2016 Report on Research Centered on Student Success by Penn State College of Education

“I’m just letting the needs dictate the direction my work goes in, which I think is really wonderful, and I’m happy to be part of it. It’s based on needs in the field and that’s the most rewarding thing as a researcher, that what you’re doing is meaningful to people in the field.’’ — Maria Lewis, assistant professor of education

RESEARCH CENTERED ON STUDENT SUCCESS 2016 REPORT ON

• Curriculum and Instruction

• Education Policy Studies

• Educational Psychology, Counseling and Special Education

• Learning and Performance Systems

Dean

David H. Monk

Editor

Annemarie Mountz

Writers

Jessica Buterbaugh, Jim Carlson, Annemarie Mountz

Photographers

Jessica Buterbaugh, Jim Carlson, Annemarie Mountz

247 Chambers Building University Park, PA 16802-3206 814-863-2216 www.ed.psu.edu edrelations@psu.edu Published by the Penn State College of Education The University is committed to equal access to programs, facilities, admission, and employment for all persons. It is the policy of the University to maintain an environment free of harassment and free of discrimination against any person because of age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, service in the uniformed services (as defined in state and federal law), veteran status, sex, sexual orientation, marital or family status, pregnancy, pregnancy-related conditions, physical or mental disability, gender, perceived gender, gender identity, genetic information, or political ideas. Discriminatory conduct and harassment, as well as sexual misconduct and relationship violence, violates the dignity of individuals, impedes the realization of the University’s educational mission, and will not be tolerated. Direct all inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policy to Dr. Kenneth Lehrman III, Vice Provost for Affirmative Action, Affirmative Action Office, The Pennsylvania State University, 328 Boucke Building, University Park, PA 16802-5901; Email: kfl2@psu. edu; Tel 814-863-0471. U.Ed. EDU 17-01

Contents Dean’s Message

The College administers approximately $19 million annually for externally funded research, instruction and outreach.

Providing a safe school environment for transgender youth goal of officials

Researchers discover link between oral discourse and argumentative writing skills.

Working play into early childhood education instruction a key element

Research by Jim Johnson, Viana Wu examines how to incorporate play in the classroom.

Researchers partner with Great Cities’ agencies to study career pathways programs 8 The partnership looks at programs and providers, and the individuals they educate.

Students with and without disabilities seek counseling for help with similar issues 10 The research is aimed at increasing the graduation rate for students with disabilities.

From research based in Texas, associate professor Ed Fuller cites a discriminatory effect.

Maria Lewis uses the law to examine policies and practices in school districts.

Quality Talk improves elementary students’ argumentative writing

People of color aspiring to become principals still face barriers

Philadelphia Urban Seminar gives students impactful and challenging immersion course 14 Jeanine Staples’ course doubles as research on how to teach students to identify and intercept racist, sexist and ableist ideologies.

Progress-monitoring software suite tracks literacy levels of students who are deaf

The suite includes a visualization system that allows the teacher to track a student’s performance and assist in the process of applying strategies to help struggling students.

Graduate students publish research volume 18 Graduate students are hopeful their research will positively impact education and students.

Research in brief

A small sampling of some of the other research being conducted in the College of Education.

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Dean’s Message What truly distinguishes Penn State’s College of Education is the vast breadth and depth of research being conducted by our faculty members and students. The College administers approximately $19 million in annual expenditures for externally funded research, instruction and outreach projects. These projects result, in part, from proposals submitted by faculty members, professional staff and students to external funding agencies and foundations, including the U.S. Department of Education through its Institute of Education Sciences, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Career and Technical Education, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, to name just a few of our major funders.

beneficial and sustainable relationships between K-12 schools and Penn State science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) researchers and outreach professionals, with the goal of helping to strengthen K-12 science, mathematics and technology education. One common thread that weaves through much of this research is a deep commitment by our faculty members to find ways to make improvements in the world of practice within the field of education. In this Theme Report, we have highlighted research projects that are designed to enhance student success at all levels from pre-kindergarten through adult learners; in all geographies from rural to urban; at all socioeconomic levels and at all levels of ability. Dean David H. Monk

Each of our four departments – Curriculum and Instruction; Education Policy Studies; Educational Psychology, Counseling and Special Education; and Learning and Performance Systems – focuses on different aspects of education, giving our College an extraordinarily diverse portfolio of research, instructional and outreach programs. For example, we have faculty members studying brain responses to learning and advancing models that integrate mind and body to study behavior in educational settings. Other members of the faculty are focused on areas including experiential learning; school district consolidation and fragmentation; classroom management; education and civil rights; responses to interventions, and the workforce experiences of individuals with health and disability issues.

The members of our faculty are not the only individuals within the College conducting valuable research. Our students also contribute to the creation of new knowledge in all areas of education. In these pages, you will read about one group of graduate students in particular, that is committed to issues of educational equity in Pennsylvania. These students have collaborated to produce an edited volume of seven research papers that will inform policy debates and lead to improvements in how politicians and administrators approach education and students. These pages contain only a small sampling of our current research, but I do hope it gives you a powerful glimpse into the impactful work being conducted within our College. As always, your views are important to me, and I encourage you to stay closely in touch. All best wishes for an exciting and productive academic year.

Other faculty members are pursuing a number of initiatives that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries of the University. For example, our Center for Science and the Schools facilitates mutually College of Education 1

Providing a safe school environment for transgender youth goal of officials

By Jim Carlson

aria Lewis is working collaboratively with the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Office for Safe Schools on issues of how to better accommodate transgender youth within the state’s school districts, issues that Lewis believes can be solved not only through research but by revisiting the purpose of an educator. More specifically, she said, she sees the importance of reflecting upon the commitment to provide a safe environment that fosters the emotional and intellectual growth of all students. Research interests of Lewis, an assistant professor of education in Penn State’s College of Education, have fallen under the umbrella of equity and diversity. By combining her doctoral degree in educational leadership and policy analysis with her juris doctorate, she uses the law to examine policies and practices in school districts to determine whether they hinder or promote equity in the educational context. “As someone whose work is really about diversity and equity and social justice, I’m really interested in the ways educational leaders overcome some of the resistance they’re facing in trying to promote inclusion for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) students 2 Theme Report

and transgender students particularly,’’ Lewis said. In response to a number of federal civil rights complaints and inquiries from school districts nationally, the United States Department of Education and the Department of Justice recently issued a Dear Colleague Letter on transgender students. The guidance identifies school districts’ obligations under Title IX. An accompanying document provides examples of best practices of school districts across the country. “Shortly thereafter,’’ Lewis said, “a lawsuit was filed in which a number of states are making the claim that they don’t have an obligation to accommodate transgender students.” Conversely, in April, a federal court of appeals ruled in favor of a transgender student and granted deference to the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX. “It’s very confusing if you’re in a school district and you’re not sure how to proceed,’’ Lewis said. “The federal government is saying that I have to do this but then there are these lawsuits going on. I’m currently conducting legal research and closely tracking the status of the law as a way to inform and empower leaders to promote LGBT inclusion in their own settings.’’ Graphic: iStock

