Riordan and Klein’s “Environmental Education in Action: How Expeditionary Learning Schools Support Classroom Teachers in Tackling Issues of Sustainability” study published in Teacher Education Quarterly was a perfect fit for what my group is attempting to do with the Maury River Middle School Eco Council. What the study aimed to look for was to look at the work of an organization that works to support teacher’s efforts in the ever growing and more important movement of Environmental Education. Their goal was to “promote the development of responsive and active citizens who are invested in environmental issues and situations, and who are empowered by their ownership of knowledge and skills”. What the essay describes is what the 10 design principles of Expeditionary Learning in schools are. The research promotes and explores sustainable school practices through specific case studies of how expeditionary learning promoted environmental based education and impact student experience and work. This essay provides the necessary theoretical framework needed for our project at Maury River Middle School as it creates the basis for the learning experiences for teachers and for students. It integrates environment education for sustainable development into our proposal and how we seek to see it through. The model provided will let us build an assignment grounded in peer reviewed research that will better enable us to produce quality work. The best way to show these frameworks is to integrate them into our own project. What this will look like is creating an assignment that fulfills the core requirements that expeditionary learning in environmental education tries to instill. The essay shows the importance of teachers engaging in field research in environmental education. In our project what that could mean is that instead of having teachers simply guide discussions, they too should participate as a model for what quality work looks like in environmental education.

Works Cited

Riordan, Meg Klein, J. Emily ““Environmental Education in Action: How Expeditionary Learning Schools Support Classroom Teachers in Tackling Issues of Sustainability”. Teacher Education Quarterly. 2010

Book review of Teaching literacy in the digital age: Inspiration for all levels and literacies by Joy Myers and Melissa Adams-Budde provide a detailed and well thought out review of how Mark Gura formulated this book. They state that

Each chapter in the book highlights specific ideas rather than providing lesson plans in order to be applicable to a larger audience, and each is authored by a current classroom teacher or support staff who works directly with teachers (769).

Teaching literacy in the digital age: Inspiration for all levels and literacies is divided into five sections: (1) ‘‘Reinforcing reading and writing with video and audio’’; (2) ‘‘Analyzing and discussing literature’’; (3) ‘‘Story writing’’; (4) ‘‘Persuasive and argumentative writing’’; and (5) ‘‘And even more inspiration’’. Each section helps organize and embrace the new style of teaching. For instance, in section 1, Myers and Budde express that each chapter highlights how teachers can use video and audio in their teachings to drive home the basic reading and writing information (770).  One point I found interesting was Myers and Budde’s section 3 review. They state

Section 3 focus on activities related to story writing in middle and high school classrooms. These include graphic novel writing projects, interactive fiction and the relationship between comics and performance. According to the authors, there are several benefits of using a graphic novel writing format, including that stories can be told in non-traditional ways and that it is a motivating genre for students (770-771).

This is important because it gives students the ability to create and mold their thoughts into creations that could become masterpieces and inspire people coming in behind them.

I believe the biggest takeaway is not what the students produce, but the process of producing their masterpieces and how it effects the generation behind them. Our education system is missing that the process is more important than the product. Putting a grade on how a student thinks, responds, or creates is in itself a disservice to their growth and their education as a whole. Focusing on the product opens the gate for shortcuts, cheating, and short-term learning. The information I took from this reading is that we as a country are failing all around and if we really want to make a change, we should focus on the process rather than the product.

Work Cited

1. Myers, Joy, and Melissa Adams-Budde. “Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age: Inspiration for All Levels and Literacies.” International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift Für Erziehungswissenschaft, vol. 63, no. 5, Oct. 2017, pp. 769–772. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11159-017-9649-y.

To share a research conversation with our partner classroom, I wanted to use something I experienced inside Mr. Simms class that I never saw when I was going through K-12–the use of laptops regularly inside of the class. The students were able to use their laptops freely inside of the classroom environment to aid in their learning and their ability to provide information to the discussion between the class members and Mr. Simms. This allowed more people to be able to talk about a subject that, in my classes, kept people from speaking for fear of getting the wrong answer or being called out for knowing something that the others did not.

In her article Payne notes that, “The average score, looking at students’ multiple-choice and short-answer scores, was roughly 71.7 percent, with a standard deviation of 9.2 percentage points. Students in classrooms without Internet-connected devices earned the highest average score of 72.9 percent. Students in classrooms where laptop and tablet usage was not restricted earned the lowest scores, on average, at 70.5 percent, a difference of 2.4 percentage points. Students in classrooms where only tablets were allowed under strict conditions did slightly better, with an average score of 71.4 percent, but they still had lower scores than students in the technology-free group” (Carter). This shows how the laptops in the classroom do not decrease the average score by a margin large enough to deem them as being bad to the learning environment. This is also shown in the same article with the statement, ” Instructor controls are important, as we want to eliminate any differences from instructors who are better or worse at delivering the material. Class-hour controls account for whether students perform differently at different hours of the day, such as before or after lunch. Semester controls ensure that differences are not driven by slight variations in the course between the two semesters” (Carter). Even though the laptops have a lower score than no technology, this is accounted for with the way that the teacher controls the class, which is everything to the student for their learning capability.

