Michigan Education Magazine Fall 2022

Michigan Education

Transforming education systems, practice, and policies

We hear a lot about improving education and that’s an admirable goal, but is it enough? Small, measured improvements are valuable, but the University of Michigan School of Education recognizes that the way forward lies in transformation.

Sometimes, transformation requires us to disrupt to challenge taken-for-granted practices and policies that don’t serve to build equitable and just systems. It takes boldness, cooperation, and a propensity to step out of the familiar to pursue the extraordinary.

This issue of MichiganEducationis dedicated to those who disrupt so that they may transform education systems, practice, and policies. We share some of their stories with the knowledge that hundreds—perhaps thousands—within our community have their own stories of disrupting to transform.

I’m pleased to introduce five outstanding new faculty members who joined our community this fall. Drs. Kara Finnigan, Jennifer Randall, Chris Torres, Jeremy Wright-Kim, and Ying Xu drive transformation in exciting ways, each using their scholarship and teaching to further education justice.

This summer, the National Center for Institutional Diversity awarded research grants to 27 U-M graduate

students to support research focused on racial equity and justice. We are proud that seven of the recipients are SOE students. Their research questions challenge assumptions, approach questions from new perspectives, and center the experiences of racially minoritized learners. With four of the seven grantees pursuing their doctoral degrees in higher education, these studies will inform college and university practices, beginning on our own campus.

One of the most exciting programs for encouraging our students to think creatively and expansively about education tools is the James A. Kelly Learning Lever Prize. Mr. Garret Potter, a dual degree master’s student in the School of Education and the School of Information, is one of this year’s development award winners for his product, Everstory. Potter saw an eagerness among his kindergarten students to freely explore all the places and things that interested them, but they were limited by their inability to read fluently. He started creating an encyclopedic exploration environment relying on audio and visual materials for early learners. Potter has now received other awards for his project and is launching it with the help of several other SOE students.

Sometimes disruption is an intentional act, but at other times, we must navigate unexpected and challenging disruptions, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is still incumbent upon us to cultivate opportunities in the wake of unplanned disruptions. SOE research teams leaped into action to start studying the educational impacts of the pandemic. In this issue of MichiganEducation, we hear from three faculty members who work at the intersection of education and policymaking. Drs. Christina Weiland, Kevin Stange, and Brian Jacob share findings from their work on early childhood education programs, district and administrator decision making, and parental choices.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many educators, students, and families to quickly adopt new

technologies. Although this isn’t the ideal situation for integrating learning technologies, it does allow researchers who are paying attention to analyze the benefits and drawbacks of each platform. Since 2016, Dr. Vilma Mesa and her research team have been exploring the use of open-source mathematics textbooks available online for their potential to help instructors become aware of—and responsive to—the needs of students. By studying the ways that students and instructors use free, open-source textbooks and introducing new capabilities, she is changing the way we think about teaching postsecondary mathematics.

At The School at Marygrove, teachers (including interns and residents in the Michigan Education Teaching School) are creating spaces for children and youth to share their ideas for the future of Detroit. As the capstone project in the high school economics class, lead teacher Mr. Brandon Moss and student teacher Mr. Hunter Janness asked students to explore how Detroit’s economy could grow in ways that are just and equitable. Applying their understanding of economic concepts, students researched topics from transportation and housing to incarceration and air quality, which they presented to Detroit City Councilmember Angela Whitfield Calloway.

Our Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education continues to shape the field with a first-of-its-kind center focused on admissions practices. The Michigan Admissions Collaboratory, created by Dr. Michael Bastedo, will convene scholars around the world examining issues of college access, admissions transparency and corruption, and holistic admissions practices. This initiative comes at an interesting time for postsecondary education in the wake of admissions scandals, the movement for test-blind and test-optional admissions, and changes to the higher education landscape brought about by COVID19 and economic circumstances. We look forward to engaging an international group of colleagues in the coming years.

As always, I am eager to share news of new scholarships and academic funds that have been established in the past several months by donors who generously support our community and mission. Their contributions bring our visions within reach and shape the experience of being at the SOE.

Please enjoy this issue of MichiganEducation, fellow disruptors! Together, I know we won’t stop at small-scale improvement when educators and learners deserve systems transformation. Go Blue! ■

Meet the New SOE Faculty Members

The Power and Potential of Education Policy

Dean Elizabeth Birr Moje Editor Danielle Dimcheff Writers

Jeanne Hodesh

Good Growth

New students were officially welcomed to campus at orientation in August. This was an opportunity to meet classmates and advisors, obtain important details about the first year of graduate school, and learn how to become active members of the SOE community.

above The Marygrove block party welcomed families of students as well as those in the community to enjoy a day of family-oriented activities including performances, face painting, a petting farm, painting classes, food, and booths featuring many community organizations.

left When The School at Marygrove asked for book donations to fill their new classrooms and Little Free Libraries around campus, the SOE community showed up! Among the book drive’s many donors was Renee Greenberger, who collected armfuls of titles to share with young readers.

Top and above Celina Byrd, Principal of the Marygrove Early Education Center; Lisa Williams, Principal of The School at Marygrove; and SOE Dean Elizabeth Moje were among many faculty and staff welcoming students to their new school. This school year marks the opening of grades K-2 in the newly renovated elementary building and the addition of 12th grade to the high school.

Over homecoming weekend, members of the class of 1972 celebrated their 50th reunion at a luncheon hosted by Dean Moje and the Office of Development and Alumni Relations.

The SOE homecoming tailgate drew together alumni, students, faculty, and staff before the Michigan vs. Maryland football game, which the Wolverines won 34-27.

Top At an open house to introduce the EdHub Design Lab, guests explored new facilities that include a recording studio available for use by SOE faculty, students, and staff. The EdHub for Community and Professional Learning is the SOE’s center of online learning for families, community advocates, educational professionals, and policymakers.

above With the new academic year just underway, students, faculty, and staff came together for the annual fall convocation. In addition to remarks from Dean Moje and Provost Laurie McCauley, Associate Deans Michael Bastedo, Kendra Hearn, and Deborah Rivas-Drake and Assistant Dean Henry Meares shared their respective goals for the year ahead.

Autumn in Michigan is the perfect time for hot donuts and cider with your SOE friends.

Meet the New SOE fa culty Members

five dynamic additions to the SoE community

Dr. Kara finnigan Professor, Educational Studies

r. Kara Finnigan is a scholar of educational leadership and policy. She has studied the implementation and impact of accountability and choice policies in U.S. public education, as well as regional educational policy solutions, with a focus on equity and racial justice. She is currently looking at connections between education and housing policies, social movements around integration in metropolitan areas, and the social networks of educational leaders around research evidence. Her work has addressed how educational policies shape access, learning opportunities, and outcomes for students of color and students living in poverty. Drawing from the fields of education, sociology, and political science, she uses qualitative and quantitative methods, including social network analysis and GIS mapping. Before joining the SOE, Finnigan served as the director of the master’s and doctoral educational policy programs at the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education, where she shaped the learning experiences of students by redesigning multiple programs. She also served as a Distinguished Equity, Inclusion, and Social Transformation Fellow and Inclusive Climate Leadership Fellow, where she focused on issues relating to faculty recruitment and retention as well as new ways of supporting community engagement for racial justice at the university level. In fall 2022, Finnigan began serving as senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation.

Several of your recent projects explore social network structures in education contexts. What have you discovered about why an understanding of these structures is important?

dKf: I became interested in social network theories and methods because they help us to understand complex issues in different ways from more traditional approaches. For example, many policy strategies focus heavily on transactional aspects of educational change without paying sufficient attention to relational components. My longitudinal studies of educational leaders helped to uncover gaps in assumptions as far as whether the conditions were in place for collaborative and sustained change as well as identified the high level of churn that was disrupting the conditions for organizational learning and change to occur. Being able to map and measure the structure of these underlying relationships—in this case among educational leaders in a district and teachers in a school—is a unique contribution to policy implementation research.