Lewis said she’s aware people are

often times driven by what the law requires but argues that shouldn’t always be the case. “In the face of legal uncertainty, we should think about what’s right in our hearts and do the right thing,’’ she said. “The law answers the questions about what you have to do and about what you can do; the harder question to answer is ‘should you?’ This question is best answered through an examination of ethics.” Lewis said state agencies are receiving inquiries from school districts about what to do and how to approach the topic. “In response to those inquiries, they’d like someone school districts can reach out to and talk to, so I would be working with those school districts and simultaneously conducting related research,’’ she said. The collaboration with the state’s Department of Education (PDE) will allow her to provide technical assistance, research, presentations and resources to support school districts’ efforts to ensure LGBT inclusion. Many organizations and researchers, both nationally and locally, are doing important work in this area. She said her work will include helping to connect school districts with relevant resources related to LGBT issues, providing research and support to PDE, working collaboratively with the Office for Safe Schools to address the intersection of bullying and harassment, and collecting data. “I hope to collect data in the field for my own research and translate those findings into a meaningful guidance for school districts to promote LGBT inclusion,’’ Lewis said. “What are the lessons learned from the

“In the face of legal uncertainty, we should think about what’s right in our hearts and do the right thing. The law answers the questions about what you have to do and about what you can do; the harder question to answer is ‘should you?’”

— Maria Lewis

field? What’s effective? What resistance are school districts still facing? How are school district leaders overcoming resistance?’’

said. “It’s an area of need in school districts and it’s something I deeply care about and am passionate about.

She said many school districts nationally already have been addressing transgender students’ issues and accommodations in their everyday work but sometimes without an official policy in place.

“Given kind of all the attention now it’s becoming very politicized and it’s a little bit more complicated,’’ Lewis said. “Many schools were providing individualized accommodations for students all the time. School districts are looking for resources and that’s one of the things I’ll be doing with the state.’’ Some states have issued voluntary guidance, some states have set mandatory requirements and other states are waiting for the courts to weigh in before taking a formal position. Given the legal uncertainty, school districts are seeking guidance. “It’s important to us as researchers to be responsive to the needs of the field,’’ Lewis

“Seeing that bridging of the gap between research and practice is extremely important. For me this experience does exactly that and I’m really proud to be a part of it,’’ she said. “When you take a step back and you think about what are we really here to do as school districts, we’re here to provide an education for kids in a safe environment,’’ Lewis said. “When you think about it that way and remove the politics and everything else that has become part of it, you want kids to feel safe and secure at school and you want kids to feel included and not isolated … so that they can be themselves.” College of Education 3

Quality Talk improves elementary students’ argumentative writing

By Jessica Buterbaugh

fter developing Quality Talk in 2002, Penn State Professor of Education P. Karen Murphy has continued researching and expanding the teacher-facilitated discussion instructional approach to advance the academic skills of school-aged children. In a recent project that spanned three years, she found that Quality Talk not only is a successful intervention for comprehension of text, it also increases students’ ability to do argumentative writing. Designed to promote high-level comprehension, Quality Talk teaches students to generate oral arguments through small-group discussions. The discussions are facilitated by teachers who have been guided and coached by the researchers, but the teachers share control of the discussion with the students. As students’ comprehension increases, the teacher becomes a participant-observer and gradually releases control to the students so that they may participate in self-guided and open dialogue. “The idea of Quality Talk is that students are going to talk about evidence, weigh that evidence and help each other come to what we call an ‘examined understanding,’” Murphy said. “So if they can do that orally, we thought that it might transfer to their writing too. And, it did.” Murphy, along with colleagues at Penn State and the University of

4 Theme Report

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, worked with two fifth-grade classrooms for one academic year to complete two studies — one in the fall and one in the spring. In the first study, the teachers held weekly Quality Talk discussions focusing on the discourse elements of questioning and argumentation. After each discussion, students were required to independently respond to a writing prompt based on the discussion. In the second study, which followed a quasi-experimental design, both teachers continued the original Quality Talk curriculum while one teacher also added an argumentative writing component. “We had writing assessments at mid-year after the first study and then again at the end of the year after the second study,” said Carla Firetto, a post-doctoral scholar on the project. “We found that there was a small increase in students’ writing after teachers implemented the original Quality Talk curriculum. But in the class where the teacher implemented the writing intervention, students’ argumentative writing doubled.” This is important, she said, because many schools have a desire to increase their students’ writing skills and the ability to read text, think about the evidence presented in the text, make reasoned decisions and express those decisions in writing. These are areas of difficulty for many students.

“Being able to do argumentative writing is one of the key components of the Common Core standards,” Murphy said. “So teachers and schools are particularly interested in students not just being able to do oral argumentation, which is part of the standards, but also to be able to do that in writing.” While small-group discussions create a collaborative environment of understanding, writing requires students to make decisions independently, she explained. “The writing outcome allows the students to show how much they have processed the information from a discussion and how much they can make reasoned arguments on their own,” Murphy said. “There are two important things we are learning from our studies,” she said, adding that her team is concurrently working on two other projects that explore the use of

Quality Talk in language arts curriculum with colleagues in South Africa and Taiwan. “Number one is that teachers are now aware that their students’ talk matters.” When students use a particular phrase, form of evidence or ask certain kinds of questions, the teacher can use that to gauge their cognitive understanding as the discussion is unfolding, she said. “It’s not just increasing the talk that matters. It is the kind of talk that happens that matters.” “The other thing we learned is that students need explicit instruction in what they are supposed to do in the discussions,” Murphy said. “In essence, students need instruction on how to ask deep, meaningful questions as well as on how to form and weigh claims, reasons and evidence so that they can reach examined understandings. Such skills do not come naturally.”

Photo: Quality Talk

A fourth-grade teacher presents a lesson introducing Quality Talk to her students.

Traditionally, teachers follow an I-R-E (initiate, respond and evaluate) model when teaching discourse. Quality Talk differs in that students are explicitly taught how to construct meaningful, “authentic” questions such as generalization questions, analysis questions and connection questions where the students find a connection between the content and previous knowledge or personal experiences.

“Regular instruction provides a more declarative level of understanding. But Quality Talk pushes you beyond that. Quality Talk enhances students’ ability to think about, around and with text in critical and analytical ways.”

