NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

Creativity

• "Knots on a Counting Rope": Teaching Stories
  Argues that reflecting on important "marker" stories in people's lives by using counting ropes (based on the children's book "Knots on a Counting Rope" by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault) helps students and teachers make sense of their complex worlds.
• "Making Democracy Real": Teacher Union and Community Activism To Promote Diversity in the New York City Public Schools, 1935-1950
  Examines how an interracial coalition of radical teachers from the Teachers Union of New York City and community activists from Harlem promoted black history and intercultural curriculum and collaborated with parents for school reform during the 1930s-40s. Their efforts to develop more culturally responsive schools were derailed in the late 1940s by the red-baiting of progressive scholars and teacher union activists during the cold war.
• "Mama," Affection, and Migration: Recommended Books about Latinos for Children and Adolescents
  Presents an annotated bibliography of books to teach children and adolescents about Latinos and the Latino culture. Topics of the books range from the spirit of the Latino folk arts to poetic expressions, migration stories, and insightful essays about Cuba under Castro.
• A "Tempest" Project: Shakespeare and Critical Conflicts
  Describes a 4-week unit of study that focuses on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," a text that has been especially controversial in today's climate of increased multicultural awareness. Involves students in a larger conversation about the possibilities for reading and interpreting literature and prepares them to write mature analyses of the play.
• A Sound Education
  Although band, chorus, and orchestra are still mainstays of most school music programs, many schools are incorporating technology, multicultural music, composition, and improvisation into the course offerings. Music teachers must balance tradition and innovation.
• Action Research and Practical Inquiry: Multicultural Content Integration in Gifted Education: Lessons from the Field
  An informal survey of 71 teachers of the gifted participating in an in-service course on gifted education suggested that many teachers had goals and experiences related to multicultural curricula for gifted children. Through the survey, teachers also identified obstacles they encountered in implementing multicultural activities and benefits they perceived.
• Art Becomes the Fourth R
  In an era where students design web sites and integrate video, graphics, and animation into their presentations, art is becoming the new literacy. Art education promotes self-expression, cognitive and attitudinal improvement, multicultural awareness, and personal growth.
• Beautiful Me! Celebrating Diversity through Literature and Art
  Describes the "Beautiful Me!" kindergarten unit, which uses children's literature to help children develop a rich vocabulary to describe themselves, their friends, and family, and to avoid words placing people into categories and stereotypes. Activities include providing various skin-tone crayons for drawing and using craft materials to depict hair with different textures, colors, and thickness.
• Blending Cultural Anthropology and Multicultural Education: Team Teaching in a Teacher Education Program
  Describes how a large urban university and K-6 classroom teachers collaborated to design an undergraduate teacher education program in elementary and special education, creatively combining subject matter curriculum with educational issues and pedagogy to better prepare teachers to succeed in diverse urban schools. The result was the team-taught Liberal Studies Seminar in Anthropology.
• Bridging the Gap: A School Based Staff Development Model that Bridges the Gap from Research to Practice
  Previous research suggests that without on going support teachers do not successfully implement instructional strategies learned during inservice training. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Research Lead Teacher model in providing support to general education teachers who were learning and implementing a strategy instruction process in their classrooms.
• Challenges of Urban Education: Sociological Perspectives for the Next Century
  Challenges of Urban Education includes a range of topics from quantitive analyses of student demographics to the description and analysis of urban high school students' creative writing. The book bridges the dualisms of local and global, theory and practice, and structure and agency.
• Chinese New Year Dragons
  Presents an art project, used in a culturally diverse curriculum, in which second grade students create Chinese New Year dragons. Describes the process of creating the dragons, from the two-week construction of the head to the accordion-folded bodies.
• Collective Reflection as an Alternative Methodology in Curriculum Research and Teaching: Representations in Global Perspectives
  This paper describes an alternative methodology used to study students' constructions of meaning as they engage in a curriculum-making project while taking "Global Perspectives," a foundational graduate preservice teacher education course at Pace University, New York.
• Creating Cross-Cultural Connections
  Describes a project partnership aimed at helping college students and urban high school students better understand each other's worlds, highlighting the massive miscommunication that often occurs in such environments. Through e-mailing, letter writing, face-to-face experiences, literary experiences with multicultural themes, idea walks, reflections, webbing, and quilt making, this project coaxed participants to break institutional and social barriers in their personal systems.
