Art education

Increasing American Indian representation in arts curriculum

For children of non-Western cultures taught in K-12 classrooms, the arts open channels for acquiring knowledge of the history, experiences, and contribution of their individual reference group to the collective cultural heritage of the United States. Strides have been made to represent the artistic histories and contemporary work of this country’s largest non-white populations in multicultural arts education; yet the artistic voice of American Indians, this nation’s first inhabitants and arguably today its least visible, must also be heard.

Assistant Professor James Bequette's current research gauges the degree to which a culturally relevant arts curriculum can engage this population, increase Native children’s tenure and success in dominant culture schools, and possibly become a paradigm for what schooling might look like across the core curriculum. Findings suggest that when schools collaborate with Native artists, inviting them to accurately represent their cultures in arts classrooms, children who are identified as American Indian, their non-Native peers and mostly European American teachers, and the artisans themselves all benefit.

Culture and teaching

The process of change in teacher development

The decisions that go into inspiring teacher changes in theory and practice are as important as ever, in order to meet the increasingly diverse needs of our students. Assistant Professor Mistilina Sato, in collaboration with other researchers and science educators, spent four years conducting action research as to the everyday assessment used by teachers in science classrooms. Groups of colleagues were assembled to discuss effective methods of assessment. The result of this National Science Foundation funded research was the recently published book Designing Everyday Assessment in the Science Classroom (Teachers College Press, 2005).

However, the research questions did not end with the book. Sato was recently awarded the University of Minnesota Faculty Summer Research Fellowship to pursue further research questions. She will be using discourse analysis to analyze the group process of two of the teacher groups. She intends to describe how ideas traveled through the two groups and document the change process as teachers changed (or did not change) their practices and conception of everyday assessment. This description will further document the messy process of change in teacher development.

The complex social production of whiteness

While there has been important work in education and psychology on white racial identity, and while whiteness studies in education have been receiving increased attention, this work, in the main, has not paid much attention to how whiteness intersects with issues of class, gender, and sexuality, or how it changes and functions differently over time and place. In his current research and writing, Associate Professor Timothy J. Lensmire takes up the complex social production of whiteness and white racial identities.

Over a five-month period, Lensmire conducted an ethnographic interview study of race and whiteness in a rural community in Wisconsin. The study involved open-ended, in-depth interviews with 22 participants who ranged in age from 18 to 83. Grounded in critical whiteness studies, Lensmire’s work helps us understand what historian Matthew Jacobson has characterized as the “historical fabrication, changeability, and contingencies of whiteness,” without ever losing sight of white privilege and a larger white supremacist context. Lensmire’s work contributes to the ongoing effort to figure out how best to work with and mobilize white students and citizens on issues of social justice and social change.

Popular culture as pedagogy

Drawing on writing and research practices in cultural and media studies, Professor Thom Swiss is currently engaged in a number of projects. These include co-authoring a book titled Engaging Digital Writing in the Classroom (Christopher-Gordon, 2007) and co-editing a book, drawn from an exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, titled Highway 61 Revisited: Dylan’s Road from Minnesota to the World (U of Minnesota Press, 2008). Swiss's writing and research focus on interdisciplinary subjects, including popular culture as pedagogy, both in and out of the classroom.

Learning technologies

Adventure learning: Transforming online learning

How do you effectively engage millions of students throughout the world within an online learning environment? The design, development, and delivery of adventure learning environments, directed by Principal Investigator Dr. Aaron Doering, have done just this. Beginning in 2004 with Arctic Transect 2004  and then the launch of the circumpolar GoNorth! series: GoNorth! Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 2006, GoNorth! Chukotka 2007 and the current GoNorth! Fennoscandia 2008, students, teachers, and experts around the world are collaborating and learning around the central theme of global climate change. This new approach to design and delivery of online learning is motivating learners of all ages on six continents and is available for any learner to get involved. To learn more, visit What is adventure learning?.