— P. Karen Murphy

“Regular instruction provides a more declarative level of understanding,” Murphy said. “But Quality Talk pushes you beyond that. Quality Talk enhances students’ ability to think about, around and with text in critical and analytical ways.” In addition to the $1.5 million Institute for Education Sciences grant that funds the Quality Talk Language Arts project, Murphy and her colleagues also were awarded a three-year, $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the use of Quality Talk in high school chemistry and physics classrooms. Quality Talk Science aligns with Next Generation Science Standards and aims to promote higher-level thinking in STEM classes through student-led class discussions. That project will conclude in 2018. For more information about Quality Talk, visit http://www.qualitytalk.psu.edu online. College of Education 5

Working play into early childhood education instruction a key element

By Jim Carlson

ncorporating play into early childhood education can lead to better schoolwork among preschool and primary-level students, and instructing prospective teaching candidates to follow that path should be a constant, research by a pair of Penn State professors has shown. Play has been an important part of teacher preparation in early childhood education because preschool and primary children learn through play and it is necessary for their development, according to Jim Johnson, professor of education in curriculum and instruction and program director for early childhood education in the College of Education.

minds, hearts and hands of new early childhood education practitioners so that their theories and practices will develop and be complex to match the realities they will face, Johnson’s research cited. Research in this area must try to learn more about the what, the why and the how concerning teaching new teachers about the importance of play in education and how to use play in the classroom. That process is slow but steady. Johnson said only about a quarter of research universities such as Penn State have a course on play, about seven-eighths embed the topic in another early childhood education course, and about half of them are linked to field work.

Johnson and recent doctoral graduate Viana Wu presented “Teacher Education for Using Play with Children: What is Valued and Learned by Teacher Candidates’’ at a recent American Educational Research Association conference. Wu also conducted research in Taiwan.

“When the word ‘play’ does not show up in college course listings, this does not mean it is not covered,’’ Johnson said. “Often other related words appear such as projectbased learning, activity-based, investigative engagements, exploratory learning and the like.

Johnson also has done professional development nationally and internationally with Karen McChesney Johnson, a College of Education assistant professor of education.

“Whatever the term, teachers need to know how to use play as a medium of learning and a context for healthy growth for young students.’’

Teacher education must cultivate the 6 Theme Report

According to newly enacted curriculum

outlines in East Asia, Wu said, teachers are instructed to place a high value on children’s fundamental nature, which includes children’s potential to imagine and create. “The outlines point out that children innately love to explore, operate and discover through play, and they learn how to interact with others and pick up cues in their surrounding environment through different play experiences,’’ Wu said. “The outlines suggest that early childhood teachers should pay significant attention to and take advantage of children’s instinctual love of play, and provide limitless opportunities and environments for children to play and explore.’’ The word play can be multi-faceted. “The middle range of recreational play can be described as active and passive entertainment, and I think a good line of demarcation is when kids become active participants – physically or mentally or socially – because this is when they are doing something meaningful and not merely being a passive recipient of scripted fun and titillation,’’ Johnson said. Johnson noted that play moderated by the teacher as educational play that is connected in some way to the aims of the curriculum is different from pure or everyday play kids do

on their own. Teachers must be able to monitor when play strays off course, such as when kids no longer wish to engage because work is disguised as play or kids’ play becomes too much driven by impulses and not enough from their brains’ executive functions, he said. Veteran teachers also must be able to adapt to new philosophies concerning play, Johnson said, citing publications, conferences and workshops, but with informal methods. “An idea I recentlyheard from a teacher is that play pedagogy can occur in 10 seconds,’’ Johnson said. “For example, when handing out materials a teacher can crack a joke and playfully set the objects out and reveal to the students her sense of humor.’’

it will be challenging to convince some educational professionals who may think combining play and education is like mixing water and oil. “We want to educate today for what’s happening horizontally and vertically in children’s lives, and play is a major occupation of childhood and essential to children’s mental health and overall development,’’ Johnson said. “Professional educators, ignore the children’s play worlds at your risk. Even worse, you will be putting them at risk of not being able to reap the most out of their educational encounters. The opposite of play is not work; it is psychological depression. Play allows them to create their own learning experiences, and participants come to feel this, relish this and see the value in it.’’

Wu’s research Wu’s research clearly cited 2006 research by points to the necessity Yanjuan Yang who said of supportive courses coursework on play had and some professional a positive influence on pre-service teachers’ Photo by Jessica Buterbaugh learning opportunities provided by teacher knowledge development Research has shown that incorporating play into early childhood education greatly aids in the development of education. and strengthened preschool and primary children. their belief. Yang, a “In order to help College of Education professor at Hunan Normal University in China, teachers successfully implement children’s play, it requires teacher also suggested that the procedure of asking pre-service teachers education that provides a practical, beneficial and robust teacher to recognize and reflect on their beliefs, views and theoretical preparation system that provides prospective teachers with a playorientations can be considered to be an effective instrument in the based curriculum and professional educators experienced in the field facilitation of their professional knowledge development. of children’s play, able to pass on their professional experiences to The play philosophy is spreading, Johnson said, but he noted that future teachers,’’ Wu said.

College of Education 7

Photo: iStock

Researchers partner with Great Cities’ agencies to study career pathways programs

group of Penn State researchers is leading the way in the study of adult education by partnering with agencies in three of the country’s largest, most diverse cities — Chicago, Houston and Miami. Funded by a nearly $400,000 grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, the researcherpractitioner partnership looks at career pathways (CP) programs and providers, and the individuals they aim to educate. “We chose to focus on career pathways because that is a huge buzzword now in adult education, but no one really knows what it looks like on the ground” said Esther Prins, associate professor of adult education. “And with the passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, there’s now a mandate for adult education and workforce systems 8 Theme Report

By Jessica Buterbaugh

to work more closely together on these programs.” Created as a way to streamline education and training services for adults, CP programs are intended to help adult learners continually achieve higher levels of education and employment. But because adult education programs have multiple funding sources and are operated by many kinds of organizations, the system is fragmented and providers may not be consistent in program offerings and characteristics. Those inconsistencies make it difficult to develop a baseline comparison for programs, an issue Prins hopes the research will address. To better understand CP, Prins and coprincipal investigators Carol Clymer and Blaire Willson Toso connected with adult

education agencies in three of the five cities included in the U.S. Department of Education Great Cities Summit, a 2010 initiative that sought to address adult education challenges in large cities across the United States. “This is an invisible and marginalized population that has much to contribute but has really faced a lot of barriers in order to access education and employment,” she said, adding that 93 million adults have basic literacy and math skills that are below the high school level. “About 20 percent of the U.S. population that has unmet literacy needs reside in the Great Cities, which are Chicago, Houston, Miami, New York and L.A.,” she said. Working with Becky Raymond and Alex Ziskind of the Chicago Citywide Literacy

Coalition; Sheri Foreman Elder and Martin Loa of the Houston Center for Literacy; and Mark Needle of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the researchers surveyed 102 adult education providers and found the most common services offered included English language classes, employability and work readiness courses, GED programs, and classes to help students transition to postsecondary education. “Many of the more prominent career pathways programs focus on students who already have a high school degree or some college, but are missing the vast majority of people who need these programs the most,” Prins said, explaining that many adults in need of education are lower-skilled adults who have very basic levels of education. For example, agencies reported that 63 percent of their students do not have a high-school degree, 45 percent are unemployed and 71 percent are immigrants. “These are people who have been left behind by the educational and economic systems,” she said. “They’re facing multiple forms of social exclusion, including poverty, unemployment or underemployment, difficulty speaking English, and literacy and math issues.” “With the popularity of career pathways, some organizations may offer a GED or employment skills class and say that they offer career pathways,” she said. “We are more interested in structured programs that prepare people to pursue a specific educational or employment trajectory, like getting a credential for a particular career.”

