Set 3: Highlighted Presidential Sessions
Please scroll down to view additional session details:
- Forging a New Digital Commons: Youth Re-Imagining and Re-Claiming Public Life
- What Can Researchers, Philanthropies, and Practitioner-Educators Do to Democratize Evidence in Education?
- Skeptical and Affective Literacies: Redefining Critical Media Pedagogies in a ‘Post-Truth’ Era
- Bending Toward – or Away from – Racial Justice? An Interactive Case study in Educational Ethics
- Non-Linear Perspectives on Teacher Learning and Practice Across the Professional Continuum
- Strategic Communications for the Public Good: Multimodal Paths Toward an Asset-Based Understanding of Public Schools
1. Forging a New Digital Commons: Youth Re-Imagining and Re-Claiming Public Life
Formal democratic institutions often marginalize or outright ignore youth voices. But today young people are increasingly creating their own digital commons, where they raise and disseminate their perspectives in a time of polarized politics and continued systemic societal inequities. This symposium will consider how young people are responding to these forces and ask provocative questions about what the public “commons” can and should look like.
Chairs: Youth participating virtually from New Tech High School
Participants:
Formal democratic institutions often marginalize or outright ignore youth voices. But today young people are increasingly creating their own digital commons, where they raise and disseminate their perspectives in a time of polarized politics and continued systemic societal inequities. This symposium will consider how young people are responding to these forces and ask provocative questions about what the public “commons” can and should look like.
Chairs: Youth participating virtually from New Tech High School
Participants:
- Kris D. Gutiérrez (University of California, Berkeley)
- Ernest D. Morrell (University of Notre Dame)
- Nicole Mirra (Rutgers University)
- Antero Garcia (Stanford University)
- Clifford H. Lee (St. Mary’s College of California)
- Elisabeth M. Soep (Youth Radio)
- Janelle Quintans Bence (North Dallas High School)
2. What Can Researchers, Philanthropies, and Practitioner-Educators Do to Democratize Evidence in Education?
An enduring challenge for education research is for research itself to become democratic—to foster goals of inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation through the activities of research. Research-practice partnerships, community-based research, participatory action research, research alliances, and other efforts show promise toward realizing this ideal. This session will foster a dialogue about how to further democratize evidence and explore its importance to the research community.
Chairs:
Moderator: Vivian Tseng (William T. Grant Foundation)
Participants:
An enduring challenge for education research is for research itself to become democratic—to foster goals of inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation through the activities of research. Research-practice partnerships, community-based research, participatory action research, research alliances, and other efforts show promise toward realizing this ideal. This session will foster a dialogue about how to further democratize evidence and explore its importance to the research community.
Chairs:
- Caitlin Farrell (National Center for Research in Policy & Practice, University of Colorado, Boulder)
- William R. Penuel (National Center for Research in Policy & Practice, University of Colorado, Boulder)
- Jim Kohlmoos (EDGE Consulting)
Moderator: Vivian Tseng (William T. Grant Foundation)
Participants:
- Megan Bang (Spencer Foundation)
- John B. Diamond (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
- Ruth López Turley (Rice University, Houston Education Research Consortium)
- Douglas Adam Watkins (Denver Public Schools)
- Esther Quintero (Albert Shanker Institute)
3. Skeptical and Affective Literacies: Redefining Critical Media Pedagogies in a ‘Post-Truth’ Era
Media education traditionally emphasizes cognitive skills: decoding, dissecting, analyzing. Yet this approach overlooks the affective dimension of our reasoning, emotional investments in particular ideologies, and the dynamics of trust in particular authorities. Rather than decoding static texts, media education demands skeptical self-reflexivity regarding our knowledge-seeking behaviors and awareness of how the social networks we belong to shape the information we consume and trust.
Chair: Megan Boler, University of Toronto
Participants:
Discussants:
Media education traditionally emphasizes cognitive skills: decoding, dissecting, analyzing. Yet this approach overlooks the affective dimension of our reasoning, emotional investments in particular ideologies, and the dynamics of trust in particular authorities. Rather than decoding static texts, media education demands skeptical self-reflexivity regarding our knowledge-seeking behaviors and awareness of how the social networks we belong to shape the information we consume and trust.