Geothentic: A new look at learning geography through geospatial technologies

“Our young people are asked to compete in the global marketplace for jobs, help lead our nation's international politics, and make tough choices here at home, yet do not get the support they need at school to become geographically literate,” —Gil Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society.

Learners select the module they want to solve within
the Geothentic online learning environment.

How do we move students beyond rote place name geography to authentic geographic literacy that engages students in deep problem solving and critical thinking? For Assistant Professor Aaron Doering the answer is clear: designing and developing an online learning environment to assist teachers and students to solve authentic geographic problems using geospatial technologies. Through the support of the National Geographic Society, Principal Investigator Doering, and colleagues are developing an online learning environment entitled Geothentic. With the collaboration with the Minnesota Alliance for Geographic Education and social studies teachers throughout Minnesota, the Geothentic team is going through a design-based research approach to the final online learning environment, that will go nationally in January, 2009.

Literacy education

English/Language Arts in Urban Schools

Professor Cynthia Lewis received a Spencer Foundation grant to study critical engagement in two English/Language Arts classrooms in urban high schools. Specifically, this research examines how critical engagement is constructed through classroom discourse and literacy practices that shape and are shaped by social identities and institutional contexts. In this work, “critical engagement” refers to something beyond the conventional definition of engagement—in other words, beyond motivation, interest, immersion, or the desire to gain new knowledge. Instead, building on previous research, Lewis defines critical engagement as a stance that combines immersion and critical distance to develop understandings of how readers position texts, how texts position readers, and how texts are situated within socio-political contexts. The first phase of her research, currently underway, focuses on the classroom of an innovative English teacher who teaches a course on documentary film analysis and production not usually offered in high-poverty schools.

Literacy and identity construction

Professor Richard W. Beach and recent Ph.D. graduates Amanda Haertling Thein and Daryl L. Parks are co-authors of High School Students' Competing Social Worlds: Negotiating Identities and Allegiances in Response to Multicultural Literature (Erlbaum, 2007). This book, based on their research, examines how working-class high school students’ identity construction is continually mediated by discourses and cultural practices operating in their classroom, school, family, sports, community, and workplace worlds. Specifically, it addresses how responding to cultural differences portrayed in multicultural literature can serve to challenge adolescents’ allegiances to status quo discourses and cultural models, and how teachers can not only rouse students to clarify and change their value stances related to race, class, and gender, but can also provide support for and validation of students’ self-interrogation.

Highlighting the influence of sociocultural forces, the book contributes to understanding the role of institutions in shaping adolescents’ lives, and identifies needs that must be addressed to improve those institutions. Current theory and research on critical discourse analysis, cultural models theory, and identity construction is meshed with specific applications of that theory and research to case-study profiles and analysis of classroom discussions. The instructional strategies described enable pre-service and in-service teachers to develop their own literature curriculum and instructional methods.

Teaching literature

Professor Richard W. Beach, with collaborators Deborah Appleman, Susan Hynds, and Jeffrey Wilhelm co-authored Teaching Literature to Adolescents (Erlbaum, 2006). This methods text for pre-service and in-service English education courses is based on social-constructivist/sociocultural theories of literacy learning. The book, based on research conducted by the authors, incorporates research on literary response related to the importance of providing students with a range of critical lenses for analyzing texts and interrogating the beliefs, attitudes, and ideological perspectives encountered in literature. It also addresses the organization of the literature curriculum around topics, themes, or issues and infusion of multicultural literature and emphasis on how writers portray race, class, and gender differences among a host of other topics, including drama as a tool for enhancing understanding of texts; the employment of a range of different ways to write about literature; and the integration of critical analysis of film and media texts with the study of literature. The book is supported by a resource site, www.teachingliterature.org, which contains recommended readings, resources, and activities.

Professor Cynthia Lewis, and co-researcher Jean Ketter (Grinnell College) have completed work on a six-year longitudinal study of rural white teachers participating in a teacher study group focusing on reading and teaching multicultural literature. The purpose of the group was for participating teachers to read and discuss multicultural young adult literature in ways that would help them make decisions about whether and how to teach these works in their community. In order to do this, the group’s work together over the years focused not only on issues related to the teaching of literature but, more importantly, on individual and collective assumptions about race, identity, and multicultural education in terms of how these assumptions shape decisions about text selection and teaching approaches. Lewis and Ketter have published several articles and book chapters about the study.