CARTER, SUSAN PAYNE, et al. “Should Professors Ban Laptops? How Classroom Computer Use Affects Student Learning.” Education Next, vol. 17, no. 4, Fall 2017, pp. 68–74. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=125076083&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Aaron J Kempf
Fieldwork 411
Major Hodde
Due April 2nd

Investigation into a Second Attempt at the Re-introduction of Tablets

Good morning Casey! After you reached out inquiring about some advice regarding teaching inspiration, I took it upon myself to find some scholarly sources that you’d be able to utilize. After some research, I found an incredible article regarding the re-introduction of tablets within an educational environment. What I found unique about the article is that it was not the students performances being measured within the article. Rather, it was the teachers opinions of the tablets use that were gauged to measure how important tablet use was. The methods used for conducting the research were the qualitative method with quantitative insight. By the end of the research, the findings produced results conveying the idea that tablets themselves are not what stipulates learning within a classroom. It is the teacher’s knowledge of how to utilize the tablets that brought about the most effective learning for students.The study was conducted in 1st and 2nd grade classrooms and was implemented because of today’s 21st century need for employees well rounded in all educational areas, specifically technology. many of the skills that employers search for are as listed – students need to have seven survival skills namely: critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration and leadership, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, effective oral and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, and finally curiosity and imagination. Within the eyes of researchers, the implementation of tablets incapsulate many of these skills and are able to give a well rounded idea as to whether students are maximizing each of these traits. Unfortunately I did find one flaw within the testing, and this would be the fact that out of the 23 patrons surveyed within the research, an astounding 96% were female. Overall, the results showed that of 23 surveyed teachers, only 1 found that the tablets were “trouble” being that students had trouble following directions. Being a class full of 1st and 2nd graders, I like these odds! I enjoyed reading about this experiment and think that there is a lot we can take and apply to our teaching at the local highschool. I hope this was helpful!

My exigence for showing this article was to provide evidence that more EL  in the class room was possible and it could still comply with standards. Gallahan and I have been working on a lesson plan for the class that incorporates these principles. The lesson itself still complies with the standards set by the state, as well. My question to you, Ms. Dowless is:  what are your experiences beyond what Gallahan and I have observed with PBL and El Education? Also, how did you teach while still complying with the set standards? I wanted to show this article because it provides examples of a often cited example of EL education.

Expeditionary learning and state mandated learning objectives do not have to be at odds with one another. They can coexist. At Grove Middle School, teachers have not abandoned expeditionary learning and moved onto follow common core. Instead, they continue to pursue Expeditionary learn while they are complying with the federal mandated learning of objectives. The teachers refuse to simply teach to the standardized tests.

EL education has a long history in Grove middle school. The school was reformed by the current principal from one of the worst and most violent schools in the district to its best. The school itself has become one of the models for expeditionary learning education. Its story is often distributed on pamphlets to other schools considering switching to this learning style.

Two lenses guide the school in the curriculum. The first is sense making. Sense making consists of an individual’s cognition, situated cognition, and role of representation. An individuals cognition consists of a person’s values, prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs. Individual cognition is used in the classroom to greater strengthen the EL curriculum by using what the educator already knows works and does not work to their advantage. This allows teacher to collaborate and do work on their own to strengthen the curriculum. Situated cognition allows for EL in the workplace to flow. It is making all the social networks, workplace structures, and professional affiliations follow together to provide cohesion. Situated cognition is also the willingness of educators to grapple with new technology. The role of representation is the reasoning behind the policy. It is the rationale, context, purpose, and difference from the previous policy.

Inquiry as a stance is a grounded theory of action that allows the learner and the teacher to transform the educational framework. In this, educators are as active as the students in the learning environments. Inquiry as a stance challenges convention. It questions what is normal.

Because of this strong framework in their curriculum, educators found little problem with the requirements of No Child Left Behind Laws. These learning requirements did not interrupt the interdisciplinary tract these teachers were pursuing in the classroom. This was due to the constant professional development that the teachers are required to go through during their teaching at Grove. The professional development allowed the teachers to focus on teaching the standards that they felt were important to students.

Managing an EL or PBL educational environment is difficult, what recommendations would you have for others at incorporating it?