Photo: Houston Literacy Council

Adult learners in Houston participate in a career pathways course offered by the Houston Literacy Council.

The researchers identified six “core” CP services — short-term certificate programs, industry-recognized credentials, postsecondary or stackable credentials, internships, apprenticeships and transition to postsecondary education. With the exception of classes to transition to postsecondary education, the other services were offered by fewer than half of all agencies. The researchers also held focus-group interviews with five to seven agencies per city to gain a more in-depth understanding of what policies influence the design and implementation of CP programs and what challenges the agencies face. “A big issue we’ve come across is that there are very few mechanisms for finding out what’s happening to students over time, after they leave a program,” she said. “Agencies just don’t have the capacity to track that information.” Different requirements among the various

adult education funding groups also make it difficult to track student and program success. An agency in Chicago found that many of their graduates were leaving jobs with a specific employer; therefore, the program did not meet the funder’s goal of retaining employment. When the agency looked into why people were leaving, it was discovered that they were offered opportunities for better paid employment. But because they were leaving, even for a good reason, the goal was technically not being fulfilled, Prins said. “Across all the agencies we surveyed and spoke with, there was no single student outcome measure that was used by all of them,” Prins said. “That makes it difficult for programs to really compare themselves to each other and to make a case for their effectiveness.” With one year left on the grant, the researchers continue to collect and analyze data and are looking toward the future and continuing their partnerships with the city agencies. It is Prins’ hope that as the first study to map the landscape of adult education career pathways in these cities, the results will set a baseline for more research into education and career pathways for adult learners. “Adult learners are a forgotten, invisible, left-behind population,” she said. “People care about K-12 and postsecondary education, but they often forget about adult education. We have this whole population of adults and out-of-school youth who need more education and support, and what is available is just inadequate.” College of Education 9

Students with and without disabilities seek counseling for help with similar issues

uring the last 20 years, the number of students with disabilities enrolling in colleges and universities has increased significantly. Universities now offer more services to accommodate students with disabilities. However, although more services exist and more students with disabilities are attending college, graduation rates for these students have been stagnant.

By Jessica Buterbaugh

disabilities also was explored. “We looked at both clinical and nonclinical samples of students with and without disabilities because we wanted to see why students with disabilities were going to counseling,” Coduti said, explaining that there may be a misconception, even among counseling practitioners, that students with disabilities attend counseling because of issues related to their disability. But that is not necessarily the case. In fact, students with disabilities are not all that different from students without disabilities and both populations have similar levels of distress, she said.

“We know that there are more services Photo: Jessica Buterbaugh and resources available to students with A study examining the mental health needs of students with disabilities, but we don’t know exactly disabilities may help counselors better help these students. why graduation rates are not increasing,” said Wendy Coduti, assistant professor of counseling centers across the country. CCMH Their findings, to be published in rehabilitation and human services at Penn collects data from counseling centers of Rehabilitation Psychology, show that State. “It doesn’t make sense and we need to member colleges and aggregates them into a students with disabilities who seek investigate all factors, including the mental single database for the purposes of research, counseling experience similar levels of health needs of students with disabilities.” training, advocacy and public awareness. distress, including depression, eating concerns, hostility, family distress and social To study mental health of students with Using CCMH data collected from the anxiety, as students without disabilities. disabilities in postsecondary settings, Coduti 2013-14 academic year, the researchers Students with disabilities who did not attend led a team of Penn State researchers and analyzed data from 5,696 students with and counseling sessions also reported similar analyzed data from Penn State’s Center without disabilities who utilized counseling levels of stress in the same areas. for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH), a services on campuses. To draw a comparison, multidisciplinary research network that “This was a big finding for us,” Coduti a nonclinical (students not in counseling) said. “Students with disabilities are coming collaborates with more than 350 college sample of 1,620 students with and without 10 Theme Report

“Not everything students with disabilities experience is a result of their disability and it’s important for counselors and therapists to recognize that.”

— Wendy Coduti

to counseling because they’re just like other college students. They’re experiencing the same things that students without disabilities experience when they come to college. Not everything students with disabilities experience is a result of their disability and it’s important for counselors and therapists to recognize that.” While the experiences of students with disabilities — both clinical and nonclinical — are comparable to students without disabilities, the study also revealed that students with disabilities report higher levels of generalized anxiety and academic distress than students without disabilities. “If students with disabilities are reporting higher academic distress, that could be a big reason as to why we’re not seeing graduation rates increasing and why retention rates are dropping,” Coduti said. “Why are students with disabilities experiencing this? Are there issues with accommodations? Are students embarrassed to ask for an accommodation? Are colleges and universities not providing enough resources for students with disabilities? These are the questions we need to be asking.” Another research outcome that generates cause for concern is that both the clinical and nonclinical sample groups of students with disabilities rated higher rates of suicide

ideation, suicide attempts and non-suicidal self-injurious behavior than students without disabilities. “We broke down the different types of disabilities and combined them into four categories — sensory, physical, psychological and learning disability,” Coduti said. “What we found was that students registered with a psychological disability had higher rates of self-harming thoughts and behaviors.” In fact, more than half of the students with psychological disabilities had seriously considered suicide and the rates of suicide attempts were more than two times greater for students with psychological disabilities than for students with physical and learning disabilities. Students diagnosed with a psychological disorder can include depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and/or other mental health conditions.

“With this study, we were able to look specifically at students who are registered with their university as having a disability — students who self-disclosed that they have a disability,” she said. “There were some pretty significant findings that hadn’t yet been identified, just because we haven’t looked at a national data set like this before.” Recognizing that students with disabilities share a lot of the personal characteristics as students without disabilities was enlightening as both a researcher and a counselor, Coduti said. But being able to confirm previously unsupported suspicions as to why students with disabilities aren’t graduating from college is disheartening.

