Education News from Sterne Library

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and Frederick M. Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute recently released a report entitled Leaders and laggards: A state-by-state report card on educational innovation.

The “Overview” section states, “In this follow-up report, we turn our attention to the future, looking not at how states are performing today, but at what they are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. . . . We chose this focus because, regardless of current academic accomplishment in each state, we believe innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change.”

The report focuses on eight areas:

• “School Management (including the strength of charter school laws and the percentage of teachers who like the way their schools are run)
• Finance (including the accessibility of state financial data)
• Staffing: Hiring and Evaluation (including alternative certification for teachers)
• Staffing: Removing Ineffective Teachers (including the percentage of principals who report barriers to the removal of poor-performing teachers)
• Data (including such measures as state-collected college student remediation data)
• Technology (including students per Internet-connected computer)
• Pipeline to Postsecondary (including the percentage of schools reporting dual-enrollment programs)
• State Reform Environment (an ungraded category that includes data on the presence of reform groups and participation in international assessments)”

The findings, recommendations, state profiles, methodology & data, and full report PDF may be accessed here.

As many of you are aware, the 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was released in July of this year.  Mervyn Sterne Library has two copies, both located at the reference desk on first floor.  These are available for your use within the library. 

Recently it has been discovered that there are many errors in the first printing of the book, which have since been corrected in the second printing.  The copies available at Sterne Library are the first printing.  If you have already purchased your own copy, check the copyright page which will indicate which printing it is. 

The American Psychological Association has posted all corrections on their website:

Corrected sample papers:

• One experiment paper
• Two-experiment paper 
• Meta-analysis paper

Other Corrections:

• Errors in APA style rules
• Errors in examples
• Clarifications
• Nonsignificant typos

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the reference department of the Sterne Library 934-6364.

Dr. Lois McFadyen Christensen in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction in the UAB School of Education has co-authored a newly released book entitled Integrating teaching, learning, and action research: Enhancing instruction in the k-12 classroom.

“Assisting teacher and teacher candidates to engage K-12 students as participatory researchers is the integral thrust of this text while immersing them in highly effective lessons as a means to authentic learning outcomes.”

This book “offers examples, most all transformative, social studies, social justice in nature, lessons demonstrating how readers of the text can implement action research as an essential, dynamic of teaching and learning.  In 1931, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, foundress of Bank Street School and College, established that the first principle of education is creating and promoting social justice and encouraging participation in democratic processes.  Alfie Kohn (2009) believes that a sense of community and civic responsibility for others isn’t limited to classrooms.  Students under the masterful guidance of teachers extend care . . .  into the school, community, city, state, nation, and beyond.  Students engaged with teachers locate themselves in places of citizenship to which we all belong.  Opportunities are offered not only to learn in depth, but to put into action.  This is a commitment to diversity and to improving lives of others. (Alfie Kohn, 2009)”

Key guidance for teachers include:

• “Guide teachers through systematic steps of planning, instruction, assessment, and evaluation, taking into account the diverse abilities and characteristics of their students, the complex body of knowledge and skills they must acquire, and the wide array of learning activities that can be engaged in the process.
• Demonstrate how teacher action research and student action learning - working in tandem - create a dynamic, engaging learning community that enables students to achieve desired learning outcomes and
• Provide clear directions and examples of how to apply action research to core classroom activities: lesson planning, instructional processes, student learning activities, assessment, and evaluation.”

“The steps of action research are embedded within the Learning Cycle model and the . . .  recursive LOOK, THINK, ACT sequence to further the depth and breadth of teaching, learning, and documenting learning.” Figure 3.1 Lesson Planning Steps illustrates this sequence:

“LOOK - Review Instructional Elements

• Student prior knowledge
• Student capacities
• Community context
• State standards
• Teaching materials
• Learning resources

THINK - Analyze: Select Lesson Components

• Identify learner outcomes
• Select specific state standards
• Select content areas/topics
• Identify instructional strategies
• State learning activities
• Specify assessment processes

ACT - Organize Lesson Plan

• Standards
• Objectives/Outcomes
• Topics
• Procedures
• Materials
• Assessment”

Dr. Tonya Perry of the UAB School of Education was awarded a Sterne Library grant this past Spring and the books have been trickling in all summer.  This collection supports research and studies in Young Adult Literature.  Here is a sampling of the new resources:

Young adult literature: Exploration, evaluation, and appreciation, by Katherine T. Bucher and KaaVonia Hinton.

Children’s and young adult literature handbook: A research and reference guide, by John Giillespie.

Best books for young adults, edited by Holly Koelling.

Naked reading: Uncovering what tweens need to become lifelong readers, by Terri Lesesne.

Literature for today’s young adults, by Alleen Pace Nilsen and Kenneth Donelson.

Booktalking authentic multicultural literature: Fiction, history and memoirs for teens, by Sherry York.

In addition to these texts, there are approximately 100 new young adult fiction books, by award winning authors such as Laurie Halse Anderson, Joan Bauer, Caroline B. Cooney, Sharon Creech, Sharon Draper, Lois Lowry, Lurlene McDaniel, Adrian McKinty, Walter Dean Myers, Gary Paulsen, Rick Riordan, Graham Salisbury, Neal Shusterman, Jerry Spinelli, and Jacqueline Woodson. The juvenile collection is located on the second floor of the Sterne Library.

Often I receive questions from Masters and PhD candidates who are in the process of writing their theses or dissertations.  They are brainstorming topics, collecting the literature, trying to make sense of the organization/format, and looking for previously written dissertations.  Here are some helpful resources:

UAB Graduate School: Theses and Dissertations - This website gives information about writing and submitting theses and dissertations at UAB.  It includes deadline dates, online forms, policies and procedures, format manual, submittal and publication instructions, copyright information, and more.

