16 minute read
FACULTY RESEARCH
School of Education faculty and staff have made a number of appearances in the media during recent months. See uwm.edu/edline-news.
KALYANI RAI, professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Community Studies, and Lynn Sedivy, senior lecturer in the Department of Teaching and Learning, talked about their work in educating immigrant children in a March Journal Sentinel article.
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DEANN HUINKER, professor of mathematics education, talked to USA Today in February about why the U.S. is lagging behind other countries in mathematics education.
In September, Assistant Dean JEREMY PAGE was interviewed on Spectrum News and Fox 6 News about supporting incoming freshmen and what they can do to acclimate to college life.
PAM CONINE, clinical associate professor in UWM’s American Sign Language Interpreter Training Program, and alumna Maria Rivera were featured in a front page Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on the challenges of interpreting the fast-moving, complex lyrics in the musical “Hamilton.”
And WUWM featured a story about how ASL students are learning to interpret live theatre.
In December, The New York Times highlighted the work of the sign language interpreter for the Milwaukee Bucks. BRICE CHRISTENSON is an alum of the School of Education’s ASL program.
SPRING 2020 EDLINE 13 MARTY SAPP’S INTEREST IN HYPNOSIS as a psychological tool dates back to his days as an undergraduate student. He read a book about its use in counseling, and around the same time, took part in some research about using hypnosis to improve study skills.
Those experiences led him to additional graduate coursework on the topic. Now, he’s a professor of educational psychology in the School of Education. Sapp specializes in the psychological and counseling applications of mind-enhancing tools such as hypnosis, mindfulness and guided imagery.
“There are a lot of things that we can do that we don’t know that we can actually do,” Sapp says. “That’s where hypnosis is very, very useful.”
Hypnosis is a trancelike state that resembles sleep and readies its subjects to act on suggestions from the person who induced it. But Sapp emphasizes that you can’t hypnotize someone against their will, nor can you make them do something they wouldn’t normally do.
One of Sapp’s research projects showed hypnosis helped women lose weight when used in combination with diet, exercise and education.
Most recently, Sapp has led a team studying connections between hypnosis and the increasingly popular practice of mindfulness meditation, which involves a heightened awareness of one’s thoughts and experiences moment to moment. In recent years, mindfulness has become more widely used in education, athletics, music and other areas to help with focus and performance.
“There have been several articles talking about the two concepts being the same, but there hasn’t been any empirical data showing they are the same, psychologically speaking,” Sapp says. “If we can show the two are similar enough, we can make a case for putting mindfulness under the hypnosis umbrella in psychological classification.”
Sapp’s team randomly assigned college participants to either a prerecorded 15-minute mindful meditation transcript and or a 15-minute hypnosis transcript. After each group listened to its respective transcripts, their participants' susceptibility to hypnosis was measured using a questionnaire called the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility.
Both groups showed similar levels in terms of their ability to be hypnotized. Researchers are beginning work on a second phase, which will look at whether hypnosis enhances mindfulness.
Sapp thinks both mindfulness meditation and hypnosis can be useful tools in counseling.
“We don’t encourage anyone to do hypnosis for entertainment purposes,” Sapp says. “There are a lot of quacks and it gets a bad rap, but it can be a useful tool for a licensed counselor, a nurse or a psychologist or psychiatrist.”
Doctoral students Glenna Gransee and Zach Bella work on reading with Zaiden Shumpert, a student at Next Door.
Building on evidence to help children learn
KAREN STOIBER HAS WORKED WITH CHILDREN in Head Start programs and their teachers to help them build the critical foundation for literacy. That work has expanded into research on helping preschoolers not only learn letters and sounds, but figure out how to handle emotions – or what is often called socio-emotional learning. Most recently, she has started working with Children’s Wisconsin to help improve teaching and learning for children with cardiac issues.
“The umbrella for all this work is evidence-based practice,” says Stoiber, professor of educational psychology. “We’re really trying to find what works and what’s actually improving children’s outcomes, especially for children with various unique needs, characteristics that might place them at greater need for personalized interventions.”
Last summer Stoiber was named the Mary and Ted Kellner Professor in Early Childhood Education. Mary and Ted Kellner established the professorship in 2007 to support efforts to improve education for the youngest learners. “I’ve seen how important it is for children to get a good start, especially when they don’t come from privileged backgrounds,” Mary Kellner said at the time. “So many children get to school and they start behind and never catch up.” Mary McLean, now retired, and Nancy File, professor of early childhood education, previously held the professorship.
Stoiber’s own interest in and passion for early childhood education, especially for children who faced challenges, started when she was working for the Penfield Children’s Center and Easter Seals 30 years ago in programs that served children with special needs.
As she got into the work, she realized she needed to learn more, especially about doing early childhood diagnostic and prevention work. She started at UWM in the school psychology program, then moved to UW-Madison for her doctorate in educational psychology.
