Search results for Case for Kindness

Professional and educational associations, such as the Carnegie Project for the Education Doctorate (CPED), create and offer awards that recognize the accomplishments of individuals, programs, and institutions. In this edited book, W. Kyle Ingle and Harriette Thurber Rasmussen focus on CPED’s Program of the Year (POY) Award, examining its history, purpose, submission requirements, its committee structure, activities, and outcomes. Faculty members from CPED’s award-winning institutions have been invited to discuss their innovative programs, how these innovations were developed, how they pursue social justice, and how these innovations have been sustained since winning the award. Furthermore, the award’s role in facilitating the diffusion of innovative and effective practices among CPED member institutions is examined. The book and its chapters are framed through the lens of innovation diffusion theory. Popularized by communication theorist Everett Rogers (1967, 2003), innovation diffusion theory has spread widely across the social sciences. In his seminal work, Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers defines an innovation as “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” (2003, p. 12). Innovation diffusion is the process by which an innovation spreads among the members of a social system, in this case the internal and external communities of Ed.D.-granting institutions.The book includes dual components: (1) innovative programs that drive social justice and (2) how these institutional innovations were developed and sustained. The latter component will shed light on three self-study processes related to these award-winnng programs: The process of creating the featured innovative program;The process of applying for the program of the year award; and The process of writing the journey and considering the impact of the program of the year award on their institution, including any reinvention/adaptations.  Taken together, readers will examine and understand “process[es] by which alteration occurs in the structure and function of a social system” (Rogers, 1995, p. 6) in pursuit of social justice goals through programmatic innovation.Perfect for courses such as: Program Development & Assessment in Higher Education; Instructional Planning for Student Learning and Achievement; Performance Improvement; Instructional Design and Development; e-Learning Design and Development; College Teaching; Supervised Experience in Higher Education; Special Problems in Educational Leadership; Professional Projects in Higher Education; Organizational Improvement in Higher Education

2024 SPE Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention Our Bodies Tell the Story: Using Feminist Research and Friendship to Reimagine Education and Our Lives asks (and answers) a number of critical questions that are key to improving our educational system. How can we use our embodied stories to navigate and disrupt how schools and society reproduce the patriarchy and heteronormativity within our institutions of learning? How do we transgress oppressive boundaries (boundaries cultivated by the patriarchy that have been perpetuated at home, within school, outside of school, in university settings, and in communities) that permit our dehumanization and exclusion? As teachers, professors, and teacher educators, how do we navigate our students’ trauma when we are navigating the re-ignition of our own? This book sets out to tell the story of how the authors have tried to answer these questions in their lives and work. It is the story of a friendship, a partnership, a narrative retelling of their “becoming” as girls, teenagers, women, teachers, wives, daughters, scholars, and mothers. From the earliest memories of their gendered and sexualized childhoods to the present navigation of sexism, heteronormativity, and trauma in the context of teaching and schools, these stories reside in their bodies. They recall, construct, and reexamine, emerging from their dialogues—from talking face-to-face, to email, to FB messenger, poetry, and text. Our Bodies Tell the Story centers around the co/autoethnography of personal narratives, stories, and a kind of survival testimonies, the ways in which the authors bore witness to each other’s lives. The book extensively uses co/autoethnography as a self-study feminist research methodology that takes autoethnography, “a form of self-representation that complicates cultural norms by seeing autobiography as implicated in larger cultural processes” (Taylor & Coia, 2006, p. 278) and moves it beyond the singular to the plural. Using this methodology enables the authors to interweave their stories through dialogue, so that validity, insight, and analysis all emerge in the text. The book investigates the self within the social context of personal relationships, as well as the larger society. Creating a co/autoethnography is a rich, multi-layered endeavor because it is not conducted in a vacuum. As such, it is an important book for faculty and researchers involved in a number of disciplines, including auto/ethnographic research, gender studies, women’s studies, feminist studies, qualitative research and many other areas of study.Perfect for courses such as: Gender and Education │ Public Purposes of Schooling │ Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies │ Critical Feminisms in Teacher Education │ Gender Issues in Teacher Education

A 2022 SPE Outstanding Book Honorable Mention What are the elements of culturally responsive and sustaining instruction? How can these elements be implemented in classrooms? One of the most effective methods of addressing these issues is the Culturally Responsive Instruction Observation Protocol (CRIOP), which is being used in school districts nationwide to guide teacher professional development. A Framework for Culturally Responsive Practices presents scholarship in second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, culturally appropriate assessment, educational anthropology, educational psychology, instruction, and critical pedagogy to provide guidance to those who strive to teach in ways that meet the needs of a diverse student population. The book is a culmination of the authors’ many years of experience as both researchers and instructional coaches in schools, presenting a comprehensive portrait of the research and practices associated with culturally responsive teaching. Each chapter showcases a different element of the CRIOP, providing supporting research as well as ways to implement the element in K-8 classrooms. The book also includes several specific examples written by teachers in the field and a comprehensive bibliography. This is a practical guide that can be used in a variety of courses for pre-service teachers as well as by teachers and administrators in school districts across the country.