Digital literacies and media literacy

Professor Richard Beach also completed work on Teachingmedialiteracy.com: A Web-based Guide to Links and Activities (Teachers College Press, 2007). This book includes references to not only Web-based resources and ideas for teaching media literacy, but also references to Beach’s and others’ research on ways of teaching central concepts of media studies and media literacy involved in teaching critical analysis of film, television, digital media, media representations, audience response, media genres, magazines, advertising, news, documentaries, and film adaptations. This book is supported by a resource site, www.teachingmedialiteracy.com, which contains links to the topics in this book.

Professor Cynthia Lewis, working with C & I faculty colleague Aaron Doering and two doctoral students, Kristen Nichols and George Veletsianos, used an activity theory framework to study how pre-service teachers and middle school students used instant messaging in educational contexts, and the impact of instant messaging on the development of community among pre-service teachers. Qualitative results from six focus groups and four personal interviews indicate that instant messaging enhanced the development of community among the pre-service teachers and facilitated the breakdown of teacher-student social barriers while being predominantly exploited as a social rather than an academic medium. Even though pre-service teachers felt uncomfortable being at a peer-to-peer level with students, instant messaging appears to have enabled them to build a unified activity system that can be characterized as a multifaceted learning and knowledge-based community. Doering and Lewis will present this research at the American Educational Research Association convention in Chicago.

Reading assessments

Researchers have determined that if we attend to particular constructs of reading assessments, we can increase students’ motivation while being assessed and thus they would perform better and show what they can achieve. Some of these constructs include students’ choice of the passages they read on the assessment, students’ control of the testing setting, the difficulty sequence of the items and the complexity of the tasks, and various response opportunities. Reading and literacy professors Deborah Dillon, David O’Brien, and Lee Galda, and special education colleague Martha Thurlow are examining whether improving the motivational characteristics of a large-scale reading assessment increases its accessibility for students at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels with disabilities, and in so doing provides a more valid assessment of these students’ reading proficiency due to their increased engagement.

This project is part of a multi-year, $6 million Institute of Education Sciences grant titled “The Partnership for Accessible Reading Assessment” (PARA), affiliated with the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) in the College of Education and Human Development. The Partnership engages in research on and development of accessible reading assessments that provide a valid demonstration of reading proficiency for increasingly diverse populations of students in public schools, and particularly for those students who have disabilities that affect reading. It is operated by a consortium consisting of the NCEO; the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST); and Westat. This project works in collaboration with the Designing Accessible Reading Assessment project at ETS through the National Accessible Reading Assessment Projects. Literacy graduate students Cassie Scharber and Katherine Byrn have served as research assistants on this project.

Boys and reading

Reading and literacy professors David O’Brien and Deborah Dillon are collaborating with colleagues at the Hennepin County Library (HCL) system to design and conduct an evaluation of the HCL Guys Read Book Club program. Guys Read is a summer book club program for boys aged 9-11 in the greater Minneapolis, Minn. area (Hennepin County). The evaluation project address such questions as who participates in the summer program, what it looks like in action, when and how it operates in particular settings, and the impact of the program on boys’ reading attitudes and practices. The program is based on author Jon Scieszka’s Guys Read initiative and was designed to encourage boys to read over the summer months and beyond. It was also created to foster boys' positive attitudes/associations with reading, develop reading habits over time, and promote positive relationships between boys and male book club facilitators. Literacy Ph.D. students Cassie Scharber, Kristen Nichols, Brock Dubbels, and Brad Biggs have been funded through the Library Foundation of Hennepin County to help collect and analyze pre- and post-survey data, conduct focus groups and individual interviews with boys and group facilitators, and observe Book Club sessions over time. Preliminary findings indicate that

• boys reported that they read more;
• they were more likely to read;
• they had more positive perceptions about themselves as readers;
• they were less likely to view girls as being better readers than boys; and
• they were more likely to view reading as a positive, socially constructed process.