Her advisor, Maribeth Gettinger, encouraged her to build on her interest in the area of early childhood – which not too many educational and school psychologists were doing. The two became co-principal investigators on a number of projects over the years, working primarily with Head Start and early childhood public school programs. Through Project EMERGE (Exemplary Model of Early Reading Growth and Excellence), for example, they worked with more than 2,000 children and 100 teachers. This work focused on providing professional development and
supporting teachers' efforts to help get their children ready to read and keep them excited about reading.
As Stoiber worked on early literacy in preschool classrooms, she realized teachers and students could benefit from help with more than just word and letter sounds. A collaboration with the Next Door Head Start program grew out of that interest. Starting in 2017, Stoiber and her graduate students began working with the children on both literacy and socioemotional skills.
Reading a book called “Llama and the Bully Goat,” for example, children are asked to think deeper about what it means to be a bully and a friend or how friends are not the same as bullies. The main idea is to give these young children “explicit opportunities” to explore what it feels and looks like to be a friend versus a bully.
Also, in recent years Stoiber has been working collaboratively with Dr. Cheryl Bosig of the Medical College of Wisconsin on a project to help improve the education of children with cardiac issues.
That research, which started three years ago with an NIHfunded pilot study with elementary students, has now been expanded to preschool children. The goal of the work is to improve understanding among medical professionals, families and teachers. These children often suffer from fatigue, anxiety and stress that can impact their learning, Stoiber explains. The results so far show that the perspectives of teachers, parents and doctors on these children’s needs may vary greatly.
“Most typically, the teachers and school nurses aren’t aware of the ongoing needs of a child with cardiac issues,” she says. “They may have looked at the doctor’s notes, but they aren’t clear on how this translates into educational practices…what interventions might be needed to really help optimize a child’s performance in school.”
One aspect of the work, she adds, will be building a database so the researchers can follow the children as they progress through school.
The Kellner professorship provides support for a graduate assistant to help her in all of this work. That not only helps her get more done, says Stoiber, it also provides valuable experience for the graduate student.
She is grateful to the Kellners for the opportunity, Stoiber says, and hopes her research will promote the goals they had in setting it up.
“The professorship is extremely welcome. I could not be more delighted to have support in these projects. It really facilitates getting important work done well.”
The books are straight off the shelves of any library’s or bookstore’s preschool section – “Little Lion Shares,” “Calm Down Time” and “Kindness Rules!” – but UWM researchers are reading them to children with more than storytelling in mind. They’re evaluating whether preschool children can simultaneously improve their reading readiness and their social emotional learning in areas such as friendship and empathy. The work is being conducted by School of Education graduate students and Karen Stoiber, who is the Mary and Ted Kellner endowed professor in early childhood education. (See story on page 14)
The research is part of Project BRIGHT (Book Reading to Improve Growth and High Quality Teaching), which Stoiber started at the Next Door’s Head Start Center in 2017. Books used for the project included social emotional learning content, such as friendship making. In addition to reading to preschoolers in small groups, doctoral students also assessed the young readers and collected data on the project’s results. Preschoolers were divided into three groups. In one group, the graduate students simply read books to the children. In the second, grad students read the books and pointed out letters, letter sounds, rhyming and vocabulary words. In the third group, the social emotional learning group, graduate students took things a step further. They not only read the book, but also talked with the children about feelings, including ways to be a good friend and strategies for calming down when they were angry.
They also explored other facets related to the project. “One question from a research perspective,” says project member and school psychology doctoral student Glenna Gransee, “is that if you’re spending time doing this additional social emotional component, are you taking away from the time allotted to literacy and to what extent is that impacting it?” Gransee is one of five doctoral students on the project, as is Zach Bella, who transferred to UWM specifically because of his interest in Stoiber’s work.
Preliminary results have shown the children gaining in literacy skills and, in the social emotional learning group, in recognition of feelings and self-management skills. “We’re trying to find out what works and what’s actually really improving children’s outcomes,” Stoiber says, “especially for children with various unique needs and characteristics that might place them at greater need for personalized interventions.”
Using academics to inform policy
JACKIE NGUYEN WAS KICKING A SOCCER BALL AROUND with a little girl inside a nonprofit organization in Tijuana, Mexico, last fall. The child’s mother was there seeking services for her asylum application, and the little girl was chatting with Nguyen about how much she missed playing outdoors. “Then she paused in the middle of kicking the ball to run and get her cell phone and, nonchalantly, show me graphic photos of a deceased (murdered) family member. Then she returned the phone to her mom and played again.”
For Nguyen, associate professor of educational psychology, the moment showed both the resilience of children and the ongoing trauma they and their families face.
Nguyen spent part of her fall semester 2019 sabbatical as one member of a group of academic and legal experts focusing on the impact of immigration policies and detention on children and their families.
Nguyen is a developmental psychologist rather than an applied psychologist by training. However, when the opportunity came up to work on the Research-toPolicy collaboration, she decided to take her work in another direction. The collaboration is supported by the Center for Healthy Children at Penn State University and other organizations.
One initial result of the research effort was a one-sheet summary – “TraumaInformed Responses to Immigration Policies and Practices” – distributed to legislators and policymakers Jan. 27 by the Society for Community Research and Action, a division of the American Psychological Association. Nguyen is one of the lead authors.