A 2023 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner Can transformation be the primary goal of autoethnographic research? In this book, the authors present a compelling case that this is indeed possible. Since autoethnography first appeared as a nascent approach to social inquiry, much has been written about it as a useful addition to the field of qualitative research methods. Over the years, its usage has been extended across various disciplines including the humanities, human services, social sciences, leadership studies, engineering, education, counseling, and even medical education. Notably, the primary function of autoethnography to advance our understanding around sociocultural phenomena has been increasingly paired with a parallel function of the many ways in which this research method can also contribute to practice. However, though its contribution to scholarship is well documented, less has been written about its practical usage as the focal point of inquiry. Yet there is growing evidence that one of the emerging strengths of autoethnography is its transformative capabilities. In Transformative Autoethnography for Practitioners, Hernandez, Chang and Bilgen turn the spotlight on autoethnography as a tool for practitioners where the primary goal is to solve real world problems by facilitating transformational change at the individual, group and/or organizational levels. They draw on existing scholarship as well as their collective work and expertise to provide a Transformative Autoethnographic Model (TAM) for use by practitioners who are intent on effecting such changes in their respective contexts. The book contains seven chapters. Chapters One through Three provide the theoretical grounding for a transformative autoethnography model. Chapter One begins with a broad overview of autoethnographic research and the unique characteristics of this method that makes it especially suited for effecting transformational learning. In chapters Two and Three, the authors provide a quick review of the literature relevant to individual autoethnography and collaborative autoethnography respectively. Each chapter discussion is centered around explicating the transformative elements of the method as well as how it is able to effect change at the individual, group, and organizational level. Chapters Four through Six focus on the praxis of transformative autoethnography. In Chapter Four, the transformative autoethnography model (TAM) is presented in detail and templates are provided for its application. Chapters Five and Six show the application of the TAM in a variety of settings. The book ends with a final chapter discussion on the continuing evolution of autoethnographic explorations, as well as future applications for the TAM model in a fast changing digital landscape. Perfect for courses such as: Research Methods in the Social Sciences | Qualitative Research Methods | Narrative Research | Advanced Qualitative Research Methods | Coaching and Consulting | Leading Change

A 2023 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner Social studies education over its hundred-year history has often focused on predominantly white and male narratives. This has not only been detrimental to the increasingly diverse population of the U.S., but it has also meant that social studies as a field of scholarship has systematically excluded and marginalized the voices, teaching, and research of women, scholars of color, queer scholars, and scholars whose politics challenge the dominant traditions of history, geography, economics, and civics education. Insurgent Social Studies intervenes in the field of social studies education by highlighting those whose work has often been deemed “too radical.” Insurgent Social Studies is essential reading to all researchers and practitioners in social studies, and is perfect as an adopted text in the social studies curriculum at Colleges of Education.Perfect for courses such as:  Foundations of Education │ Social Studies Methods │ Multicultural Education │ Critical Studies of Education │ Culturally Relevant Pedagogy │ Social Education

Hauntings, Remembering, and Aesthetics offers an intimate, artful exploration of what is lost—and what remains—when schools are closed. Grounded in the stories of two shuttered public schools in Chicago, it weaves together research, narrative, memory, and visual art to honor the communities shaped by these institutions and reckon with the systemic forces that led to their closure. Drawing from archival research, local records, personal memories, and conversations with former students, educators, and community members, the author—who has a personal connection to each school—reconstructs the histories left behind by braiding their voices with collages and photographs. The book makes visible the deep ties between school communities and the neighborhoods they served. This powerful storytelling serves as a prompt for reflection and reconsideration of school closures.The portraits that emerge tell of schools that operated under immense financial strain but built strong, nurturing environments through resourcefulness and relationships. Participants recall staff who shaped their lives, naming teachers and leaders as transformative figures in their youth. They speak openly about the racism, classism, and broken promises surrounding public education in gentrifying neighborhoods—where public housing was demolished and communities were displaced. In their words, school closures were not isolated policy decisions but outcomes of a broader inequality and disinvestment. Far from passive witnesses, these community members critically examine the past, theorizing their experiences and naming the systemic failures that framed them. They express a desire to pause, reflect, and remember—to reclaim the memory of their schools as spaces of resilience, joy, and collective resistance. As one participant shared, “There’s so much history in us.” That history, the book argues, is too often erased in mainstream narratives about school closures. By presenting these stories through both visual and literary forms, the book creates a new kind of archive—one grounded in lived experiences and presented through aesthetics. It invites educators, parents, policymakers, journalists, and anyone invested in public education to listen differently: to hear what was lost when the schools closed, and to recognize what still echoes in the voices of those who remember.This is not just a story of the past—it is a call to action in the present through stories that have always been here. These acts of remembering resist the dominant, data-driven narratives that often justify school closures. It reveals the human cost of policies disconnected from community realities and asks us to imagine more just futures for public education in our cities. This book asks us to see and hear stories anew, through the haunting beauty of memory, artwork, and collective reflection.Perfect for courses such as: Social Foundations of Education; Educational Policy Studies; History of Urban Education; Sociology of Education; Teacher Education in Urban Education; Historical and Cultural Contexts of Urban Education; Qualitative Research Methods; Arts-based Research Methods; Visual Research Methods