The project was recently funded for a second time by the Library Foundation of Hennepin County and was also awarded a University of Minnesota Office of Public Engagement Seed Grant to support the work of literacy graduate students on the project.

Literacy teacher preparation

Professors from literacy and second language and culture, along with several graduate students, worked on a four-year $1 million grant from the Bush Foundation to improve literacy teacher preparation. The grant, titled “Minnesota Reads: A Higher Education Partnership to Better Prepare Faculty and Future Teachers for Literacy Instruction,” included professors Dillon (co-principal investigator), O’Brien, Galda, Beach, Lensmire, Bigelow, Helman, Rapport, and research assistants Kate Kelly, Peggy DeLapp, and Mark Vagle (now an assistant professor at the University of Georgia). The goal of the grant is to strengthen pre-service literacy teacher education at four institutions of higher learning, including the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Augsburg College, the College of St. Catherine, and St. Cloud State University, and to share the findings of this work with other literacy colleagues nationwide.

Faculty members at the four institutions reviewed relevant research in reading and language arts, best practices in teacher education and literacy education, appropriate technology to enhance literacy teacher preparation, and evaluation procedures to document pre-service teachers’ learning. Knowledge gleaned from these sources, along with research findings generated during the project, were used to enhance literacy curriculum, assignments, and assessments at the four institutions. Professional development also included sessions where university faculty members examined pre-service teachers’ assignments and assessments, analyzed these as data sources, and used the findings to strengthen course topics, readings, assignments, and the assessments. Overall findings indicate that professional development sessions, designed by and for university literacy faculty members, promoted consensus building and the development of several key components of literacy teacher preparation. These include an “agreed upon” conceptual framework used to guide syllabi construction at the four institutions, a beginning repertoire of knowledge and practices deemed important for new teachers, four common assignments, and three pre- and post-course assessments.

Literacy development and instruction with English language learners

Assistant Professor Lori Helman and co-authors Donald Bear, Shane Templeton, Marcia Invernizzi, and Francine Johnston examined how word study is most effectively taught with students learning English as a new language in the book Words Their Way with English Learners: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction (Pearson Education, 2007). This book is based on research with students across the developmental spectrum, and from a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds. Words Their Way with English Learners introduces teachers to the stages of reading and spelling development, describes how to use developmental spelling assessments, and outlines how to build on students’ home languages and literacy backgrounds. It guides teachers to support English learners in the classroom by incorporating word study activities that involve the active construction of knowledge, are explicit and systematic, help students highlight connections, and engage students in an interactive learning community.

Professor Helman is currently engaged in a longitudinal study describing the literacy development of a group of students from Somali, Hmong, and Spanish-speaking backgrounds as they learn to read, write and speak English in the primary grades. The study is documenting the instructional and non-instructional factors that influence literacy learning for beginning readers by collecting literacy artifacts and assessments, classroom observations, and conducting teacher and family interviews. Insights from the study will guide teachers and teacher educators to better understand the complexity of literacy growth and effective teaching for English-learning students.

Helman is also studying the teaching practices of effective reading teachers of English language learners. This study, based in the Minnesota Center for Reading Research, investigates a set of successful third-grade classrooms to better understand the combination of factors that may lead to reading growth for English learners. The research involves mixed methods, including reading assessment scores, teacher demographic information, classroom observations over a two-year period, and interviews with teachers, principals, and literacy leaders involved in the classrooms.