Format Manual for Theses and Dissertations - This manual outlines requirements regarding the format of all dissertations and theses published at UAB.

Research Guide: Theses and Dissertations at UAB - This guide outlines methods for locating theses and doctoral dissertations written at UAB. 

UAB Digital Collections: Electronic Theses and Dissertations - This repository holds UAB dissertations and theses from Spring semester 2007 and on.

Dissertation Abstracts Online - This database indexes selected master’s theses and dissertations from the U.S., Canada. Great Britain, and Europe. 

Dissertations and Theses at the University of Alabama at Birmingham - This database contains citations and abstracts of dissertations and theses completed at UAB.  Previews the first 24 pages for those published after 1996, and free downloads for selected publications after 1996. 

Here are some online sites which give free access to dissertations and theses from institutions other than UAB:

• OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center 
• Caltech Electronic Theses
• Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Virginia Tech
• Australasian Digital Theses Program MIT Thesis Collection
• Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
• Rutgers Electronic Theses & Dissertations (RUetd)

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s mission is “to catalyze and support research, innovation and investment in digital media technologies to advance children’s learning.”  Joan Ganz Cooney’s 1966 landmark study “The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education” led to the creation of the Children’s Television Workshop in 1968 and the debut of Sesame Street a year later.  In 2006, The Joan Ganz Cooney Center was established and its focus is how emerging media help children learn.  The Center disseminates research and policy reports. One of its most recent publications entitled “Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning” analyzes the key industry trends and innovations, as well as academic and industry projects, in order to make the case for the use of educational media to accelerate children’s learning and for its economic benefits to society.  The author Carly Shuler draws on interviews with research, policy and industry experts “to illustrate how mobile technologies such as cell phones, iPod devices, and portable gaming platforms might be more widely used for learning.”

Education Week is hosting a free webinar on Tuesday, July 7, 2 - 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

” ‘On the Front Lines of Schools’ is the latest chapter in a series of seminal reports that represent the critical voices in the dropout debate: students, parents, and now, teachers.  The report identifies ‘expectation gaps’ and the need for more support at home as major factors in the rising tide of high school dropouts.  The study gives voice to hundreds of educators, including teachers, principals, superintendents, and school board members.” Read more about and register for this webinar here.

“On the Front Lines of Schools: Perspectives of Teachers and Principals on the High School Dropout Problem” is a report by Civic Enterprises.  The descriptions and full text of this report and other reports published by this organization may be accessed from the Civic Enterprises website.  Some of these other reports include:

• Grad Nation: A Guidebook to Help Communities Tackle the Dropout Crisis
• One Dream, Two Realities: Perspectives of Parents on America’s High Schools
• Engaged for Success: Service-Learning as a Tool for High School Dropout Prevention
• Achievement Trap: How America is Failing Millions of High-Achieving Students from Lower-Income Families
• The Case for Reform: Raising the Compulsory School Attendance Age
• Rebuilding Rwanda: From Genocide to Prosperity through Education

PBS announced this week the “launch of the PBS Digital Learning Library, a PBS system-wide online repository of digital education assets from public broadcasting programs and services nationwide.”  This library will contain resources for classroom use, such as video, audio, images, games, and interactive simulations. 

Read and view the video of the announcement at the PBS Teachers News website. 

To browse the teacher resources, go to the PBS Teachers website.  Included on this site are preK- 12 educational resources, including lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video, interactive games and simulations.  The resources are tied to PBS on-air and online programming such as NOVA, Nature, Cyberchase, and more.  In addition, they are correlated to state and national educational standards.  Subjects represented include the arts, health and fitness, math, reading and language arts, science and technology, and social studies.

By registering as a PBS Teacher, there are additional features available, such as the saving and tagging of resources, accessing the PBS Kids Raising Readers national literacy campaign resources, and connecting with other educators to share ideas through online discussions.

Mervyn Sterne Library has a long list of research guides on a variety of topics, many of them relevant to the field of education.  Recently the following new guides have been added:

• Children’s Literature: Book Reviews and Literary Criticism - This guide lists print and online resources for locating book reviews and literary criticism of children’s literature. 
• Alabama Statistical Sources - This guide lists commonly used federal and state government web sites which provide Alabama statistics in the following categories: Education, Health & Wellness, Career & Wage, Demographics & Population, Business & Industry, Transportation, and Crime & Safety. 

The following guides have been redesigned and/or updated:

• Caldecott and Newbery Medal and Honor Books - This guide lists the medal award and honor books for these two children’s literature awards.
• Coretta Scott King Award Books - This guide lists the award winners and honor recipients of this prestigious award for African American authors and illustrators of children’s books. 
• Pura Belpre Award Winners - This guide lists the award winners and honor recipients of this award for Latino/Latina writers and illustrators of children and youth literature.
• Content Area Reading and Writing - This guide will lead you to relevant books, audiovisual materials, journal articles and internet sites about this topic.

The U.S. Government and Accountability Office (GAO), often called the “congressional watchdog,” investigates how  taxpayer dollars are spent by the federal government.  Its mission is “to support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. . . . [It provides] Congress with timely information that is objective, fact-based, nonpartisan, nonideological, fair, and balanced.”

One of the ways it carries out this mission is through the publication of reports, testimonies, correspondence, and legal decisions and opinions.  The GAO Reports cover a variety of subjects including education.  The most recent education related report Seclusions and Restraints: Selected Cases of Death and Abuse at Public and Private Schools and Treatment Centers was released today.  Browse reports by date, topic, or agency, and sign up for email updates at the GAO website.