As a genre, science fiction is uniquely suited for highlighting and modeling the basic tenets of critical pedagogy, that branch of educational philosophy and theory devoted equally to 1) exposing the hidden power structures embedded in educational practice and 2) articulating equitable and sustainable alternatives. The science fiction novum – that is, the technological or scientific newness found within the text – serves as a catalyst not only within the textual universe but also, potentially, within the universe of the reader. New questions arise. Previously hidden beliefs come to light. Tacit assumptions are exposed. The unfamiliar nova of science-fiction can lead to new interrogations of our own all-too familiar surroundings, causing us to see our previously unquestioned worlds in a new way. These new understandings are at the heart of critical pedagogy. The learning spaces within science fiction texts can expose the fault lines within the educational structures of the real world. Questions about what it means to be human, about the proper limits of technological power, or about the relationships and obligations of one species to another have profound implications for 21st century educators and learners, particularly those who are interested in creating just and equitable learning spaces. Learning Space: Exploring Critical Pedagogy through Science Fiction draws on popular science fiction stories to provide current and future educators with the language, concepts, vocabulary, and practices to cast a critical lens upon their own learning spaces and their own pedagogical practices. For example, a critical examination of the way that Yoda trains Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back reveals a great deal about the insidious nature of deficit thinking, assuming that students learn best when they “empty their minds” and remain “passive.” The assumed hierarchical power structure between teacher and student, and the assumed relationship between learners and the knowledge with which they are supposed to be filled – all of these are called into question when viewed through a critical lens. The more we recognize the injustice in Yoda’s pedagogy, the more we might begin to see it in our own. Similarly, Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation trilogy imagines a world in which mathematical modeling and statistical computation are used not only to predict what people might do but instead to determine what they should do. This kind of algorithmic determinism is unfortunately common in contemporary education, and yet far too few educators and learners recognize just how much of their own agency has been given over to the machines. By highlighting the algorithmic inequities in the world of Asimov’s text, we begin to recognize similar inequities at play in our own world. Ultimately, this book uses science fiction to highlight educational inequities in such wide-ranging topics as standard English, literary canons, machine learning, notions of academic dishonesty, epistemicide, inequitable school discipline, and more. More importantly, however, it provides a framework for moving forward, giving current and future educators the critical knowledge and skills both to recognize pedagogical injustice and to create viable, just, and sustainable alternatives.

From Getting Started to Graduation: A Student Guide to the EdD, a volume in The Coming of Age of the Education Doctorate Series book series, pulls back the curtain on the hidden curriculum of the EdD experience for students, fully supporting their journeys by making what is too often anxious and abstract more clear and concrete. Drawing from years of experience from designing and directing an EdD program, the authors provide an end-to-end playbook for students to draw from as they navigate their own EdD program of choice.Part I focuses on getting started. The book begins with an establishment of the why behind getting an EdD and how this is a distinct and unique experience unlike other graduate degrees. It pushes readers to think beyond the title, encouraging them to drill down into their core motivation for pursuing not just a degree but a transformative experience. Readers will then learn about finding the match quality between their goals and aspirations and the myriad program choices available to them. Once students have winnowed down their choices and found their fit, they will be coached on how to build survival systems that will help them thrive from the onset to the finish line. This includes learning how to pace themselves, how to lean on friends and family, how to create contingency plans, and how to create helpful constraints that make room for work-life balance. The book closes Part I with helpful tips for time and resource management, as well as how to build routines and habits that allow them to be kind of their future selves.Part II explicitly explores how to navigate this years-long quest and stay the course. Readers will learn how to get curious and keep that door open across coursework in order to allow for innovative and creative ideas to flourish and eventually lead to fusion—the key to creative thinking. With the door opened to ideas and exploration, the book sets the stage for how to become a scholar-practitioner through key habits of mind such as the what-if and maybe mindset and tackling the tough task of synthesis. Part II ends with the call to team up and to take this winding road together. The EdD experience can be lonely if students go it alone, and the volume explains how and why teaming up is not just nice but necessary to persevere as the way to reach the finish line.Finally, Part III pivots to helping students survive the intensive thinking, researching, and writing demands of the dissertation. Readers will tap into years of tips and tricks on how to break this mystifying and monstrous project into sizable and achievable small steps that fuel motivation for the long haul so that students avoid burnout during the final push as they near defending their projects and crushing their comps. When finished, EdD students will be able to leverage what is too often hidden from students and draw from the concrete examples, strategies, stories, and templates therein in order to start strong and finish strong.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Research; Research Methodology; Introduction to the EdD; The Scholar-Practitioner; Exploring Problems of Practice; Becoming a Change Agent