Chair: Megan Boler, University of Toronto
Participants:
- Donna Alvermann (University of Georgia, Athens)
- April D. Baker Bell (Michigan State University)
- Megan Boler (University of Toronto)
- Jeremy D. Stoddard (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Discussants:
- Joseph E. Kahne (University of California-Riverside)
- Jennifer Wemigwans (University of Toronto)
4. Bending Toward – or Away from – Racial Justice? An Interactive Case study in Educational Ethics
For generations, American students have been taught historical narratives about the United States that privilege European-American viewpoints and obscure narratives of cultural imperialism, racial oppression, and gender-based domination at the expense of Indigenous, African American, and female perspectives. The institutionalization of such historical narratives in textbooks and school curricula carries with it important signals about which facts and whose truths matter.
Chairs:
Participants:
For generations, American students have been taught historical narratives about the United States that privilege European-American viewpoints and obscure narratives of cultural imperialism, racial oppression, and gender-based domination at the expense of Indigenous, African American, and female perspectives. The institutionalization of such historical narratives in textbooks and school curricula carries with it important signals about which facts and whose truths matter.
Chairs:
- Meira Levinson (Harvard University)
- Tatiana Geron (Harvard University)
- Jacob Fay (Bowdoin University)
Participants:
- Meira Levinson (Harvard University)
- Tatiana Geron (Harvard University)
- Jacob Fay (Bowdoin College)
- Deborah Loewenberg Ball (University of Michigan)
- Darrius D. Robinson (University of Michigan)
- Winston Charles Thompson (The Ohio State University)
- Janine de Novais (University of Delaware)
- Margot Ford (University of Newcastle, Australia)
- Daniella J. Forster (University of Newcastle, Australia)
- Kevin Lowe (Macquarie University, Australia)
- Teresa Rodriguez (Boston Collegiate Charter School)
- Clinton W. Smith (Harvard University)
5. Non-Linear Perspectives on Teacher Learning and Practice Across the Professional Continuum
Although dominant perspectives in education tend to perpetuate reductionist and linear narratives of how teachers learn and “transfer” that learning into practice, many scholars argue that this work is situated, relational, and highly mediated. These countering complex, non-linear theories provide an affirmative perspective to mediate harmful divisions of difference by religion, ethnicity, culture, language, gender/sexuality, and other identifiers.
Chair and Discussant:
Participants:
Although dominant perspectives in education tend to perpetuate reductionist and linear narratives of how teachers learn and “transfer” that learning into practice, many scholars argue that this work is situated, relational, and highly mediated. These countering complex, non-linear theories provide an affirmative perspective to mediate harmful divisions of difference by religion, ethnicity, culture, language, gender/sexuality, and other identifiers.
Chair and Discussant:
- Kathryn Jill Strom (California State University, East Bay)
Participants:
- Kara Mitchell Viesca (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
- Tammy Mills (University of Maine)
- Mariama Gray (California State University, East Bay)
- Brandon Sherman (Indiana University, Purdue University)
- Linda Whalen Abrams (Knowles Teacher Initiative)
6. Strategic Communications for the Public Good: Multimodal Paths Toward an Asset-Based Understanding of Public Schools
Research reveals that as nations become more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse, support for public institutions declines as long-time residents are less likely to support robust social services for “others.” As the “public” of public education changes and becomes more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse in the U.S., support for the public good will only flourish when people appreciate the knowledge and wisdom grounded in all cultures.
Chair:
Research reveals that as nations become more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse, support for public institutions declines as long-time residents are less likely to support robust social services for “others.” As the “public” of public education changes and becomes more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse in the U.S., support for the public good will only flourish when people appreciate the knowledge and wisdom grounded in all cultures.
Chair:
- Amy Stuart Wells (Teachers College, Columbia University)
- Abbey Keener (Teachers College, Columbia University)
- Diana Cordova-Cobo (Teachers College; New York University)
- Dianne G. Delima (Teachers College, Columbia University)
- Siettah Parks (Teachers College, Columbia University)
- Stanley Nelson (Firelight Media), Lisa Binns (Firelight Media)