In addition to studying education policy, how do you connect policymakers and others with your findings?

Kf: As an education policy scholar, I conduct research that focuses on the design, implementation, and impact of policies at all levels of the education system to improve our understanding of who is benefiting or being harmed by policies and ensure equity and justice. I see my role as a public scholar, meaning someone who prioritizes not just conducting research and being in dialogue with other scholars, but also communicating with and learning from a variety of different audiences. I have done this through writing opinion pieces and blog posts, testifying before governmental agencies, sharing my work on podcasts, serving on local committees engaged in policy change, and participating in events focused on parents or community members. Helping the next generation of policy scholars in developing the knowledge and skills to engage with and learn from different policy audiences, including policymakers, is something I value a great deal.

How do you mentor students to be justice-focused scholars?

Kf: I mentor students to be justice-focused scholars in three key ways. First, I try to ensure that equity and racial justice are in the foreground of all aspects of my work—from teaching to research to service—and try to help students see how these are centered. Second, I provide context and resources to facilitate their learning about the historical patterns and structures that are unjust and inequitable (and for whom) and work with them to develop strategies not just to navigate but to disrupt these, whether by understanding or advocating for policies, designing research, engaging with communities, or developing courses. Third, I bring critical lenses to the mentoring relationship itself and try to create more democratic spaces to exchange ideas, in contrast to the more hierarchical mentor-mentee relationship. In doing so I often uncover new understandings and practices as far as what it means to be a justicefocused scholar and mentor. ■

“I conduct research that focuses on the design, implementation, and impact of policies at all levels of the education system to improve our understanding of who is benefiting or being harmed by policies and ensure equity and justice.”

Dr. Jennifer Randall Dunn Family Endowed Professor of Psychometrics and Test Development, Educational Studies

dr. Jennifer Randall is a scholar of educational assessment and psychometrics who studies measurement issues (both large-scale and classroom-based) and the ways in which assessments take into consideration historically marginalized populations in the U.S. and abroad. She explores this through two overarching strands of research: core technical issues in psychometrics and culturally sustaining and antiracist approaches to developing assessment and measurement tools and practices.

Randall’s teaching reflects her commitment to applying her research on social justice in assessment and measurement to her own pedagogical practice. She teaches courses focused on classroom assessment, research methods, statistics, measurement, and scale development. Her instruction is guided by social justice pedagogical practices, which are centered in democracy and the ability to exercise one’s full humanity. Randall’s dedication to teaching and mentorship have been recognized with the University of Massachusetts College of Education Outstanding Teaching Award in 2013, and the NERA Thomas F. Donlon Memorial Award for Distinguished Mentoring in 2021.

Randall is also the president of the Center for Measurement Justice (CMJ), an independent nonprofit funded by philanthropic organizations. With her move to the SOE, CMJ will be affiliated with U-M, but will remain an independent nonprofit organization run by racially minoritized persons.

She comes to the SOE from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was an associate professor in the College of Education. How did your time as a classroom teacher shape your course of scholarly research?

JR: I worked for several years as a preschool teacher, then as a high school social studies teacher. Contrary to the platitudes I was fed about the ways in which education can elevate, empower, and liberate, what I saw were the ways in which multiple systems (across

multiple levels) seemed designed to marginalize and dehumanize certain groups of students. Racially minoritized students seemed to be especially targeted through academic tracking, exclusionary discipline practices, and assessments seemingly designed to support deficit narratives about what they know and are able to do. Although I personally support efforts to disrupt all of these systems, my professional scholarship focuses on the latter. I believe that education spaces have the potential to be liberatory for all students and I am committed to figuring out how educational assessments can support—as opposed to inhibit—those aims.

What would it look like for antiracist assessment practices to be common in schools?

JR: I believe antiracist assessments are a part of a comprehensive system of justice-oriented, liberatory education. Antiracist assessments can complement existing—or instigate the implementation of—antiracist pedagogical practices. In practice, this looks like large-scale design and implementation of assessments that (1) disrupt negative stereotypes about any marginalized group; (2) acknowledge sociopolitical inequities and injustices and empower students to enact change by combating these injustices; (3) allow multiple ways of knowing/understanding and performing the content; and (4) provide complete and accurate historical and contemporary perspectives that go beyond celebrating and/or protecting whiteness. Rupturing these logics will require the efforts of co-conspirators at every level—engaging with parents/families and students—to create something better.

What is the Center for Measurement Justice?

JR: CMJ is a research center with a focus on antiracist assessment and measurement practices (which complements and supplements my own research agenda). We work with industry partners, parents, teachers, and students to develop and evaluate antiracist assessment practices and tasks. In addition to both conducting and funding research, CMJ was created to further two other goals: to improve representation in, and transformation of, the field of measurement. To increase the representation of racially minoritized scholars in the field of educational measurement, CMJ funds fellowships and internships as well as provides mentoring support for Black, Brown, and Indigenous students. In partnership with education agencies, other nonprofits, and researchers, CMJ also advocates for the adoption and implementation of justice-oriented, antiracist assessment practices at the state, local, and classroom levels.

With anchor funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, we launched in January of 2022. These first few months we have focused on building the team, including hiring an executive director, assembling an advisory board, establishing partnerships, and listening to stakeholders. This fall, we will continue these efforts and release our first RFP. Ultimately, we will build a strong and powerful community of activists and co-conspirators committed to equitable and just assessment practices. ■

“I believe that education spaces have the potential to be liberatory for all students and I am committed to figuring out how educational assessments can support—as opposed to inhibit— those aims.”

“But I soon began to wonder why so many of the teaching staff left every year... I was intrigued by this puzzle, and I also felt like it was a travesty that so many minoritized students were losing teachers every year to the point that it was a running joke among some of our students.”

Dr. Chris Torres Associate Professor, Educational Studies

ascholar of educational leadership and policy, Dr. Chris Torres’ research examines the perspectives, experiences, and practices of teachers and educational leaders in marginalized communities to understand how they are influenced by the policies, systems, and organizations in which they are situated. His work largely focuses on two areas: no-excuses charter schools and the role of leadership and governance contexts in school choice and accountability policies.

Torres uses mixed-methods research designs that include applied research conducted in partnership with the organizations he studies, with the aim of elevating and centering the voices of teachers and families, along with Students of Color and those experiencing poverty.

In 2022, he received both the AERA Districts and Reform SIG Outstanding Publication Award and the AERA Division L Outstanding Policy Report Award. He was also named Outstanding Reviewer for Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (2018 and 2019) and received a University of Michigan NCID Exemplary Scholar Award (2013). Prior to joining SOE this fall, Torres served as an associate professor of educational administration at Michigan State University, where he was also the associate director of the University Council on Educational Administration.

How did you become interested in examining school leadership, and particularly in charter schools?

CT: I started off my career teaching kindergarten and first grade in the Bronx. After a couple of years, my principal seemed to trust me and largely left me alone, but I wanted to learn and grow as a teacher. I started looking around for other jobs and ended up at

a charter school in Harlem that had a collegial environment and impressive teacher coaching systems. But I soon began to wonder why so many of the teaching staff left every year. The problem of teacher turnover at this school was similar to what I’d seen in the Bronx, but the context was so different. I was intrigued by this puzzle, and I also felt like it was a travesty that so many minoritized students were losing teachers every year to the point that it was a running joke among some of our students. I eventually applied to graduate school to better understand this problem, which led me to my dissertation work on teacher turnover in no-excuses charter schools. From there, through triangulating the literature, my findings, and my own experiences as a teacher, it became impossible to ignore how important school leadership is to teacher retention.

As Michigan and the nation face severe teacher shortages, what can be done to improve teacher recruitment and retention?