“People might say that this makes sense but up until now, we never had the data to back that up,” she said. “We didn’t know that we need to focus more on this particular group of students with disabilities.”

“To me, there’s something broken,” she said. “When more students with disabilities are going to college but they’re not graduating at the same rates as students without disabilities, it impacts their lives significantly. It impacts their ability to get work and stay self-sufficient which we know affects a person’s overall mental health.

Having access to CCMH data to conduct research on students with disabilities provided an opportunity to explore a topic that many counselors have thought about but have not had the means to investigate, Coduti said.

“This study gave us a good starting point to figure out what we need to look at next,” Coduti said, adding that her team will investigate predictors as to why students with disabilities may or may not engage in self-harming thoughts and behaviors. College of Education 11

iring leaders of color within K-12 educational systems has beneficial outcomes for teachers and students of color, according to research by College of Education Associate Professor Ed Fuller. Fuller, a former special research associate and instructor at the University of Texas at Austin, presented “Considering Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Leadership Preparation and Placement” at the American Educational Research Association conference on his research based solely in Texas. His research, based on an analysis of Texas data, revealed five salient points: • There has been a dramatic reduction in the percentage of white males obtaining principal certification and a steady increase of Hispanic females obtaining certification. • There is increasingly an underrepresentation of males in leadership positions with respect to Hispanic males. • There remains a preference for hiring of white males as school principals despite the rapid and widespread diversification of students across Texas. • Black and Hispanic males have greater odds of being named assistant principals than their white peers but significantly lower odds of becoming a principal within five years. • Personal characteristics of graduates play a far more important role in the placement process than program characteristics. 12 Theme Report

People of color aspiring to become principals still face barriers, research shows By Jim Carlson

In their discussion of their findings, Fuller and his colleagues draw on research by Liethwood and Riehl (2003) and many others that, “There are a lot of benefits to students and teachers when you have more diverse leaders,’’ Fuller said. “Not only for kids [of color] but [for] all kids to see more diverse leaders is beneficial because when you grow up in a segregated system where you only see whites as leaders, then it gives you a skewed perception of what society looks like.’’

color and teachers of color, but it’s also really important for white students and white teachers to see leaders of color. They are less tangible but nonetheless very important benefits as well,’’ Fuller said.

Fuller also noted that researchers have found individuals expect leaders to be white and this expectation influences who gets considered and hired for leadership positions.

Hiring processes are still partially based on discrimination and on who people expect to be a school principal, according to the research cited by Fuller and his colleagues in the study. “And many people in hiring positions still don’t expect women at the high school or middle school to be leaders, nor do they expect people of color to be leaders, so they’re not getting hired as principals,’’ he said.

In summarizing research from Gündemir, Homan, de Dreu, & van Vugt from 2014, Fuller contends that seeing only white leaders feeds into discrimination. “If all your leaders are white, then you expect all your leaders to be white when you get into the position you are as an adult,’’ he said.

Fuller said some of his earlier research, also using Texas data, revealed that assistant principals of color “take much, much, much longer” to get into a principal role than if you’re looking at white assistant principals. “There’s a barrier still for people of color trying to become a principal,’’ he said.

“That expectation perpetuates itself; one way to decrease that perpetuation of expectation is to hire leaders of color. There are really tangible benefits to students of

Fuller said students of color became a majority in Texas nearly a decade ago. He cited that there’s been a push in Texas to hire educators who look like the kids, and

there’s been a big increase in leaders of color. “Which is good; that’s what they should be doing,’’ Fuller said. “The downside is that they are not getting hired as principals. When you break it down, assistant principal vs. principal, most of the hiring of people of color into leadership positions is occurring at the assistant principal level and not the principal level.’’ The principal methods to better serve students, Fuller’s research shows, are, to pay attention to hiring practices. “Focus on your teachers of color and your assistant principals of color and mentor them and support them and make sure they’re experiencing positive working conditions so they continue to stay in your system and move up throughout the system,’’ he said. “You’d think more people would do that because it has ultimately more benefits for kids but we don’t see that a lot,’’ Fuller said. “Part of it might be that district leaders don’t know about the research about the positive benefits of having leaders of color, so they don’t make a concerted effort to go and recruit and support leaders of color. “All of that is easier said than done, of course,’’ Fuller said, “but just focusing on the issue and being aware of the issue and working with people to address the issue in that community is the most important takeaway. We are an increasingly diverse society so making sure our schools reflect that diversity is important.’’ That responsibility falls on school boards and superintendents, Fuller said, and

ED FULLER’S TEXAS-BASED RESEARCH • There has been a dramatic reduction in the percentage of white males obtaining principal certification and a steady increase of Hispanic females obtaining certification. • There is increasingly an under-representation of males in leadership positions with respect to Hispanic males. • There remains a preference for hiring of white males as school principals despite the rapid and widespread diversification of students across Texas. • Black and Hispanic males have greater odds of being named assistant principals than their white peers but significantly lower odds of becoming a principal within five years. • Personal characteristics of graduates play a far more important role in the placement process than program characteristics. changing their perceptions about school leadership and who can be a leader. Fuller said most of the superintendents in Texas are still white males, but cited a trend that’s slowly changing toward people of color. “Particularly Hispanic females are starting to make in-roads,’’ he said. An additional element or consideration in order to ultimately have a high-quality effect on students is to better evaluate administrators. “Current school accountability systems don’t evaluate [school leaders] very well; they essentially evaluate [them] based on the characteristics of your kids, particularly poverty,’’ Fuller said. Fuller also has conducted a number of studies using Texas data and has consistently found that principals of color tend to lead

schools with lots of poverty. “If you just look at the percentage of kids passing a test, those schools are always going to be near the bottom because the kids grew up in poverty and poverty is strongly related to achievement test scores.” Fuller noted that other researchers have reached similar conclusions. “What you have to do is adopt a system that focuses on how the kids in that school are progressing, so look at growth in scores and growth in achievement, and when you adopt that kind of perspective then those schools tend to look a lot better. “That’s one of the biggest issues that districts can easily fix if they’re just aware of the problem that’s going on, which they should be but [often] are not,’’ Fuller said. College of Education 13

Philadelphia Urban Seminar gives students impactful and challenging immersion course

eanine Staples’ Philadelphia Urban Seminar transcends a two-week Maymester course that offers a preservice teaching experience in an urban setting; it’s ongoing research on how to teach students to identify and intercept racist, sexist and ableist ideologies in their own souls, in school and in society. The course entails Staples and her teaching assistants spending about 18 hours a day with dozens of freshmen and sophomores. They live in the same residence hall and eat, study and write as a group. They engage in emotionally taxing discussions on controversial topics, and they take part in sessions with racially, economically, sexually and linguistically diverse individuals who live in neighborhoods wildly different from those in which her students grew up, Staples said. Staples, an associate professor of education in language and literacy education in Penn State’s College of Education and affiliate faculty member in African-American

By Jim Carlson

“I make them stretch intellectually and emotionally beyond what they think is possible or necessary. It is a difficult experience.’’