A 2022 SPE Outstanding Book Honorable Mention Teaching Improvement Science in Educational Leadership: A Pedagogical Guide presents the reader with a range of pedagogies from a variety of viewpoints and approaches. The book provides a holistic picture for how one might develop stakeholder competency and capacity with improvement science as a signature problem-solving methodology for educational leaders. And while there are books that provide foundational knowledge on the field of improvement science (including the list of titles from Myers Education Press), this book differs in that it presents varying approaches for teaching others about improvement science. For those who want to develop the methodology but who need resources, the book provides the illustrations, examples, and other concrete applications so that those involved in teaching the subject matter can connect foundational knowledge of improvement to the applied context. This book serves as the guide for education leaders who wish to have the know-how for developing the knowledge, skills and dispositions relative to the field of improvement science—the education leader’s signature problem-solving methodology.To learn more about Improvement Science and see our full list of books in this area, please click through to the Myers Education Press Improvement Science website.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Improvement Science | Educational Research for Administrators | Introduction to Program Evaluation | Action Research for School

Curriculum and pedagogy are the heartbeat of our schools. They encompass what we do and do not teach–what content and approaches we either choose or are mandated to choose, or leave out or are mandated to leave out. Curriculum entails the overall educational experience of schooling, while pedagogy is the art and craft of teaching–or the translation of curriculum into student knowledge and growth. Hence, curriculum and pedagogy are sociocultural phenomena that impact and are impacted by context (e.g., students, community, colleagues, geography, etc.). Once upon a time, curriculum and pedagogy were the spaces in which educators could exercise creativity and exploration, reflecting the individual needs of their students and communities. However, as political structures shifted and the standards movement took hold in the late 20th century, freedoms around curriculum and pedagogy began to fade with increased oversight over and standardization of “best practices” with greater emphasis placed on performance and efficiency. Pedagogical practices were soon framed around producing results (test scores, graduation rates, measurable learning objectives derived from prescribed state standards), while curriculum became a prescribed structure formatted to reflect state standards with an eye toward test performance. Curriculum and pedagogy were further impeded by hegemonic forces calling for censorship of teaching and curriculum, such as the ban on Ethnic Studies in Tucson, Arizona, and continued attacks on Critical Race Theory nationwide. Further, curriculum became a tool for concealing and/or silencing the experiences and voices of our diverse students, educators, and communities. The results of these phenomena are teachers feeling uninspired and deprofessionalized and students feeling devalued and unheard–especially marginalized students. Since curriculum and pedagogy directly impact the experiences of teachers and students, they must be transformed. However, how do we do that within today’s tenuous PreK-12 environment? How do we transform curriculum and pedagogy so that they reflect, liberate, and ensure justice for students and educators in preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and the content areas taught within them? Moving from Traditional to Transformative Curriculum and Pedagogy addresses these challenges by providing clear and direct guidance for current and aspiring educators committed to transforming the status quo in their classrooms and schools. Innovative and creative methodologies and practices that aspiring and practicing educators can use right away are the primary focus of this book. Because the editors and contributors are former or current PreK-12 practitioners and/or education scholars, this book is written for a broad educational audience. The editors and contributors provide preservice and practicing teachers entry points for transforming the educational landscape in favor of liberatory, transformative practices in PreK-12 schools across grade levels, content areas, school types, and geographic regions. Additionally, this book is ideal for teacher preparation programs as well as PreK-12 professional development, as this book guides readers through theoretical and empirical discussions, supported by hands-on applications that enable real-time application, and concludes with interactive features, like case studies, extension activities, and discussion prompts.