CT: When my son was three, I remember one of his favorite teachers abruptly leaving his daycare classroom. He struggled a little after that. Before she left, I had a conversation with her. She said it made a lot more sense for her to be a nanny. Not only would she get paid more, but it would be less stressful. Another of MSU’s best childcare centers just advertised for a teaching position—this person would make in the high $20K range each year. Obviously, these examples are not from the K-12 context but the concerns about pay are similar, especially for new teachers in low-income districts. Researchers and policymakers like to point to “malleable” factors like working conditions and leadership to improve teacher supply and retention, but there’s also a lot of good evidence that concerns about pay influence teachers’ career decisions and mobility between districts. Pay is something that policymakers largely have control over. What’s on your current reading list—academic or otherwise?

CT: Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of pop psychology books for fun. I was a psychology major in college so that’s been an area of interest of mine for a long time. Earlier this year I read a couple of books on positive psychology and right now I’m in the middle of Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty and Chatter by U-M’s own Ethan Kross. ■

Dr. Jeremy WrightKim

Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education

dr. Jeremy Wright-Kim joins the SOE’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE) as an assistant professor of education. His research agenda seeks to identify and address structural and institutional inequities that hinder American higher education from delivering on its promise of educational equity for all students, and centers community colleges as engines for opportunity.

Wright-Kim has led or collaborated on research projects funded by the American Educational Research Association, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation, and the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. A recent co-winner of the ASHE Dissertation of the Year award, he is a critical policy scholar with a focus on higher education finance and a particular interest in community colleges and open-access institutions.

Wright-Kim comes to the SOE from the School of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he was previously an assistant professor.

What are some of the greatest challenges you have found through your research that prevent American higher education from delivering on its promise of educational equity for all students?

JW-K: American higher education is stratified by design. While this structure may ostensibly help the system fulfill an admittedly impressive array of goals and functions, it can also bake in inequality. One key example of this is the community college sector, which is a

primary focus of my research. Despite being tasked with serving some of the students with the highest needs, the sector receives far fewer resources than its four-year counterparts—in effect, it must “do more with less.” Although it has the highest potential to move the needle on social mobility and educational access and success, such chronic resource stratification hinders the sector’s ability to meet these goals. Some of my current work also highlights other policy-designed constraints placed upon the sector, such as limitations to the level and type of degrees community colleges may offer. Overall, I believe better alignment between our public policies and the needs facing the community college sector would be a crucial and productive step toward educational equity.

How do you hope your research will help address inequities in higher education?

JW-K: Like most researchers, my ultimate goal is for my work to have practical value. All of my interactions with policymakers and practitioners lead me to believe that we’re largely on the same page. We all want to make college more accessible, affordable, supportive, and aligned with our myriad social and economic needs. But we’re operating within real constraints, and there are tangible tradeoffs to consider with most policy choices. I hope I can help higher education leaders think through these tradeoffs with an equity-oriented mindset and enable them to make the best choices possible for their communities. In terms of my current scholarship, that means (1) identifying how to more equitably fund the community college sector and (2) exploring how certain policies, such as community college baccalaureates or stackable pathways, can help the sector address the persistent opportunity and outcome gaps experienced by the populations it tends to serve, including the lion’s share of minoritized, othered, and otherwise underserved students in the U.S.

What course or courses are you most excited to teach at U-M?

JW-K: I’m fortunate to be teaching some of the introductory classes, which means I’ll have the chance to get to know many of our CSHPE students and their varying interests—it’s the multifaceted nature of higher education that makes studying and teaching it such fun. I’m particularly excited about the Public Policy in Postsecondary Education course. There are so many important policy issues facing this next generation of higher education leaders, and whether they’re policymakers, researchers, or practitioners, they’ll have a role to play in tackling them. I’m looking forward to helping them along that journey. ■

“We’re operating within real constraints, and there are tangible tradeoffs to consider with most policy choices. I hope I can help higher education leaders think through these tradeoffs with an equity-oriented mindset and enable them to make the best choices possible for their communities.”

PBS KIDS

interactive science show where the main character asks children questions about the science concepts introduced in the show and provides tailored feedback based on the children’s responses.”

Dr. Ying Xu Assistant Professor, Educational Studies

dr. Ying Xu researches and designs technologies that promote language and literacy development, STEM learning, and well-being for children and families. Xu’s current projects center on artificial intelligence: in particular, natural language processing and speech technologies. She explores whether and how these new technologies play the role of a language partner or learning companion for children, thereby impacting children’s social interactions and developmental processes. She has a particular interest in designing technologies from an asset-oriented perspective with and for children and their families who speak languages other than English.

In her research, Xu collaborates closely with national media producers, including PBS KIDS and Sesame Workshop, as well as industrial partners and local community organizations. Her work has been supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Still an earlycareer scholar, she has already published over 20 peer-reviewed papers in premier academic venues across psychology, learning sciences, and human computer interaction. She has won five bestpaper awards or nominations for her research and was selected as a Public Impact Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Irvine in recognition of the potential of her research to significantly enrich people’s lives.

What possibilities do emerging AI technologies offer for your research interests?

YX: Advances in speech technologies and natural language processing (think Siri and Alexa) present a variety of opportunities to carry out research in support of children’s education and development.

My research focuses on integrating this kind of technology into educational media so that children can converse with AI partners capable of providing targeted guidance and scaffolding. For example, I am partnering with PBS KIDS to develop an interactive science show where the main character asks children questions about the science concepts introduced in the show and provides tailored feedback based on the children’s responses. We have found that these types of conversations between children and their AI partners enhance children’s learning, engagement, and motivation.

However, as with most technologies, conversational AI can have its own biases. Children who do not speak English at home or who simply have less experience interacting with digital devices of this sort may encounter more challenges, and therefore reap fewer educational rewards. Thus, my research also aims to identify and address such biases so that the technologies I create contribute to, rather than work against, educational equity.

How do you engage children, families, and communities in co-designing media?

YX: I see co-design as a way of actively challenging and reducing many of the biases inherent in AI and making the technology more responsive and responsible. To achieve this goal, I always involve children, families, and community members in the research when I develop AI-powered media, eliciting their perspectives through interviews, contextual inquiries, and low- and high-fidelity prototyping, among other methods. In a project with Sesame Workshop, I used these methods to co-design e-books with Latino families. The resulting e-books are embedded with conversational AI designed to engage bilingual families in dialogues that are responsive to their values, routines, and language preferences.

The co-design process is a great way to empower those who are not traditionally involved in academic research. In addition to involving the children, families, and community members who will ultimately use the educational media, my projects attract underrepresented college and graduate students who can uniquely contribute to the research by leveraging their own background and experience.

In anticipation of starting your next professional chapter at U-M, what are you most excited about?

YX: I’m really excited about the recently established Eileen Lappin Weiser Learning Sciences Center in the SOE. It will afford me tremendous opportunities to continue my research and use AI technologies to tackle educational challenges facing local communities. In particular, I look forward to partnering with schools and community groups in Ann Arbor and Detroit to develop new mechanisms supporting equitable learning for children in Michigan and beyond. ■

“I am partnering with

to develop an

The Power and Potential of Education Policy

Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered public education in the United States, with many schools introducing remote learning for at least part of the year and making urgent decisions in the face of constantly evolving conditions, creating new challenges for teachers, parents, and children alike. Education policy researchers are now examining the extent of learning setbacks experienced by youth and the harmful impacts to our public education system.

For three education policy researchers, all parents themselves, the task is now to evaluate what happened—from inside early childhood classrooms to decisions made by school boards and around family tables— and understand the pandemic’s effects on learning in order to establish a way forward.

Christina Weiland, Associate Professor in the School of Education and Co-Director of the Education Policy Initiative (EPI) at the Ford School, felt that it was essential for policymakers to have a clear and accurate lay of the land when making COVID-related

decisions and allocating resources. There had been a significant amount of research conducted even from early 2020 on the effects of the pandemic on young children and early childhood education programs, but local school administrators and policymakers often struggled to access or evaluate these resources while coping with urgent, rapidly changing needs.

Weiland, who studies how quality early childhood education can affect student outcomes later in life, understood the importance of getting research findings in the hands of educators and policymakers.