— Jeanine Staples

studies in the College of the Liberal Arts, presented recently at the American Education Research Association conference. Her research topic was “Dismantling the White Supremacist Patriarchy Working Against Black Boys and Men, One Teacher at a Time’’; her session title was “Regarding Blackness and Maleness Lovingly: Critically Conscious Reflections from Women Teachers, Teacher Educators and School-Community Activists.’’

The research links itself to the Philadelphia Urban Seminar and while the overall seminar schedule is largely the same on an annual basis, research on the course is constantly updated. “I update the interpretivist, ethnographic framework that governs the course every year,’’ Staples said. “After eight cycles, the curriculum plan is very well established and particularly reflexive. The readings, assignments, social, cultural and civic experiences, assessments and instructional methods and activities are all now aligned with a scope and sequence that generates a highly impacting and influential, intensive immersion course. “I make them stretch intellectually and emotionally beyond what they think is possible or necessary. It is a difficult experience.’’ She also said students’ writing and digital assignments are closely examined each year, using methods for critical discourse analysis.

— Jeanine Staples

14 Theme Report

Staples said research revealed that roughly 8 percent of her Philadelphia Urban Seminar students pursue teaching positions in urban settings. She said her students are mostly white, middle-class females, and although she has recruited students of color, Staples said those efforts have been met with only modest success. “Several students of color are more interested in pursuing majors that position them for what they believe are more lucrative careers,’’ she said.

“Without the openness of the course, my high expectations and intensive, direct approach, and teaching assistants’ constant feedback and support, the paradigm shifts evident in the course would not take place,’’ Staples said. Staples said she and five of her teaching assistants who have taught the course with her are in the process of writing a book that will present research on which the course is based and offer a framework for implementation and inquiry for other teacher educators in various parts of the world.

“The primary research Her students’ focus of the book is that in-class success, it centers the research Staples said, is gauged project underlying the by their abilities to course, which has to deeply engage with do with using a New counter, contrary Literacies framework, and complementary along with an Endarkened narratives about social Feminist Epistemology Photo: Jeanine Staples constructs that affect to select readings, pedagogical formation Participants in the 2015 Philadelphia Urban Seminar pose for picture in Center City. design assignments and and classroom culture. assessments; coordinate “In this case, deep instructional practice and learning activities; and decolonize engagement has to do with persistence and consistency, and to ideological frames that inform unconscious and conscious biases converse intelligently about research and theory and apply concepts among teachers,’’ Staples said. posed within their practicum,’’ she said. “By analyzing the arch of students’ artifacts, we are able to gauge “To converse intelligently has to do with the construction of the extent to which the readings, assignments, assessments and inquiry-based/critically conscious questions and assertions and to experiences influence paradigm shifts that lead to anti-racist, antimeaningfully anticipate the ways course content and experiences can sexist and anti-ableist pedagogical formation among predominantly be translated into professional and personal practice over time. white pre-service teachers.’’ College of Education 15

Progress-monitoring software suite tracks literacy levels of students who are deaf

f there is a common complaint among teachers, it is that there is not enough time in the day to complete all the duties with which they are tasked. From lesson plans to assessments to grading and student reports, the day is gone, and for most teachers, so are their evenings. A new software suite out of Penn State’s Learning, Design and Technology program is addressing those time constraints while also improving the literacy of young students. Named avenue pm for its audio visual environment and progress monitoring capabilities, the suite helps teachers track the literacy development of school-aged children, specifically for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. It consists of four different assessments that measure reading and writing aptitude, and is available for free for all educators and school districts at http://lt.umn.edu/pm online. “If you look at current progress monitoring of regular, mainstream classrooms, the vast majority of these assessments are being done with a paper and pencil,” said Simon Hooper, professor of learning, design and technology and avenue pm project director. “We wanted to see what would happen if we computerized these assessments, delivered them over the computer, gathered the data and presented 16 Theme Report

By Jessica Buterbaugh

the data back to teachers in charts instead of having the teachers scoring all of the assessments themselves and then physically putting data into a gradebook where, often, the data just sits.” The suite, which has shown to reduce teachers’ grading time by about 50 percent, has four assessments — SLASH, MAZE, Kid Speak and WordMark — that are delivered in the form of a computerized game. “When we’re using technology, there are things we can do that you don’t necessarily normally do,” Hooper said about converting the assessments into games. “These assessments become fun and so much fun, in fact, that kids want to keep taking them over and over again. So in the end, they become practice environments.” Three of the assessments — SLASH, MAZE and

KidSpeak — measure reading fluency and comprehension. SLASH and MAZE provide students with passages where they must decide where word breaks in sentences should occur and also fill in sentence blanks with the appropriate words. Students’ accuracy determines whether they move up or go down a level. As students move up a level, the assessments become more complex. KidSpeak focuses on oral reading ability and requires students to read a passage out loud using a recording device. WordMark is a timed, authentic writing

A screen shot of Maze, a reading comprehension assessment in the avenue pm suite, shows how a student fills in sentence blanks with words. As student success increases so does the complexity of the content.

task that measures writing skills. It presents a randomly selected story starter and students must complete the writing task within three minutes. Assessments are scored either automatically or by a user interface. SLASH and MAZE are scored immediately after a student completes the assessment; KidSpeak and WordMark require the teacher to grade the assessments themselves. All grading is completed online and, once submitted, the data is recorded in avenue pm’s database and aggregated.

performance.” Although avenue pm was developed to monitor the literacy progress of students who are deaf or hard of hearing, the suite can be used in both special- and regular-education classrooms. KidSpeak was developed after the researchers, which also include Rayne Sperling, associate professor of educational psychology at Penn State, received feedback from teachers requesting a program that would measure oral reading fluency.

