’ own priorities
The Stories We Share: Integrating the Humanities and Sciences
Get PDFTrack: Course Design
In a world that is ever-increasingly prioritizing the education, work, and advancements of data science, how can we look to and draw upon skills, strategies, and principles commonly found within the humanities classroom to better teach students across the disciplines? In effort to answer this question, this presentation will provide an overview of the pedagogical model utilized by NC State University’s Data Science and AI Academy (DSA): ADAPT, the All-campus Data Science and AI Project-based Teaching and learning model. Moreover, this presentation will explore how the ADAPT model and its student-centeredness and its prioritization on project-based learning reinforces humanistic teaching and learning into data-science classrooms. This will be illustrated by exploring a DSA course at NC State: “Storytelling with Data and AI: The Story of Self.
Development of Adaptive Learning Modules for an Undergraduate Engineering Course
Get PDFTrack: Student Success & Wellness
Adaptive and personalized learning modules were developed for an undergraduate Thermal-Fluid Sciences course using Moodle, the primary learning management system for NC State University. This work was a collaboration with the Digital Education and Learning Technology Applications Division at the university as part of an internal university grant.
The Moodle lesson tool was used to create modules on the first and second laws ofthermodynamics that students completed outside of class time. Artificial intelligence tools were also used to generate ideas and customized learning paths for students. The structure of the adaptive learning modules as well as the potential challenges and considerations faculty face when using these tools are discussed. Student engagement and feedback is also included to assess the effectiveness of these modules