When the pandemic began, Weiland’s own children were four months old and eight years old. “For me, it meant no childcare for 16 months because we were very cautious with our little guy until vaccines were available,” she says. This also meant round-the-clock hours for Weiland and her husband as they juggled work and childcare, an experience that is familiar to many families. “I would say our lives are definitely still not back to normal,” she says.

Weiland and her team worked to synthesize the volume of early education policy research and guidance into a cohesive picture of where the country stood in order to offer evidencebased solutions for moving forward.

faculty research offers surprising insights and meaningful solutions for education policy during and after the coVid-19 pandemic

Christina Weiland

That picture is one of many challenges. “Teachers’ working conditions got really hard,” Weiland says. She notes that early childhood centers were often open during times when public schools weren’t, placing staff on the front lines in a period when there was sparse information on how the virus was transmitted. “They were there showing up day to day for their kids,” Weiland says. The added pressures caused many teachers to feel overwhelmed or experience depression, with a significant number leaving the profession entirely.

The inherent challenges of learning and education in a pandemic were exacerbated by the understandably emotional conflicts arising when parents disagreed with their public school’s decision to hold classes in-person or remotely.

“Our research looking at how school enrollment shifted during the pandemic showed that parents reacted very differently even when facing the same situation,” says Kevin Stange, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School, Associate Professor of Education

in the School of Education, and Co-Director of EPI. He is currently on leave to serve as an adviser for the U.S. Department of Education.

Stange’s research on the pandemic explores the drop in public school enrollment spurred by different learning modalities. Many parents unhappy with a school’s decision to hold in-person classes opted to transition their children to a home school environment, while parents disagreeing with their public school engaging in remote learning placed their children in private schools instead.

“My long term concern is that this shift that we saw with the pandemic might lead to an unraveling of the social contract that provides support for public education,” Stange says. Though individual families may do what they feel is best for their own children, taken collectively, the decrease in enrollment could have significant implications for public school resources.

Even if parents objected to their local school board’s decisions, though, research by Brian Jacob, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Education at the Ford School and Professor of Education at the School of Education, showed that, in general, administrators were

behaving

“Some of what’s broken now wasn’t broken by the pandemic. We had high turnover in early childhood settings before the pandemic,” she says.

“Basically anything that was a crack before the pandemic has become a chasm. So, we need to think about the recovery not just being short term, but around longer term investments.”

Kevin Stange

rationally. “At some baseline level, they were doing what you would hope they would do, balancing costs and benefits and making decisions based on COVID cases and how it changed over time,” he says.

Jacob’s research shows a greater degree of nuance both in initial decisions regarding learning modality for the 2020-21 school year and for decision points that emerged throughout the year.

“We show that as vaccines became more widely adopted, COVID case rates were less predictive” of whether a school would hold inperson learning the following week, Jacob says. “They were less worried because they thought people would be able to protect themselves.”

“We also found that they were cognizant of their peers. Like if Saline [schools] went back in person, that put pressure on Ann Arbor [schools],” Jacob adds. Stange’s research also supports this conclusion.

The subtle and nuanced deliberation that went into decisions on learning modality evidenced by his research surprised Jacob.

“In the midst of the early pandemic, it wasn’t clear that there was a lot of thought to any of this,” he says. “Ann Arbor is a relatively affluent district that had the resources and should have had the capacity to do things that other districts with less money probably didn’t have,” he says. “I was definitely frustrated, and that was one of the things that spurred my interest in understanding what was going on.”

Stange, whose research highlights parental decisions, also notes the challenges faced by administrators. “Being a head of a school district during the last three years has to be the hardest job I can imagine,” he says. “I have deep empathy for folks in those positions.”

Locally, Stange cited Kalamazoo as a district that was responsive to parental concerns. “They conducted surveys to get people’s concerns on the table and to weigh them,” he says. This resulted in Kalamazoo schools maintaining remote learning for most of the 2020-21 school year, “and the parents were pretty happy with that.” In other districts, he says, board members instead debated with each other and handed down decisions that upset parents.

So what happens next? Though a muchpublicized study seems to confirm parents’

fears about the pandemic’s effects on children’s education, Weiland would prefer to focus on the solutions her research points toward. Children of all ages have clearly experienced learning setbacks—a term Weiland prefers over the more negativesounding “learning loss”—but these should not be insurmountable, she says. “Young kids can learn really fast under the right conditions, and they can come back from setbacks.” Weiland stresses the need to focus resources and spending on evidence-based approaches including tutoring, improved curricula, and increased focus on socialemotional learning, while supporting educators and bolstering early childcare programs. “We really need to follow the science of teaching and learning.”

Weiland also says that it is essential to address longstanding problems with the education system.

“Some of what’s broken now wasn’t broken by the pandemic. We had high turnover in early childhood settings before the pandemic,” she says. “Basically anything that was a crack before the pandemic has become a chasm. So, we need to think about the recovery not just being short term, but around longer term investments.” ■

Many parents unhappy with a school’s decision to hold in-person classes opted to transition their children to a home school environment, while parents disagreeing with their public school engaging in remote learning placed their children in private schools instead.

Brian Jacob

Good Growth

How do you make sure that growth is good?

This was the overarching question students at The School at Marygrove (TSM) explored for their final projects about creating equitable growth in their hometown of Detroit. It was the culminating assignment for the economics class taught by lead teacher Brandon Moss and student teacher Hunter Janness.

The students’ work wasn’t just for a grade: they were speaking directly to Detroit City Councilmember Angela Whitfield Calloway. Whitfield Calloway— a graduate of Cooley High School who went on to earn degrees from Spelman College and Detroit College of Law—is a former adult education instructor, human resources administrator, hearing officer, and lifelong Detroiter. Although the students in class are too young to vote, Whitfield Calloway believes these students’ voices are as critical as any of her constituents’.

The students formed groups, with each one researching a different area they saw as crucial to equitable economic development in Detroit. Topics included access to housing, mitigating air pollution, fixing roads, encouraging small businesses, improving bus infrastructure, and rein tegrating Detroiters who have been incarcerated.

“I have not seen teenagers so engaged in identify ing problems in their city and fiercely, confidently pursuing solutions,” says Whitfield Calloway. The councilwoman enthusiastically encouraged each group and followed up with questions that pushed the students’ thinking even further.

One group, whose project was titled “Housing in the D,” discovered that more than 1,000 people became homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic, and over 300 of Detroit’s currently unhoused individuals are under the age of 18. According to the students, the city’s 26 shelters can’t meet the demand. Families without secure housing struggle to participate in the economy and the educational system. Their team proposed investing in housing and supports particularly designed for single

“I have not seen teenagers so engaged in identifying problems in their city and fiercely, confidently pursuing solutions.”

Angela Whitfield Calloway

High school students lend their voices to the effort to create equitable economic growth in Detroit

mothers facing homelessness.

Several other groups presented on various aspects of transportation in Detroit, including road conditions that impinge on the local economy; Detroiters who struggle to get to work because they can’t afford gas, vehicle maintenance, and insurance; and buses that aren’t perceived as being safe or clean. Their solutions ranged from AI-powered road condition monitoring to crowdsourced data on public transit.

If this doesn’t sound like a typical high school economics class, that’s because it isn’t. However, the students are showing mastery of terms such as GDP, supply, demand, profit, and opportunity cost, among many other common economics concepts. “Rote memorization teaches you an accepted framework within economics but it doesn’t teach you to think ‘economi cally,’” says Janness.

Moss and Janness first introduced the language of economics in apprehensible ways. “We did this by applying labels to phenomena they already intuitively under stood,” says Janness. That was the founda tion for building a curriculum in which students would be prepared to ask authentic questions, synthesize their own knowledge and experiences, and think critically about equity as it pertains to the economic growth of a large metropolitan area.

“You undersell the importance of the topic if you’re not teaching them about the implications of GDP, for example,” says Moss. “They can listen to the news and hear that the GDP grew and it can be implied that that’s a good thing, but it’s important to us that they can ask questions about what that actually means. Is all growth good? Does where the growth comes from matter? How is that wealth distributed?”