The data visualization interface of avenue pm allows teachers to easily track “We’ve had quite a lot of teachers “We designed a visualization system students’ abilities for each of the suite’s four assessments. who adopted KidSpeak and are using it that charts the data of each assessment for kids in special education who have and allows the teacher to track a reading problems,” Hooper said. “Then we also have some in regular student’s performance on each assessment over time,” Hooper said, education classrooms who are just using it with their kids to be able to explaining that the visualization of data was an important component monitor their reading progress.” when creating the suite. “We wanted to help teachers better identify any learning difficulties and help in the process of applying strategies Currently, avenue pm has 500 teachers and 1,000 students from 49 or changing instructional methods for struggling students.” states as registered users, with the majority of participants belonging to special education classrooms. Data from approximately 200,000 Funded by a nearly $900,000 grant from the U.S. Department of assessments has been collected and currently is being evaluated. Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, avenue pm is the

second suite created by Hooper that addresses the needs of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. The first, named avenue ASL, was used to evaluate college students who were learning American Sign Language. For both projects, he solicited the help of Susan Rose, deafeducation specialist and professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota. “For students who are deaf or hard of hearing, the average reading achievement levels at high school graduation are at approximately the fourth-grade level,” Hooper said, adding that about six million children in the U.S. suffer from hearing loss. “Current progress-monitoring tools are not focused on this population and the idea with avenue pm was that we needed assessments that would be good predictors of their

“We want to make sure the system really measures what it is that we think it is measuring,” he said. “So what we do is correlate the scores we get on the system with other literacy assessment scores, and we’re getting some pretty good numbers.” Hooper and his colleagues also are planning for the future and helping other underrepresented populations. They have already started to expand the use of avenue pm to adult English language learners in China and have seen initial success. “In general, I love the idea of progress monitoring,” he said. “You can have a really brief assessment that you do regularly and it’s telling you how you’re doing, how things are going, and if you’re improving.” College of Education 17

Graduate students publish research volume

By Jim Carlson

ollege of Education graduate students committed to issues of educational equity in Pennsylvania are hopeful their edited volume of seven research papers can influence the manner in which politicians and administrators view education and students. Heather Bennett, president of the Pennsylvania Education Equity Project (PEEP) at Penn State, said not only is the state of Pennsylvania changing but demographics and the student population are as well. “It’s a very diverse state and I think all of our papers reflect that changing demographics shifts how we view our students,’’ Bennett said. “Educators need to rethink how we teach teachers to deal with students of color and other differences. We need to rethink that there are these shifts happening, and policymakers, school board members, teachers and communities need to start to rethink how we view education to deal with these demographic changes.’’ Bennett said PEEP was inspired by faculty who, as graduate students, worked on issues of equity throughout the country. “We wanted to do something like that in Pennsylvania; these projects are a culmination of what we’ve been working on,’’ said Bennett. Getting it in front of people who can influence policy-making decisions also will 18 Theme Report

“Implementing Restorative Practices: How Educators in a Pennsylvania School District Conceptualize Disciplinary Reform,’’ by Stephen S. Worthington, Rafael

E. Alvarado and Kendra A. Taylor. This study uses qualitative methods to examine the implementation of restorative practices in a racially diverse school district in Pennsylvania. Restorative practices aim to prevent and repair harm from student misbehavior by emphasizing relationships and community, and are widely viewed as an alternative to punitive and exclusionary discipline. Key findings include that the educators largely made sense of restorative practices as a complement to punitive discipline rather than a replacement, and also observed was an absence of critical examination of the racial dimensions of school discipline when teachers discussed restorative practices. play an integral role in the project’s success. “Ideally I think we’d want to see policymakers become a little bit more involved in educating themselves given the resources that Pennsylvania has to offer in this (Penn State) College of Education,’’ said Rafael Alvarado, who along with Stephen S. Worthington and Kendra A. Taylor wrote one of the research papers (displayed on these pages). “Courts and their relationships to social science have been evolving and I think increasingly you see judges who are relying

“Teacher Diversity in Pennsylvania: Racial Composition and Segregation Among Peers and Students,’’ by Jing Liu

and Hee Jin Chung. The study will attempt to examine teacher diversity and teacher segregation in Pennsylvania public schools. Data from 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) revealed that the teacher population was less diverse than the students and that minority teachers and minority students were more likely to be in minorityisolated schools. It also showed that the extent of segregation was higher in urban, elementary and charter schools. on experts when deciding what the facts of the case are and deciding what the best methods of deliberation are,” Alvarado said. “Lawmakers, whether they’re lawyers or legislators, are going to want to base their decisions on some sort of rational basis, and we’re hoping to provide that basis for them.’’ Erica Frankenberg, Penn State associate professor of education, will write the foreword for the volume. The papers examine a variety of diversity-related topics. “I think these are very now issues, very important issues,’’ Bennett said. “Social science research and the law goes hand-inhand. It’s in their (legislators) best interest that they are serving all of their electorate instead of a small portion of it. Hopefully they’ll think so as well.’’

“Examining Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission v. School District of Philadelphia: Considering How the Supreme Court’s Waning Support of School Desegregation Affected State-Based Desegregation Efforts,’’

by Steven L. Nelson and Alison C. Tyler. This study examines how the Supreme Court’s handling of school desegregation cases at the federal level impacted the enforcement of desegregation orders mandated under state law and tracks the development of various school desegregation cases. The paper establishes four distinct generations of school desegregation cases at the federal level and determines that the political tides created, in large part, by the Supreme Court’s handling of federal school desegregation cases severely limited efforts to pursue state-mandated school desegregation in Pennsylvania.

“School Integration and Student Assignment Plans: The Legal Landscape,’’ by Julie Rowland Woods. This paper aims to give readers a general sense of how court decisions have affected the options for states and districts seeking ways to promote school integration. It outlines how the U.S. Constitution and affirmative action cases in higher education law created a legal foundation for balancing diversity’s benefits and state obligation. It also discusses the impact of affirmative action cases for two voluntary integration K-12 cases, and concludes that alternatives to raceconscious policies are needed to promote greater diversity in public schools.

“A Change of Plans: How One School Board Responded to the Needs of Its Immigrant Student Population,’’ by Kristina

Brezicha, Erica Sausner and Hilario Lomeli. This qualitative case study examines the work of one school board whose school district has experienced a rapid increase in the immigrant population over the past 15 years. The board’s support of its newly diverse student population and responses followed a story arc moving from inaction to ad hoc solutions to more comprehensive solutions. Findings have implications for how school boards located in communities experiencing similar demographic shifts should proceed.

“Schools of Last Resort: Discussing the Impact of the Alternative Education for Disruptive Youth Act (AEDY) for Students in Alternative Education Programs in Pennsylvania,’’ by Heather Bennett, Santosh Madahar, Chi Nguyen and Devin Carpenter. This study examines the Alternative Education for Disruptive Youth Act (AEDY) law and legal policies and procedures in place in Pennsylvania; it also focuses on the School District of Philadelphia’s (SDP) alternative education network and examines how SDP’s network supersedes the current law. Findings revealed that SDP offers highly qualified teachers, personalized learning plans and choices for students, yet transitioning back to traditional programs for students is problematic because of labels attached to students, questionable academic rigor and lack of funding to pay for these programs.

“Educational Equity as a Moving Target: Consolidation, Tracking and Choice in the Woodland Hills School District,’’ by Emily Hodge.