Nguyen’s interest grew out of her previous research in the developmental experiences of individuals from immigrant, refugee and ethnic minorities. Her research has focused on ethnic and cultural identity and parent-child relationships, especially in adolescence and early adulthood.
The goal of the Research Policy Collaborative is to help policymakers by providing information to them in a nonpartisan, manageable form that can help them make evidence-based decisions and policies on immigration and migrants, says Nguyen.
“There’s this huge gap between our world of academia and science and the world of policy,” says Nguyen. “We kind of take our time and ask questions and explore, and the publication cycle may take a year and a half, whereas policy is minute-to-minute. What’s happening today? What are the issues?”
Meeting with families and social workers and lawyers and those doing work on the ground every day put a face on the abstract concepts about migrant families and children’s trauma, says Nguyen.
The Jan. 27 paper presented to policymakers stressed a number of recommendations on how to ease the trauma of children and families, recognizing they have already experienced trauma that drove them to leave their home countries, and that has been made worse by separations and long waits in detention camps. The recommendations stress that service systems involving immigrant families should take trauma and culture into consideration. The collaborative is also suggesting a national toolkit for communities receiving migrant families that support effective responses to trauma.
More than 700 copies of the paper went to congressional representatives and their staffers, and Nguyen has been heartened by the response. A few members of Congress have already incorporated some of the ideas from the collaboration into bills.
“The idea of this came out of questions being asked by members of Congress themselves or their offices. To hear a policymaker say, ‘okay, I want to put forth a bill that funds something that can directly support families, what do I need to know?’ That’s a direct call that, at least in my work, I haven’t been able to respond to before. So I think we will make a difference that way.”
“I really believe the science we do matters, and we should be able to close the gap between science and policy.”
Teaming up to help students with special needs
STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS OFTEN RELY on a group of experts to help them succeed in school.
Now a School of Education faculty member is part of a project team that is integrating the preparation of teachers, occupational therapists, communication scientists and kinesiologists to better serve these students.
Sara Jozwik, an assistant professor in SOE’s Department of Teaching and Learning, is part of the interdisciplinary project team. The Interdisciplinary Technology Instruction Program for Individualized Technology Implementation Planning (ITIP2) received a five-year $1.228 million grant from the Office of Special Education Programs last year.
Roger Smith, professor in the College of Health Sciences and director of the Rehabilitation Research Design & Disability Center, is the principal investigator for the project.
The goal of the project is to help students from education and health sciences work together and better understand each other’s role in helping students with special needs, says Jozwik. Aspiring teachers, for example, will learn more about how adaptive technology can be used in the classroom, she adds.
“Classroom interventions can range from high tech to low tech,” says Jozwik. This could encompass everything from an iPad to specially designed pencil grips to help students communicate. Jozwik’s research and teaching focus on special education and bilingual learning.
Students from the different disciplines can take online classes together, then move on to doing clinical experiences and internships together. One cohort started online classes this spring, and plans are to begin planning for some joint projects in schools in southeastern Wisconsin during fall semester 2020. (Like many other field experiences and projects, the coronavirus pandemic is impacting planning.)
In addition to Jozwik and Smith, other faculty members of the ITIP2 team are:
Michelle Silverman and Denis Tomashek from Occupational Sciences and Technology; Shelley Lund from Communication Sciences and Disorders; and Victoria Moerchen from Kinesiology-Integrated Health Care and Performance.
Writing well
THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSINMILWAUKEE WRITING PROJECT is part of a five-year Department of Education grant to help improve the writing skills of students who are English language learners.
Donna Pasternak, professor of teaching and learning, will direct the UWM part of the project, which will involve six middle and high schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system. UWM’s subaward as part of the $14.7 million project is $600,000.
“The idea is to support teachers to work with English language learners, particularly on the subject of writing, using a cognitive strategies approach,” says Pasternak.
That approach helps students make the connections between reading and writing, and provides those strategies to classroom teachers to help their second language learners become more successful.
The grant grew out of the research of Carol Booth Olson of the University of California, who is principal investigator on the project. Her work is summarized in her book, “Helping English Learners to Write – Meeting Common Core Standards, Grades 6-12.”
Teachers will receive a stipend for their work on the project, for substitutes while they are out of the classroom and for books, technology and other curricula needed.
The project will involve professional development and summer institutes for teachers, and other supports to help students improve their writing in both English and other subjects and overcome education disparities, according to Pasternak.
The UWM Writing Project has recruited schools. A key priority was that schools had to have a large population of second language learners, says Pasternak. Three teacher consultants --Jennifer Hussa, co-director of the UWM Writing Project, Kelly Saunders and Natalie Cook – will be working with the public schools.
Pilot projects began in January 2020 with the intent to start working with schools in the summer and fall of 2020, but that timing may be interrupted by school closings due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The hope, though, is that the work will carry on when schools return to their normal schedules, and can support teachers aid English language learners with those vital writing skills that can help them better prepare for the challenges of high school and beyond.
“The original research has shown that this approach really works,” says Pasternak. “We are excited about our future implementation and results.”