Project- and place-based learning, which are at the heart of the TSM curriculum, are powerful for many reasons. Moss and Janness say that structuring learning this way has led students to learn about them selves and their communities while also giving them opportunities to make real contributions that they feel good about. Moss and Janness are impressed by their students’ progress during the year. They found that the students were asking better questions, astutely using sources to do research, and challenging each other to imagine creative solutions to problems that they identified in their own communities.

In addition to the learning objectives of the state’s economic standards, the class incorpo rates the Learning for Justice standards put forth by the education arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Learning for Justice publishes resources to help foster shared learning and reflection for educators, young

people, caregivers, and community members.

Janness, who completed his undergradu ate degree in economics, is thrilled to share his interest in economics with his students. The final presentations were the culmina tion of the class as well as Janness’ experi ence as a student teacher.

Since Janness is pursuing the Michigan Education Teaching School pathway, he joined TSM at the start of his one-year Master of Arts with Certification program. He worked with his attending mentor teacher, Moss, and his field instructor, Bill Waychunas, to plan the ambitious lessons he taught.

Janness is now a resident teacher at TSM and is able to continue working with TSM students and families. Janness is a mentor to intern teachers while benefiting from the continued support of his colleagues at TSM and the faculty and staff of the SOE. His placement in the school allows him to keep helping his students use their agency, ideas, and passion to shape their community.

Whitfield Calloway is also eager to hear more from TSM students, who peppered her with questions about how city council works, how residents can communicate with city council, and how local taxes are determined. “You’ve given me a lot of ideas to take back to council tomorrow,” she told the class. ■

Michael Bastedo Launches the Michigan Admissions Collaboratory a

new center highlights the role admissions play in equitable access to college

Long before the Varsity Blues Scandal of recent years was front-page news, Center for the Study of Higher and Post secondary Education (CSHPE) professor Michael Bastedo had a vested interest in the topic of college admissions.

As a first generation college student himself, Bastedo remembers how daunting it was to navigate the application process.

“My parents didn’t go to college,” says Bastedo. “They had no idea where I should go. So I sat in the library and read the admissions guidebooks from beginning to end. One of them twice!” This fall, he is launching the Michigan Admissions Collaboratory, the first academic center of its kind devoted to researching college admissions.

Admissions research was not what Bastedo set out to study. Long fascinated by the ways that people and organizations make decisions—specifi cally, how bias factors into the decision-making process—he began his academic career researching state policy and governance structures. “I was very interested in what was going on in psychology around biases and heuristics—what are the cogni tive biases that people hold? And how do those biases affect their work?” Furthermore, he was interested in finding ways to change how people think so that they would become less biased, and the potential impacts on access, equity, and educa tional justice.

But as he approached tenure, Bastedo felt that his research on policy and state governance was, as he puts it, “in a cul-de-sac.” While he was a graduate student, he had worked in an admissions office as a seasonal reader. The experience stayed with him. “Admissions,” says Bastedo, “is a crucible for decision making.” He conjectured that it might be the perfect arena to continue his investigation of decision-making biases and their impact on people’s work.

On sabbatical, Bastedo volunteered as a seasonal admissions reader in two public university admissions offices. His goal was to ascertain what biases admissions officers had and why, and how

those biases might be impacting the number of low-income and racially minoritized students who were admitted to selective colleges. Since he turned his focus to admissions in 2010, he has gone on to visit nearly 30 admissions offices. Ultimately, he found that admissions practices are deeply con nected to the population attending each college.

“I looked at 30 years of data, and whether we were looking at low-income students, or racially minoritized students, or women for that matter, there had been little to no progress over that time in the proportion of those students who were enrolling in selective colleges,” says Bastedo. Given that, he says it would be easy to assume that increasing enrollment for these students is not a priority for admissions offices. But because of his background working in such offices himself, Bastedo quickly realized that was not the case. In the field, Bastedo examined what attempts had been made to increase enrollment of low-income and racially minoritized students, what admissions officers were currently trying to do, what was failing, and why.

“Everyone talks about research-to-practice, but I’ve always thought that my best ideas for doing research have actually come from practice,” says Bastedo. That’s why he is calling the new Michigan Admissions Collaboratory a “practice-to-research” center. Housed at the SOE, it will be a place where both professionals working in the admissions field and scholars can talk to each other. In addition to Bastedo’s research team, the center will have a

Bastedo

board of working professionals in the field. He intends the center’s work to be collab orative in nature, and wants the scope of its research to expand beyond the national context. By establishing a center people can turn to when seeking research on the topic, he hopes to raise the profile of the crucial role the admissions process plays in equitable access to a college degree.

“Everyone who’s gone to college has an opinion about how they got in,” says Bastedo. And yet, he adds, “the topic of admissions has historically been overlooked in academia. When I first started doing this, there was very little research on admissions. There were a few histories, but in terms of empirical research, there really wasn’t much.” In recent years, though, Bastedo has seen an uptick in interest, not just in society at large, but among researchers.

“I think for a long time people thought admissions was a bit of a sideshow topic. The real meat of college access was in com munity colleges and broad access colleges. But more people who are really committed

admissions tells us about cognitive bias, and the ways in which officers can organize to mitigate it.

In collaboration with the College Board, Bastedo’s research inspired Landscape, a dashboard tool that provides admissions counselors with a more well-rounded pro file of an applicant by sharing data about their high school and neighborhood. On Landscape, readers can access information about the availability of Advanced Place ment courses, the percentage of students on free or reduced-cost lunch programs, and how applicants’ test scores compare with those of their high school classmates. Over 150 colleges have adopted the tool, and a recently published article shows

to access and equity are seeing that this is a pretty significant proportion of schools. The people who go to selective colleges are far more likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. They have big impacts on their communities. They’re much more connect ed to power in our society. They are much more likely to be leaders in business and politics. And so these schools matter a lot.”

In addition to academic conferences, Bastedo regularly presents at professional gatherings in the admissions field. This fall, he will present at the National Association for College Admissions Counseling confer ence and the College Board Forum. He also leads workshops for admissions offices in which he talks about what research on

that, on average, the percentage of under represented students who were admitted increased by five percentage points.

“I think it’s really important to tie our work to what professionals need and want,” says Bastedo. Leading these workshops and presentations, it struck him that there needed to be a book that presented the empirical research being done on admissions practices in a format that would be apprehensible by an audience that doesn’t necessarily have time to read journals. This December, Bastedo and co-editor OiYan A. Poon will publish Rethinking College Admissions (Harvard Education Press), which translates researchbacked insights into actionable strategies for innovative, equitable admissions practices.

Michigan Admissions Collaboratory’s scope of research will include holistic admissions, the movement for test-blind and test-optional admissions, and the ongoing impact the pandemic has had on college admissions. Another goal of the center is to engage with scholars who are researching admissions around the world. In spring 2023, the center will host an AERA Education Research conference in Ann Arbor. Until now, there have been few opportunities for international admissions scholars to share their work with colleagues in the field. The first-of-its-kind gather ing, titled Holistic Admissions in Global Context: Access, Diversity, and Diffusion, will bring together leading scholars from many countries, including South Korea, China, France, the UK, and Japan, to share ongoing research on holistic admissions practices around the world. The conference will provide a space to share their work and develop opportunities for collaborative inquiry that can move the field forward. In addition to examining the development of holistic admissions practices and their role in promoting and hindering social stratifi cation, reproduction, and mobility, partici pants will prepare working papers examin ing issues of access, mobility, transparency, and corruption across country contexts. Working within and across groups, partici pants will develop a multidisciplinary and global perspective on admissions practices. The ultimate goal is to ignite a robust, global community of admissions researchers who will inspire a research agenda for the field for many years to come.