• Creative Experiences for Young Children. Third Edition
  Noting that a creative approach to early childhood education allows teachers to reinforce the foundation of achievement by encouraging and expanding upon children's play activities, this book provides teacher-developed ideas and strategies for creating learning communities in the early childhood classroom.
• Creativity and Collaborative Learning: The Practical Guide to Empowering Students, Teachers, and Families. Second Edition
  These 24 papers explain how using the collaborative learning model can help teachers address classroom challenges.
• Creativity and Giftedness in Culturally Diverse Students. Perspectives on Creativity
  The 11 chapters in this text address issues concerned with identification and educational intervention with gifted students who are from culturally diverse backgrounds.
• Cultural Voices
  Presents brief descriptions of 39 children's books (most of them published in 2000) that enlighten readers about new worlds by introducing countries, cultures, and people. Highlights books that present voices from the past, voices honoring heritage, the search for a voice, voices for freedom, voices of the community, and voices of wisdom.
• Dow's Conception of Teaching Art: "Harmonious Composition" and "Notan."
  A U.S. art educator, Arthur Wesley Dow, synthesized Japanese and U.S.
• Expectations Great and Small: The Mental Maps of Teachers and Systems
  Discusses how high and low expectations are communicated to British students both directly by what teachers say and indirectly through the systems and processes through which teachers work. Examines racial and social biases and notes that expectations can be self-fulfilling prophesies.
• Focus on Elementary (Ages 7-10): A Quarterly Newsletter for the Education Community, 1999-2000
  This document consists of four issues of a newsletter for educators at the elementary level. Each issue features articles on a specific theme along with regular columns.
• Foreign Language and Culture: Some Background and Some Ideas on Teaching
  Educators should combine foreign language study with discovery of another culture. Several postsecondary institutions are adopting Language Across the Curriculum, which allows students to apply their second-language knowledge in various courses or integrate other disciplines into language courses.
• Give Us a Taste of Your Quality! A Report from the Heartland on the Role of the Arts in Multicultural Settings
  Discusses the role of the arts in multicultural education, explaining how diverse students react to and need support in the arts in order to succeed. Focuses on the efforts of urban elementary and secondary schools in Madison, Wisconsin.
• Going Beyond Words
  Reflects on three articles in this themed issue written by classroom teachers, describing how and why they incorporate the arts into the heart of their language arts instruction. Concludes that sign systems and the arts are powerful tools for thinking, whether they are used differently, to represent specific information, or aesthetically, to create vicarious, lived-through experiences.
• Greening School Grounds: Creating Habitats for Learning
  Schoolyard greening is an excellent way to promote hands-on, interdisciplinary learning about the environment through projects that benefit schools and increase green space and biodiversity in communities. This book features step-by-step instructions for numerous schoolyard projects from tree nurseries to school composting to native plant gardens, along with ideas for enhancing learning by addressing diverse student needs.
• Integration of Technology into the Classroom: Case Studies
  This book contains the following case studies on the integration of technology in education.
• Interactive Drama: A Method for Experiential Multicultural Training
  The authors present interactive drama as a medium to create learning about multicultural and diversity issues in the basis of cognitive-experiential self-theory. Results of exploratory qualitative research suggest 2 interactive dramas had an impact on awareness, understanding, and skills.
• It's Elementary: Special Topics in Elementary Education
  As elementary teachers work to educate and meet the needs of the students in their care, their job has become increasingly challenging and demanding. This volume addresses a variety of issues and topics related to elementary education around eight sectional themes relevant to the work of elementary teachers: celebrating diversity, classroom configurations, reading revisited, writing world, content connections, todays classroom, artistic avenues, and assessment alternatives.
• Literature Circles: Creating an Environment for Choice
  Describes how two teachers in a fourth-grade classroom adapted the idea of literature study to a format that nurtured first- and second-language learning for all their students. Shows how choice of reading materials and choice of language to discuss what was read provided opportunities for students to raise their levels of both fluency and literacy.
• Multicultural Training in Art Therapy: Past, Present, and Future
  Describes the past and current state of multicultural education within the art therapy profession. Models for curriculum and educational delivery are offered along with suggestions for the future development of multiculturalism within the profession.
• Multiculturalism and Music Re-attached to Music Education
  Suggests that the role of music and music education in supporting culture is very powerful. Focuses on students learning about music as opposed to performance.
