TEACHING & LEARNING

• Everson Instrumental in Creating Handbook
• Sunstein Co-authors Two Research Books
• Boldt Book Studies Emotions
• Whitmore Book Studies Literacy, Gang Life
• Best Science Teacher Preparation

Everson Instrumental in Creating Handbook

Only approximately 200 American high schools teach Chinese language today. However, in a recent survey by the College Board, 2,400 schools expressed interest in starting a program.

“But schools don’t know where to begin,” said Vivian Stewart, vice president for education at the Asia Society, a nonprofit educational organization.

That’s where Associate Professor Michael Everson comes in. Everson, along with some 25 other national experts, participated in an Asia Society project to create a handbook to help schools start Chinese programs.

The handbook, Creating a Chinese Language Program in Your School: An Introductory Guide , discusses how to set goals for a new program, where to find teachers, and where to turn for resources.

Stewart said Everson played an important role in collecting that information.

“He really knows the research literature on Chinese extremely well,” she said. “Also, since The University of Iowa is one of only about 10 universities in the country that have a program to train teachers to teach Chinese, he was able to give a lot of advice about where teachers can be found, the scale of teacher shortages, what teacher training programs need.”

Everson said there are three main things to keep in mind when approaching the Chinese language.

First, it’s going to take longer to become proficient than if one studied French or German or Spanish. Second, there are a growing number of materials for Chinese learners and teachers. And, finally, he said, students should “be prepared to be introduced to one of the most fascinating cultures of the world.”

Everson, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chinese before earning his doctorate in Foreign Language Education, said the handbook project has been fun, even a bit of “vindication.”

“To see China becoming this economic juggernaut and to see people have the realization, finally, that maybe we ought to be paying attention, this is something we’ve been saying for years,” he said.

To find out more about starting a Chinese language program or teaching about Asia , visit www.askasia.org/chinese.

Sunstein Co-authors Two Research Books

Professor Bonnie Sunstein says her book, What Works: A Practical Guide for Teacher Research, helps make sense of efforts most teachers are already engaged in.

“Teachers are intuitive researchers and they don’t usually know it, but they’re doing research all the time,” she said. “This book helps teachers be more systematic.

The book, co-authored by Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, uses examples of projects in progress and walks teachers through the process of doing research in their classrooms. The book differs from most research books that simply focus on finished projects. Project examples in What Works include many from University of Iowa College of Education students as well as from teachers all over the United States .

In the ALAN Review, William Broz (BA ‘72/MA ‘76/PhD ’96) wrote that What Works will empower and inspire busy teachers.

“These authors know the difficulties of public school teaching so well and confront them so honestly that one of their main discussions is how to fit teacher research around full-time teaching schedules,” Broz wrote. “But I should caution readers—the stories of individual teacher researchers in this book are infectious. When you read this book you will want to do teacher research. And you will also know how to do it, so there will be no excuse not to.”

Sunstein has a second book out this fall, FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, also co-authored with Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater. The book, first published in 1997 and now in its third edition, features significant changes from previous editions. It teaches readers how to conduct ethnographic research as well as instructs on how to write once the research is complete.

“The thing that’s different is that it teaches writing strategies—something most research books don’t do,” Sunstein said, adding that an essay about field research should read like a “really good documentary film.”

Lia Schultz, a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies, said she sees multiple important uses for FieldWorking methods.

“FieldWorking has helped me center my teaching philosophy on the idea that students at all levels need ways to access and understand not only the unique subcultures impacting their literacy and education experience, but also the institutional and campus subcultures of which they become part,” Schultz said.

Boldt Book Studies Emotions

What does love have to do with teaching, especially in a test score-obsessed culture?

Literacy Education Associate Professor Gail Boldt’s new book, Love’s Return: Psychoanalytic Essays on Childhood, Teaching and Learning, which she edited with Paula Salvio from the University of New Hampshire , attempts to answer that question.

The book, published in May 2006, grew out of a panel discussion Boldt participated in at the 2003 American Educational Research Association meeting with Salvio, Peter Taubman from the City University of New York, and Chelsea Bailey from New York University.

“The idea of the panel was that the undergraduates with whom we work most often explain their desire to become teachers by saying, ‘I love children.’ We wanted to understand how ‘love of children’ is conceptualized in education,” Boldt said.

Aimee Mapes, a doctoral candidate in Language, Literacy and Culture and Boldt’s advisee, helped edit the book and said she was proud of the finished product.

“It’s readable. It’s complex. It looks at emotional attachments in complicated ways,” she said.

Boldt said it’s important to consider the emotional side of teaching and learning in today’s world of No Child Left Behind.

“We feel that the present pressure in education is a political pressure that demands that we ignore the personal and affective dimensions of learning and teaching,” Boldt said. “We hope this book will provide educators with language to revalue and demand again the space for learning and teaching as a highly subjective and potentially rich undertaking.”

Whitmore Book Studies Literacy, Gang Life

Kathryn Whitmore ’s new book deals with literacy in the lives of four gang members encountered by her co-author, Debbie Smith, as an alternative high school teacher in Tucson , Arizona .

Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and Juvenile Court Communities: “CRIP 4 Life” follows the four teenaged men as they travel between the four worlds described in the title and examines ways in which they use literacy.

“It explores the mythology that gang kids don’t care about school and their parents don’t care about them,” said Whitmore, an associate professor in Language, Literacy, and Culture. “Part of this book is disrupting those myths.”

The book chronicles Smith’s advocacy and interactions with the students. Through Smith’s efforts, three of the four young men eventually graduated from high school despite several obstacles in that path.

In her foreword to the book, Denny Taylor, a former professor at the University of Arizona where Smith and Whitmore earned their doctorates, describes Whitmore and Smith’s project as “remarkable.”

“Debbie and Kathy have provided us not only with an opportunity for reflection,” she wrote, “but also for direct action in our classrooms and in our communities to reach out and change the conditions of those who grow up disenfranchised and dispossessed.

Best Science Teacher Preparation

Science Education Emeritus Professor Robert Yager is leading a project to determine what elements of teacher preparation programs best prepare science educators for the classroom and result in notable improvements in student achievement.

The project, “Investigating the Meaningfulness of Pre-service Programs across the Continuum of Teaching” (IMPPACT), includes studies involving teaching majors prior to any science education courses, students at the end of the campus program, a sampling of graduates during the first three years of teaching, and a sample of in-service teachers with five or more years of experience. The project examines the impact of specific science teaching programs on content and teaching knowledge and determines how those programs translate into better achievement among 7 th- to 12 th-grade students.

“The study promises to produce real evidence for what kind of teaching is needed to keep students involved in their own learning, and to see that learning affects their daily lives and the improvement of their communities and the world,” Yager said.

In addition to Yager, the UI research team includes: Norbert Pienta, associate professor of chemistry; Margaret Sadeghpour-Kramer (MS ‘93/PhD ’05), long-time elementary and middle school science teacher; and Zeha Yakar and Jeffrey Ploegstra (MS ‘02/MAT ’04), UI Science Education doctoral candidates. Measurement and Statistics Associate Professor Timothy Ansley will serve on a panel of experts for the national project.