As a researcher, says Bastedo, one always has to find one’s own motivation. The practice-to-research basis of the Michigan Admissions Collaboratory is his. “You never know what is going to make an im pact. As a scholar, you just have to pursue what you think is interesting. I hope that by focusing on practice-based problems in admissions, that increases the likelihood that people will be interested in what is discovered, and want to integrate those findings into their work.” ■

“Everyone talks about research-to-practice, but I’ve always thought that my best ideas for doing research have actually come from practice,” says Bastedo.

What Open-source Textbooks Could Mean for Teaching Mathematics in College

What is a good question?

Recently Dr. Vilma Mesa and her research team were thinking this over in the context of math textbooks. Nearly the whole team agreed that a good question is one everyone gets right. Mesa sat with that for a moment, then disagreed.

“A good question is one that gives me responses responses that allow me to see how people are thinking about the ideas,” says Mesa. After all, the School of Education professor of education and College of Literature, Science, and the Arts professor of mathematics is interested in how people think. Specifically, how mathematics students think.

Since 2016, as part of the Undergraduate Teaching in Mathematics with Open Software and Textbooks (UTMOST) Project funded by the National Science Foundation, Mesa has been investigating how the use of open-source textbooks written in a language called PreTeXt can improve the way postsecondary educators teach math. Available online, open-source textbooks are covered by an open copyright license, making them free to students, teachers, and members of the public.

PreTeXt is an authoring and publishing system for authors of textbooks, research articles, and monographs that is especially used in STEM disciplines. Open-source textbooks written in

PreTeXt are entirely customizable—giving faculty the freedom to enter, answer, and change questions, and gather responses from students. The software can even facilitate learning in other languages. Mesa relates that one of the authors in the project found a Spanish translation of a textbook he had written. Because the book had been written in PreTeXt, a professor at the University of Chile was able to translate it for use in his own classroom. The language also enables teachers to place interactive questions in their textbooks, which in turn can make it easier for them to see how their students are understanding the material. When students answer questions, the teacher sees their responses immediately. Most importantly, teachers can better understand how their students are thinking about the questions posed. With an understanding of how students are grappling with the concepts in the book, teachers can theoretically tailor their instruction to better serve their classes— but that remains to be seen.

“One of the things we want to know is whether faculty can see the advantages and if they will be more inclined to start using that information to do something different in the classroom,” says Mesa. She notes that math faculty regularly complain that their students never read their textbooks before coming to class, but after

Vilma Mesa and her team of researchers investigate the power of asking interactive questions

“In postsecondary education, the textbooks are mostly written for the students, even though it’s the teachers that use them the most. It’s a very interesting duality. It seems to me, most of the time, this ideal reader does not exist, or that teachers are trying to create that ideal reader based on the books that a certain person wrote.”

Mesa

analyzing student responses, Mesa says that’s not the case. “We had over 1,200 students in our sample of survey respondents and the number of people who say that they don’t read the book is very small. What does it take for faculty to actually look at the data [gathered from an interactive text] and say, ‘Oh, maybe I need to do something differently.’”

As Mesa’s team analyzes the data from those 1,200 students, they are looking at all the different

some were not textbooks but workbooks, others used cartoon characters to show how students could reason out the problems. She was curious about concepts that were presented differently than they had been when she was growing up in Colombia, or the ones that are commonly used in the U.S.

ways the students responded to a particular question. The team also shares this information with the students’ instructors. One teacher, whose class was taught entirely as a lecture when Mesa observed it, was so excited by the student responses, he immediately began thinking of other questions he would like to pose to his class. “I didn’t realize they were thinking about the content in this way,” he told Mesa. The students’ responses prompted the teachers to do things they had never done before, like generate discussions among the students about ideas that were presented in the questions.

Mesa has long been interested in the act of writing textbooks: how they organize information, and how they can be improved. While working on her dissertation, she examined textbooks from different countries.

Although most were similar, a few were quite different—

“It also interests me how the knowledge is conveyed,” says Mesa. “What are the assumptions that are made about knowledge, and about the reader? Who is the imagined person who will be reading the textbook or working with the textbook? In postsecondary education, the textbooks are mostly written for the students, even though it’s the teachers that use them the most. It’s a very interesting duality. It seems to me, most of the time, this ideal reader does not exist, or that teachers are trying to create that ideal reader based on the books that a certain person wrote.”

“What does it take for faculty to actually look at the data [gathered from an interactive text] and say, ‘Oh, maybe I need to do something differently.’”

Lack of student feedback is part of the reason it is hard to write good textbooks, notes Mesa. A traditional textbook might be 400 pages long.

“It’s so much content,” she says. “You have to cover those 400 pages in a semester. The kinds of connections that are going to happen over those 400 pages—nobody has time. I can see computers helping us do that by accumulating data. If groups of researchers gather around those data points and find patterns in student responses, they might say ‘Ask a question here. Next week, ask that question. Let’s see what happens.’”

Open-source textbooks have the potential to enable a new method of responsive teaching, but they also address an equity issue, plain and simple.

“They’re free, for God’s sake!” says Mesa, who remembers xeroxing pirated copies of textbooks for a tenth of their cost when she was a student

herself. “In terms of democratizing access to knowledge, that is one of the driving forces behind open-source books.” Furthermore, because they are digital, open-source textbooks can be accessed by students on any device. The sample of 1,200 students that Mesa’s research team is analyzing indicates that students may have used their phones more often to access their textbooks. There is also evidence that students interacted with the material on more than one device to complete their work.

In the long term, Mesa dreams of an automatic classification of student responses that would give instructors information that, for example, half of the students are thinking about a notion in one way, a third are thinking about it in another, and the rest are getting confused in a different way. The system would then prompt the teacher to introduce an activity in class that would support all three types of students in furthering their understanding of the concept.

For the next phase of her research, Mesa hopes to apply the same method of interactive questioning to a large subscription course taught by a group of faculty in the same department. Together, they can look at the responses, and then propose questions and activities to advance their students’ learning.

For now, her study is in the early stages of development. As she continues her investigation, Mesa hopes to better under stand what it will take for faculty to use the information that can be garnered from asking good questions to better serve their students.

“I imagine that the availability of this information may turn off some people, but it may be very exciting to other people. I don’t presume that this is going to revolutionize everything,” says Mesa, but over time, she hopes that the collected data will help move the needle in the way we think about teaching math. ■

Seven SOE Graduate Students Garner 2022

Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grants

Funding will support student progress toward degree

Earlier this year, the Anti-Racism Collabora tive, administered by the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID), awarded research grants to 27 U-M graduate students—seven of whom are SOE students. Co-sponsored by The Rackham Graduate School and the Center for Racial Justice (CRJ) in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, these grants aim to support engagement in research projects focused on racial inequality, racial equity, and racial justice while advancing graduate student progress toward degree.

“The Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grants offer critical support to our developing scholars in several ways,” says Elizabeth R. Cole, NCID Director and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies. “This funding allows them to pursue innovative, community-engaged scholarship that challenges systemic racism and oppression in our society, while providing the grantees with a supportive community of like-minded students from different disciplines across campus.”

Tabbye Chavous, Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer and former NCID director, said the Anti-Racism Collaborative received outstanding proposals from graduate students across the university. “The funded projects reflect the broad range of research that our graduate students are engaged in, focused on advancing anti-racist action,” Chavous remarked upon the announcement of the 2022 grant recipients.

From a digital storytelling project, to a maker space for Black youth, to new approaches to developing DEI strategies, and more—read on to learn how these exceptional SOE graduate students are putting their Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grants to use.

Yv ONNE G ARCIA PhD candidate in higher education

Faculty advisor: Charles H.F. Davis, III

An Anti-Colonial Phenomenology of Racialized Knowledge Systems, Epistemic Injustice, and Epistemic Resistance in Graduate Education

“This research creates a counter epistemic community for 4-6 graduate students from racially minoritized backgrounds who are resisting white dominant knowledge systems in their own research. We will co-create a convening to understand graduate student socialization experiences into white knowledge systems, how this affects their scholarship, scholarly identities, and sense of belonging. Using participatory action research, pláticas, and autoethnographic/ethnographic methods, the preparation of and the convening itself will serve as a site for my dissertation data. This research practically and theoretically can help reimagine graduate education as an epistemically just space that honors the multiplicity of knowledges of racially minoritized graduate students.”