Woodland Hills in suburban Pittsburgh was formed in 1981 with the merger of four predominantly white school districts with General Braddock School District, which was 45 percent minority enrollment. The study shows that segregation did not disappear but moved within schools, as students were sorted in racially identifiable tracks. The implications of the history of the Woodland Hills School District are twofold: inequality is a shifting target that cannot be easily mandated away through changes to district boundary lines or through detracking reforms; at the same time, dissolution of the district’s desegregation plan and the rise of school choice have left the district with few options for maintaining or increasing equity across and within district schools. College of Education 19

Research in Brief Vivian Yenika-Agbaw

David McNaughton

Curriculum and Instruction

Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education

Critical Content Analysis in Children/Young Adult Literature; Literature and Writing in the Classroom

Investigating AAC Technologies to Support the Transition From Graphic Symbols to Literacy

Yenika-Agbaw is a leading U.S. scholar on research methods in critical content analysis in children’s and young adult literature. As such, she authored a book chapter on “Re-Imagining an Alternative Life after the Darfur War: Writing as Emancipatory Practice,” in Reframing Perspective: Critical Content Analysis of Children’s and Young Adult Literature, edited by Holly Johnson, Janelle Mathis and Kathy G. Short. In it, she explores how a child refugee uses writing to liberate herself from the oppressive reality of war in literature. She also is co-editor of “Adolescents Rewrite their Worlds: Using literature to Illustrate Writing Forms,” which explores ways teachers can use literature to enable young adolescents to navigate writing genres — including writing practices popular among the youth. She used critical content analysis in her article, “Textbooks, Literacy & Citizenship: The Case of Anglophone Cameroon” in Research in the Teaching of English.

Marcela Borge Learning and Performance Systems Fostering Ecologies of Online Learners Through TechnologyAugmented Human Facilitation Marcela Borge is a leading scholar in the area of socio-metacognition. This research project, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Center for Online Innovation in Learning (COIL), focuses on the development and evaluation of technological tools to enhance collaborative processes. As part of this work, Borge developed a prototype environment called CREATE (Co-Regulation Enhanced, Activity Training Environment) that pushes students to carefully analyze text-based discussions by comparing existing collaborative reasoning processes to desired collaborative reasoning processes. Based on students’ assessments of their strengths and weaknesses, the system provides suggestions for mitigating weaknesses and helps groups improve the quality of collective thinking over time. As a new Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) fellow, Borge will work with TLT to make the system available University-wide. For more information, visit http://stemforall2016.videohall.com/presentations/772 online. 20 Theme Report

David McNaughton is part of a multi-institution research team investigating the effects of a new communication app that dynamically displays text upon selection of graphic symbols. This app is designed to help pre-literate individuals with complex communication needs, including individuals with autism, Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, in the transition from using graphic symbols to using literacy skills to communicate. The researchers expect that the app, combined with formal literacy instruction, will increase reading and writing skills in people with disabilities. The data from this study will be used to guide tech transfer of this innovation to the marketplace. The research is supported by a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/1mCva0s online.

Ashley Patterson Curriculum and Instruction Biracial Students and Educational Experience Multiracial students are the fastest growing racial subpopulation (U.S. Census, National Center for Educational Statistics), but there is a dearth of educational research focusing on the needs of this population. This project seeks to identify components to help make classrooms “holistic learning spaces” that respond to the unique needs of biracial students while also welcoming them as whole beings instead of a conglomerate of fractured identity components. Patterson presented this research at the National Association of Multicultural Education Conference in New Orleans (September 2015). It also will be included as a chapter in the publication “Multicultural Education in the 21st Century: Innovative Research and Practices.” Patterson also is researching the participation of historically underrepresented students in international study abroad programs in an effort to identify a blueprint outlining key components of an exemplar ‘minority-serving’ study-abroad program.

Research in Brief Paul L. Morgan Education Policy Studies

Heather Toomey Zimmerman/ Karen Eppley

Minorities Are Disproportionately Underrepresented in Special Education: Evidence Across Five Disability Conditions

Learning and Performance Systems/Curriculum and Instruction

Paul L. Morgan, with colleagues George Farkas (University of California, Irvine, Calif.), and Marianne M. Hillemeier, Richard Mattison, Steve Maczuga, Hui Li and Michael Cook, all at Penn State, investigated whether minority children attending U.S. elementary and middle schools are disproportionately represented in special education. They found minority children were consistently less likely than otherwise similar white, English-speaking children to be identified as disabled and to receive special education services. Their findings suggest federal legislation, which currently is written to address supposed over-representation, should instead be rewritten to better ensure all U.S. schoolchildren with disabilities are provided with the special education services for which they are legally entitled. Funding was provided by the National Center for Special Education Research, Institute of Education Science, U.S. Department of Education.

Liliana M. Garces Education Policy Studies Race matters on college campuses One of Garces’ more recent studies, published in the American Educational Research Journal, examined how bans on race-conscious policies influenced the actions of university actors charged with creating inclusive campus communities. With a colleague, Garces sought to understand how administrators at the University of Michigan understood the influence of Proposal 2, which in 2006 banned affirmative action at postsecondary institutions in the state. Findings showed that the law limited the conversations administrators could have around race and racism, made efforts around racial diversity less visible, and made them feel less empowered to advocate for racial diversity. The findings show that the influence of these policies extends beyond admissions and the number of racially diverse students to efforts that are critical for supporting students of color throughout their education. The findings also contribute new insights about the types of institutional responses required to support racial diversity in a postaffirmative action context.

Why Do Rural Schools Matter? Social Justice and Rural Education This research, presented with Jennifer Lynn Weible of Central Michigan University at the 2016 American Educational Research Association annual meeting, argues for a re-conceptualization of rural education as a project of social justice that seeks full participatory parity for rural citizens. This may help to enhance high school students’ success by considering adolescents’ rural experiences as assets for future science learning. The work is supported by a College of Education Research Initiation Grant and will be featured in a forthcoming issue of the journal Cultural Studies in Science Education.

David Lee Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education Developing Supportive Environments for Success Many students with or at risk for emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) fail to engage in academic and appropriate social activities, which leads to a cycle of frustration, lack of engagement and ultimately failure. Lee’s research aims to break this cycle through strategies to support the academic and social engagement of adolescents with or at risk for EBD. Lee and colleagues at Penn State (Debbie Brooks) and other institutions (Thomas Farmer, William and Mary; Jill Hamm, University of North Carolina) are working on Institute of Education Sciences-funded projects, developing and evaluating professional development programs to enable middle-school teachers to structure their classrooms for success; use student success to promote academic engagement; and recognize the social dynamics that affect student performance. Preliminary data suggest the program increases academic, social and behavioral success. In addition, teachers provide supportive classroom structures, demonstrate more effective behavior management, give more positive academic feedback to students, and report feeling more effective addressing the needs of struggling students than comparisons. This work was presented at Teacher Educators of Children with Behavior Disorders and published in several journals. College of Education 21

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