Research methodology

Professor Cynthia Lewis has co-edited a book with colleagues Patricia Enciso (The Ohio State University) and Elizabeth Moje (University of Michigan) that has been awarded the Edward Fry Book Award from the National Reading Conference. This award is given annually to recognize a book that makes a noteworthy contribution to research in the field of literacy. The volume, Reframing Sociocultural Research: Identity, Agency, and Power, articulates and develops the argument that new directions in sociocultural theory are needed in order to address important issues of identity, agency, and power that are central to understanding literacy research and literacy learning as social and cultural practices. With an overarching focus on the research process as it relates to sociocultural research, the book is organized around two themes: conceptual frameworks and knowledge sources. Part I, “Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks,” offers new theoretical lenses for reconsidering key concepts traditionally associated with sociocultural theory, such as activity, history, community, and the ways they are conceptualized and under-conceptualized within sociocultural theory. Part II, “Rethinking Knowledge and Representation,” considers the tensions and possibilities related to how research knowledge is produced, represented, and disseminated or shared—challenging the locus of authority in research relationships, asking who is authorized to be a legitimate knowledge source, for what purposes, and for which audiences or stakeholders.

Other outreach and engagement activities

Professor Cynthia Lewis, with colleague Kevin Leander (Vanderbilt University), co-chaired the annual Assembly for Research of the National Council of Teachers of English held at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in February of 2007. The conference theme “What Counts As Literacy? Living Literacies of the Body and Image,” focused on an expansive definition of literacy, including visual texts, broadly defined, and embodied performances and representations. Lewis and Leander are current co-chairs of the Assembly for Research (Feb. 2007-Feb. 2008).

Professor Lewis served as Co-Facilitator of Curriculum Review/Adoption for Minneapolis Public Schools, 6-12 English/Language Arts, working closely with Tracey Pyscher, Secondary Language Arts Specialist for Minneapolis Public Schools.

Literacy on Its Feet: Critical Arts Literacy and Social Justice

University of Minnesota faculty in curriculum and instruction (Cynthia Lewis), youth studies (Jan Mandell, also a Central High School teacher in Saint Paul), and theatre (Sonja Kuftinec), have worked with teachers, artists, and students to create a focus on critical arts literacy and social justice. To date, they have convened a University/school community summit of 40 teachers, artists, administrators, community leaders, and students—from area high schools, community organizations, and the University of Minnesota—and sponsored visiting critical arts and literacy scholars Patricia Enciso and Brian Edmiston, associate professors of literacy education at The Ohio State University. (Literacy on its feet Web site.)

Crosswinds Metro School/English Education Partnership

For the last nine years, the English education program has been involved in a partnership with Crosswinds East Metro Arts and Science School (East Metro Integration District) initiated by Professor Richard Beach. Every fall, students in the master's of education—English education program have a practicum during which they meet weekly with small groups of Crosswinds middle-school students to teach reading, writing, and literature. English education program faculty Cynthia Lewis and David O’Brien meet with partnership teachers several times in the summer and early fall to develop curricular goals and activities that meet the needs of the Crosswinds teachers and students, as well as the pre-service teachers. The culminating activity is a seven-day unit taught by pre-service teacher teams to small groups (5-15) Crosswinds students during the year-round school’s intercession session. In the fall of 2006, Crosswinds students, grades 7-8, visited the University of Minnesota campus to learn about the university and consider it as a possible option for their post-secondary education. Crosswinds students, many of whom had never been to a university campus, were thrilled with this opportunity, and many expressed their desire to attend the University.

Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award

In the 22 years the International Reading Association has presented the Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award it has never conferred the award to someone who also won the Albert J. Harris Award for a recently published journal article that makes an outstanding contribution to the understanding of prevention or assessment of reading and/or learning disabilities. Perhaps it is because the two prestigious awards honor two distinct skill sets and it is unique to find one person that embodies both at such a high level. Fortunately for the communities of Minnesota, Professor Barbara Taylor excels in both research and teaching. In 2005, she was the first person to be awarded both awards.

The Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award honors an outstanding college or university teacher of reading methods. Barbara Taylor’s continued teacher-leadership at the Minnesota Center for Reading Research supports new and veteran teachers in applying current reading research at schools with diverse students from high-poverty backgrounds.