A NGIE K IM PhD student in higher education

Faculty advisor: Charles H.F. Davis, III

Manifestations of Racial Neoliberalism through Experiences of Students of Color in Anti-Racism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committees at Historically White Institutions

“This qualitative study aims to illuminate the experiences of Students of Color currently engaged in committees intended to support institutional-wide anti-racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in historically white institutions. Given the increased emphasis on the need for student representation on DEI committees, I utilize elements of Racialized Organizations (Ray, 2019), racial neoliberalism, and critical race institutional logics (Squire, 2015) perspective as theoretical and analytical tools to examine the following research questions: (1) What are the ways DEI committees may become both sites of institutional transformation and reproductions of neoliberalism and whiteness? (2) Do students’ racialized labor become co-opted in committees?”

K ATHERINE L EBIODA

PhD candidate in higher education

Faculty advisor: Rosemary J. Perez

Blossoming Together: Imagining New Relationships between Students of Color and Institutions through Digital Storytelling

“My research uses participatory methodologies to work with racially/ethnically minoritized students as both advisors and participants in a digital story telling project. Through multiple discussions and workshops, students create digital stories about their experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. The narratives are intended to inform the university’s next Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan and improve the campus culture for racially/ethnically minoritized students. Moreover, as an embodiment of transformational relationships between students and the institution, this project could serve as a model for wider student engagement in DEI plans and initiatives at the University of Michigan and/or at other institutions nationwide.”

PARKER M ILES

PhD candidate in educational studies

Faculty advisor: Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Black Critical Digital Literacies

“The proposed research is an after-school makerspace for Black youth that endeavors to ask: ‘How do Black kids practice embodied critical digital literacies in an after-school third/ makerspace?’ Data will be collected via a composite of digital ethnographic methods and traditional qualitative methods that account for the mutually constituted nature of Black kids’ online and offline selves. This project is antiracist in that it takes an asset-oriented approach to Black practices; the research also grows from a genealogy of Black Cyberfeminisms invested in understanding the ways that digital technologies and discourses produce and reproduce racism— and disrupting this reproduction.”

TAYLOR L EWIS

PhD student in higher education

Faculty advisor: Charles H.F. Davis, III

Towards a “Quare” Battle Fatigue: Queer and Trans Students of Color’s Experiences of and Resistance to Queer & Racial Battle Fatigue

“Higher education scholarship has failed to recognize Queer and Trans Students of Color (QTSOC) and how they negotiate their environ ment with various subordinate identities (Nicolazzo, 2016). In this research project, I introduce ‘Quare’ (Queer and Racial) Battle Fatigue to examine the psycho-social and physiological effects of navigating higher education institutions deeply embedded in multiple and various forms of oppression. This research project illuminates the margins, seeking to identify the health, wellness, and safety resources QTSOC need to not just survive, but thrive. This project will also examine how QTSOC disrupt practices of education violence with practices of Queer/Trans of Color life-making to spark joy and create a sense of home.”

A NDY P INEDO

PhD candidate

G ABY Ku BI

PhD student in education and psychology

Faculty advisor: Matthew Diemer

Cultivating Students’ Critical Consciousness and Ethnic-Racial Identity: Ethnic Studies and Adolescent Development

“This project assesses the efficacy of an ethnic studies curriculum for fostering critical consciousness and ethnic-racial identity and whether these two factors positively shape academic and civic outcomes for Students of Color. Ethnic studies is an educational model that centers the perspectives of marginalized ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Research suggests that ethnic studies benefits racially marginalized students, but little is known about the mediating mechanisms that connect ethnic studies to desired outcomes. Therefore, this study aims to extend our understanding of how ethnic studies—an inherently anti-racist pedagogy—supports racially marginalized students in developing critical consciousness and ethnic-racial identity, which may link ethnic studies to desired youth outcomes.”

Helping Young Learners Get Where They Want to Go in the World

On his first day as a kindergarten teacher, Garret Potter asked his students what they wanted to learn most. One student’s hand shot up. “All the countries, and continents, and oceans!” Since 12 of his 23 students spoke two languages at home, it made sense that understanding the world they lived in was their highest priority, recalls Potter. And yet, despite their boundless curiosity, even the state’s most progressive social studies curriculum would not take them where they wanted to go.

For Potter, an educator, father, and now a dual degree master’s student in the School of Education and the School of Information (UMSI), that wasn’t good enough. “What if children had a resource they wanted to turn to before learning to read, where they could explore what they were curious about?” This became the driving question that led Potter to develop Everstory, an encyclopedia exploration environment for early learners.

Conceived of in 2021, Everstory is an audio/visual Wikipedia for four-year-olds who cannot yet read text but are fluent in spoken language and image transfer. With Everstory, children can begin with a person, place, or thing in which they are personally interested and move from that point— virtually—around the globe, the universe, and throughout time, building their own connected web of knowledge.

In the spring of 2022, Potter applied for the James A. Kelly Learning Lever Prize, a competition designed to challenge U-M stu dents to invent digital tools with the potential to significantly improve student learning. In her welcome remarks at the start of the competition, SOE Dean Elizabeth Moje addressed the presenters: “Each of your designs is timely, inventive, and informed,

and demonstrates your commitment to improving student learning outcomes for all individuals.” Potter’s presentation of Everstory garnered a development award of $4,000.

Subsequently, Potter applied for—and was awarded—a UMSI Field Innovation and Entrepreneurship Grant of $5,000 to support his startup venture. The fund ing will help cover the many expenses associated with launching new technology, including software development, mobile application development, content creation, user testing, and legal consultation.

“The University of Michigan offers a wealth of resources through programs and coaching for students who are seeking to launch a startup; however, seed funding can often be a challenge or highly competi tive,” says Kelly Kowatch, director of UMSI’s Engaged Learning Office. “The Field Grant helps UMSI students and their teammates move their ideas forward in ways that are challenging in other environments.”

In May, Potter was selected as a finalist for the Michigan Virtual Ed Tech Contest, and advanced to a pitch presentation held on June 22. The competition is the result of a partnership between Michigan State’s Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and

Innovation, Spartan Innovations (a sub sidiary of MSU Foundation), and Michigan Virtual, to bring educators’ ideas to life on ways to solve common classroom problems. Ultimately, Potter took second place, securing $6,000 in business startup grant funding, as well as logo design support, legal consultation, and the opportunity to attend an innovation bootcamp. The camp was designed to help participants further explore and develop a business model around their ideas, while also introducing them to the resources available to entrepre neurs and innovators in Michigan, as well as opportunities to bring entrepreneurial and innovative lessons into classrooms.

“Michigan schools have an opportunity to benefit from anyone who has ever thought, ‘I wish there was an app for that’ in an educational setting,” said Jamey Fitzpatrick, President and CEO of Michigan Virtual. “This contest is an opportunity for real Michigan educators to directly impact classrooms by turning their dreams into reality, with the goal of improving teaching and learning for years to come.”

Over the coming year, Potter intends to hire a full stack developer, seek the support of undergraduate UX capstones course students, beta test with users in English and Arabic, and continue to pitch and present Everstory to potential partners and funders. Everstory aims to launch publicly in 2024. In the meantime, Potter has invited Educa tional Studies graduate colleagues Xuechen “Sally” Liu, Harmeet Kaur Saini, and Makoto Watanabe to write content for Everstory in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Punjabi. His hope is that more colleagues will join in collaboration to ensure Everstory is devel oped by a multilingual, multicultural team of educators and designers for the benefit of early learners across the world. ■

Potter

Richard (AB ’90) and Tanhya Schimel have established The Schimel Family Fund for LEAPS. The fund will provide flexible support for the SOE’s new undergraduate major: Learning, Equity, and Problem Solving (LEAPS) for the Public Good. This support may cover initial expenses for infrastructure, student scholarships, or other needs deemed critical by the dean to ensure a success ful program launch. “We wanted to support LEAPS after learning about the innovations the School of Education is creating within this program,” said the Schimels of their gift. “It will bring many professions together and integrate them into the surrounding communities and their education programs.”