• Multiculturalism, Diversity, and African American College Students: Receptive, Yet Skeptical?
  Hypothesized that African American college students with higher racial self-esteem would be more open to diversity and multiculturalism than students with lower racial self-esteem. Surveys indicated that most students valued diversity-oriented courses, though most also believed that diversity courses were biased against African Americans.
• PEPNet 2000 Innovation in Education. Conference Proceedings (Denver, Colorado, April 5-8, 2000)
  This proceedings focuses on the best practices and most effective strategies for meeting the needs of postsecondary students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Presentations address professional development, access to programs and services, teaching methods, using technology, student preparation for college, program development, working with students from diverse backgrounds, and personal development.
• Personal Experience as a Guide To Teaching
  Analyzes teacher educators' experiences using storytelling about teaching to prepare second-career teacher candidates to critically reflect on their practice and teach for diversity. Using stories, prospective teachers developed retrospective explanations and justifications for their teaching practices, constructing platforms from which to launch future actions.
• Preparing Counselors and Therapists: Creating Constructivist and Developmental Programs
  Written for those who will educate future counselors and psychotherapists, this book marks out a vision for counselor and psychotherapist training for the postmodern era. The book details specific practices that are grounded in constructivist and developmental principles including approaches to classroom instruction, field supervision, curriculum, admissions, student evaluation, and multicultural awareness.
• Project Zenith: Multicultural/Multimedia/Emphasis in Speech-Language Pathology, 1997-2001. Grant Performance Report--Final Report.
  This report discusses the activities and outcomes of Project Zenith, which was designed to recruit two cohorts of bilingual graduate students to complete a graduate program with specialized skills in the diagnosis and treatment of communicative disorders in multicultural populations in the public schools. Included in the specialized training is coursework in bilingual and alternative assessment, instructional technology, and a clinical practicum.
• Promoting Multicultural Awareness through Dramatic Play Centers
  Although many teachers acknowledge that language and culture are critical components of children's development, actually incorporating materials representative of children's cultures remains a problem. This article explains how the dramatic play center is a natural place to promote multicultural awareness in the classroom and offers suggestions for materials and activities.
• Reaching TESOL Teachers through Technology
  The preparation of qualified teachers with knowledge and skills in the areas of English as a Second Language (ESL) and technology is an important issue in urban educational reform. This paper addresses components that one teacher preparation program is implementing in training multicultural, urban public school teachers in this critical shortage area.
• Renewed IDEA Targets Minority Overrepresentation.
  The article reports that the reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act will attempt to eliminate one of the longest-running problems in special education: the overrepresentation of minority students. The Schott Foundation for Public Education recently released a report on education and black males that showed black students accounted for 72 percent of the total number of students with mental retardation classifications in Chicago's public schools, while black students accounted for 52 percent of overall enrollment.
• Resources for a Multicultural Classroom. The Multicultural Resource Series, Volume 2
  This second volume in the series "Resources for a Multicultural Classroom" helps teachers develop creative ways to integrate multiculturalism into every curriculum, from science to literature. This annotated resource guide presents K-12 teachers with an extensive listing of print (biography, poetry, anthology, essay, fiction, research, and history), film and video, and electronic resources.
• Revista de Investigacion Educativa, 2000 (Journal of Educational Research, 2000)
  Articles in this volume focus on the following: teacher evaluation and quality management in education; steps toward a comprehensive and systematic staff evaluation; opinions of university students on teaching methods at science faculties; design of a scale to assess the ability to jump for the use in elementary school physical education; effects of age and gender differences in student-teacher relationships in an interactive cognitive-behavioral study designed to improve self-esteem; evaluation of a counseling program of prisoners for the reintegration into the workforce; statistical models to establish determining factors for choosing a university career and performance during the first year of teacher training; self-concept, self-esteem, and academic performance of students during the 4th year of Obligatory Secondary Education (Educacion Secundaria Educativo--E.S.O.); initial training of Secondary Education teachers. Current situation and outlook; methodology for teaching mathematics through problem solving: An evaluative study; and analysis and validation of a scale for measuring explorative behavior; evaluation of educational programs; evaluation of social programs; design and sub-designs in program evaluation; validity in program evaluation; data analysis in the evaluation of educational programs; optimizing the assessment of program evaluation; survey sampling and its problems in institutional program evaluations; evaluation and improvement of teaching at the university; evaluation of teaching by students within the National Plan of Evaluation of the Quality of the Universities; construction of an assessment instrument; evaluations of university training programs in a European and American framework; new trends in the evaluation of multicultural education programs; evaluation of computerized programs; evaluation of professional and continued education; evaluation of programs for the education of highly gifted students; evaluation of programs for high ability students; evaluation of special education programs for children with mental disorders; evaluation of programs focusing on children with disabilities.