Taylor’s commitment to improving reading instruction in high-poverty classrooms is evident in her research as well. The Albert J. Harris Award was bestowed on Taylor et al (2003) for the article “Reading Growth in High Poverty Classrooms: The Influence of Teacher Practices that Encourage Cognitive Engagement in Literacy Learning.” Her meaningful research provides a direct bridge to practical application, thereby impacting the practices of many teachers and communities as they struggle to close the achievement gap.

Partners in storytelling

The Continuing Professional Studies (CPS) department within the newly named Preparation to Practice Group embarked on a unique research collaboration with Lucy Craft Laney Community School and the Black Storytellers Alliance (BSA) earlier this fall. The project, funded by the University’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, aims to explore storytelling as a means of teaching literacy skills to young students of color.

Throughout the project, third-grade students from Lucy Craft Laney, a predominately African American K–8 school in north Minneapolis, will participate in regular storytelling activities coordinated by BSA. The nonprofit organization promotes the traditions of African and African American storytelling. CPS and principal investigator associate professor Tim Lensmire are supervising the research and evaluation components of the project.

The research also specifically explores the partnership between the University, schools, and community organizations. The collaboration is one way to apply the mission of CPS, which is to create mutually beneficial partnerships between the College and the community, says Suzanne Miric, one of the project’s supervisors.

Diane Tedick (associate professor of second languages and cultures education) and Tara Fortune (college alumna and current immersion projects coordinator at the University’s national language resource center, CARLA), traveled to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, in December 2005 to work with staff at Inerisaavik, a center for educational reform and in-service teacher development. Greenland’s educational system uses both Greenlandic and Danish for instruction, with Danish being the predominant language of instruction in high school grades (grades 11-13). Well over half of the country’s native Greenlandic children are not acquiring the academic skills they need in Danish to succeed in the higher grades and are therefore dropping out before graduating from high school. Tedick and Fortune were invited to work with Inerisaavik and other educators to explore program options that will help improve native Greenlanders’ Danish language development so that they succeed in high school and can take advantage of higher education opportunities in Denmark.

Social studies education

Deliberating in a Democracy (DID) project

“We are Lithuanians and our character is a little bit different from the rest of the states, especially the Americans. And what we are used to is to argue, from the beginning. And here, this method taught me and my students just to get the main point then to listen to others and to make to some conclusion, to solve the issue at the end and so get some results and of course leave with your own aspects. So I like it very much and my students also.”—Teacher from Lithuania

Should all citizens of voting age be required to register and vote in federal elections or face fines? Should physician-assisted suicide be legal? These are the types of controversial public issues that secondary students are discussing as part of the Deliberating in a Democracy (DID) Project. DID is a five-year project directed by the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago (CRFC) and funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Professor Patricia Avery is leading an evaluation of this innovative program, which strives to introduce such rich discussions into five urban centers in the United States, as well as the emerging democracies of Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Azerbaijan, and the Czech Republic. Avery; Carol Freeman, research associate from the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI); and Kyle Greenwalt, doctoral candidate in social studies, have been evaluating a professional development that leads teachers to implement Structured Academic Controversy (SAC), developed by David and Roger Johnson (professor of educational psychology and professor of science education) in order to increase students’ ability to participate in deliberations about controversial public issues.

During the 2004-2005 school year, the DID Project was conducted with 54 secondary teachers and over 1,000 students in six sites: Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania; and the metropolitan areas surrounding Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. For the current school year, the project has added sites in Estonia; Russia; Denver, Colo.; and Columbia, S.C. As part of the evaluation of the DID Project, multiple types of data (focus group, interview, observational, survey) were collected from multiple sources (students, teachers, school administrators, site coordinators, project directors). Findings from the initial year of the DID Project indicate that teachers found the deliberation model relatively easy to implement. Students reported that through their involvement in classroom deliberations, they recognized the value of considering multiple perspectives, and drew comparisons between classroom and “real world” democratic practice. Students further indicated that the format of the SAC promoted a supportive classroom environment for the exchange of ideas.

Avery, Freeman, and Greenwalt have presented their findings to the National Council of Social Studies (2005) and American Educational Research Association (2006).