• Seeding Ethnomathematics with 'Oware': Sankofa
  Explains the game of Oware, an African board game that provides rich opportunities for all children to build and extend arithmetical ideas and number sense, develop strategic thinking, and explore important social behaviors. (Contains 22 references.) (ASK).
• Sogolon Marionettes. Cue Sheet for Teachers
  This performance guide is designed to help teachers prepare students to see the Sogolon Marionettes performing one of two stories from the West African country of Mali.
• Teaching 4- to 8-Year-Olds: Literacy, Math, Multiculturalism, and Classroom Community
  The next decade will see a dramatic increase in public finding for programs serving young children. Prekindergarten and early elementary programs will received more scrutiny in line with a growing awareness that school success is heavily influenced by the skills and attitudes children have when they enter school and quality of initial school experiences.
• Teaching Mathematics from a Multicultural Perspective
  Describes principles and instructional strategies for teaching mathematics to culturally diverse students, explaining: fundamental principles of multicultural mathematics; approaches to multicultural mathematics instruction (e.g., portrayal of cultural groups in instructional materials and historical roots of mathematics concepts); and instructional strategies for diverse students (e.g., high expectations, questioning, cooperative learning, and technology use). (SM).
• Teaching Preservice Teachers To Incorporate the World Wide Web To Promote Respect of Cultural Diversity
  This paper describes how preservice teachers at one university are introduced to computer technology in a nonthreatening manner and how they learn to use the World Wide Web to promote cultural pluralism.
• Teaching Reading to American Indian/Alaska Native Students. ERIC Digest
  This digest summarizes ways to help young American Indian and Alaska Native children become fluent readers. There are numerous reading intervention programs, each with its own set of claims and counter-claims.
• The Culturally Competent Art Educator
  Focuses on the importance of preparing teachers to be culturally competent art educators, addresses the qualities of a culturally competent teacher, delineates Mazrui's seven functions of culture, and explores how to comprehend multicultural practice. Discusses how teachers can acquire cultural knowledge through literature, films and videos, and museums and galleries.
• The Fin Art of Science
  Describes how Japanese fish printing brings interdisciplinary science and culture to the classroom. Presents an activity on fish printing that provides students with a tactile, concrete experience and explores what fish feel like and how their scales are arranged.
• The Multicultural Science Framework: Research on Innovative Two-Way Immersion Science Classrooms
  Reviews the different approaches to multicultural science teaching that have emerged in the past decade, focusing on the Spanish-English two-way immersion classroom, which meets the needs of Spanish speakers learning English and introduces students to the idea of collaboration across languages and cultures. Two urban two-way immersion classrooms in Texas and New York are described.
• The Pit Boss: A New Native American Stereotype?
  Stresses the importance of U.S. history textbooks containing information that is accurate, realistic, and comprehensive, noting that while there are increased portrayals of Native Americans in today's history textbooks, portraying them in a stereotypical manner that suggests a single type of Indian culture is inappropriate and may affect students' attitudes toward Native Americans or their own self-esteem.
• The Spirit of Chinese Shadow Puppet Theater
  Presents a project where fourth- and fifth-grade students created Chinese shadow puppets, designed scenery for puppet theater, built the theater, wrote plays, and put on performances in a Chinese theater festival. Lists a collection of resources.
• To See One Another More Clearly: A Pacific Children's Literature Web Project
  Discusses the Pacific Children's Literature Web Project, which uses the Internet as a vehicle for building and sharing the cultures of Guam, Micronesia, and the Pacific. Describes how the website was developed, presents an overview of the site with selected student webpage examples, offers suggestions for developing a website with students, and lists Internet resources.
• Using Educational Technology To Teach Cultural Assessment
  A module to prepare nursing students to conduct cultural assessments of patients covers multicultural health care environments, genogram skills, self-awareness, theoretical lenses, and cross-cultural communication skills. Instructional materials use multimedia CD-ROM and web-based technologies.