Through a planned gift, former School of Educa tion dean Cecil Miskel and his wife Marjorie Barritt have established The Cecil G. Miskel and Marjorie A. Barritt Scholarship in support of future secondary English or science teachers. This scholarship represents the couple’s passion for encouraging future educators and, in particular, educators who plan to teach science or English, subjects that Cecil and Marjorie taught, respectively.

Cynthia L. Cook (ABEd ’71) of Tampa, Florida, recently established the Cynthia Cook Educa tion Scholarship Fund, which will provide support to teacher education students who graduated from public high schools. Cook, herself a public high school graduate from Kalamazoo, Michigan, served as a Latin teacher for many years after obtaining her degree and teaching certificate from the SOE. Cook enjoys returning to Ann Arbor each fall to root on the Wolverine football team and enjoy tea at the Martha Cook Building.

laura Rendón Establishes award to Help Doctoral Students cross the Finish line

hat would be helpful?” is the question that led Laura Rendón (PhD ’82) to establish an award for doctoral students who are finishing their dissertations. Although the award was established this year, it is that same sense of giving back that has driven her entire career as a scholar and educator.

“W

Rendón’s scholarly research examines the college student experience for first generation, low-income students.

“I am interested in those students for a number of reasons,” she says. “One is that they constitute a huge number that are entering higher education these days. They’re also among the most vulnerable student populations, many with food and housing insecurities. During the COVID lockdown they suffered the most—having ill family members at home and not having high-end technology. They typically don’t attend the best resourced schools with modern well-equipped labs, libraries, and well-credentialed teachers. What I would like to do with my research is [help] educators understand that they cannot compare students and say everyone is initiating their educational path at the same starting line, because that is a false notion.” At the same time, she notes, these students have “several unacknowledged assets, such as giving back, resistance, and perseverance.” They also have navigational ability, and are able to maneuver them selves in different contexts—especially those who have come from another country. “They have learned the English language and mastered what it is to live in the U.S.” She understands this population well because, as she says, “I was one of those students. I grew up in poverty. English was not my first language, my

parents didn’t finish high school, or even elementary school.”

Rendón began her career in higher education in 1966 at Laredo Junior College. In 1979, after working as a teacher and administrator, she became the first in her family to enter a doctoral program. Her development of “validation theory” along with her book, Sentipensante (Sensing/ Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation, represent two scholarly contributions that transformed

she was told that the final phase of completing their dissertations can be quite challenging.

“That is a tough time,” says Rendón. “They’ve already finished all their courses. Sometimes they have spent their financial aid, and they’d like to have some time to finish without having to worry about covering the necessities of life.”

The Laura I. Rendón “Dissertation Finishing Grant” for Equity and Justice will provide funding to doctoral students who are researching topics related to justice and inequity in American society.

higher education scholarship on student development and teaching. Recently, Rendón’s extensive career accomplish ments were recognized by the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) with the prestigious Howard R. Bowen Distinguished Career Award.

“Michigan took a gamble on me,” she says of her acceptance to the SOE. “I will always be grateful for that opportunity to show what I could do. I hope that I have made Michigan proud. I’m certainly proud to be a graduate and to call Michigan my academic home. The Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education helped me become who I am today.”

When she asked CSHPE colleagues how she could be of help to current students,

“We have a number of issues to address in higher education, and that is why this award is for students who are researching topics related to justice inequity in American society,” says Rendón. “I hope these students will use this award and all of the prepara tion that they received to make an impact on society, to have a social justice con sciousness in their work, and to feel empowered to eradicate the barriers that get in the way of more students becoming successful.”

Rendón ensured the impact of her gift by creating an endowment, which will serve to support students for years to come. Of the selection of Selyna Beverly as the inaugural recipient, Rendón says, “Selyna Pérez Beverly is just the right person to receive this award. She is the model of the equity and justice scholar we need in this era. I love her attention to teaching and learning in engineering with special attention to women who remain underrepresented in STEM fields of study. Employing an intersectional approach that considers racism and sexism will advance engineer ing education research and practice and will be useful in preparing more women to succeed in this field of study.” ■

The CSHPE alumna reflects on the importance of giving back to help advance justice and equity in higher education

Rendón

How g ivingtuesday Powered nicholas Michael through Student teaching

An international day of giving focuses SOE donors on small funds with big impact

November 29

Like many other organizations around the world, the SOE has participated in recent years in GivingTuesday, the daylong fundraising effort that encourages people to give back during the holiday season. GivingTuesday takes place on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. The self-proclaimed “global generosity movement” estimates that 35 million adults in the U.S. participated in the one-day giving extravaganza in 2021. The SOE Office of Development uses the day to garner support for important needs that don’t always receive a lot of attention among the many donor priorities.

In 2021, rather than call for donations to a general fund, “we chose student mileage reim bursement because there was a lot of need around that area,” says Krissa Rumsey, Director of Development for the SOE.

Previously, a grant from the Provost’s Office had established a student mileage reimbursement pilot that proved to be enormously helpful. Since funds for the pilot were nearly exhausted, SOE development officers decided to put the call to action front and center on GivingTuesday to make the program permanent. Doing so made all the difference for Secondary Master of Arts with Certification (SecMAC) student Nicholas Michael (MA ’22, TeachCert ’22).

For 17 years, Michael had worked as a public radio producer in New Mexico, but when opportu nities in his field began to dry up, he recalls thinking, “Now is the time to switch over, and do something I’m passionate about.” He entered SOE’s SecMAC program in June 2021, joining a cohort of students like himself who were willing to put in an intense, accelerated year as they navigated a master’s degree with teacher certification.

When Michael and his wife relocated from New Mexico to Michigan, they settled in Milan, a small town just south of Ann Arbor. His first placement teaching summer school was a manageable 15-mile commute. But in the fall he was placed in Southfield. Suddenly, he faced a 45-mile commute each way, which translated into 270 miles a week. In the spring semester, when he began teaching onsite five days a week, his weekly commute went up to 400 miles.

“I didn’t mind the driving so much; it’s just that as the gas prices started rising in the spring, it got harder and harder,” recalls Michael, who had planned to work part time while completing his degree, but quickly found he couldn’t work and study on top of being a student teacher.

Thanks to GivingTuesday donors, the Student Mileage Reimbursement Fund was there to meet his need.

“We set a goal, and one of our alums made a commitment right off the bat to meet it,” recalls Rumsey. Another alum offered a matching gift. By the end of the day, the fund had seen an influx of cash.

“There are many donors who like to give at the end of the year,” says Rumsey. “I also think that a lot of people are inclined to give when they know a little bit will make a big difference.”

This year, GivingTuesday falls on November 29, 2022. The Office of Development plans to raise funds for student mileage reimbursement once more.

The value GivingTuesday contributions provided to Michael can’t be overstated. “The travel allowance made my student teaching entirely possible,” he says. He’s driving to school this fall again—now as a fully certified English teacher. ■

Lowell D. Eberwein (AM ’58) recently published The Adventures of Juan Ortiz: Explorer,Captive,Interpreter (Christian Faith Publishing) for middlegrade elementary students. The Adventures of Juan Ortiz is the story of a 15-year-old noble who left Seville, Spain, to explore the New World. Eberwein’s story is based on Ortiz’s real life experiences; Ortiz left Spain to seek excitement and unexpectedly found more than he anticipated. Eberwein is a husband, father, and grandfather who has been a dedicated elementary teacher and principal for eight years and a college professor for thirty years.

Jeffrey Grim (PhD ’22) began a new position as a visiting assistant professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Iowa. He researches and teaches about organizational equity issues in higher education.

Jeanne Dressel Hanigan (AM ’92) just completed her 30th year of teaching with no plans yet to retire. She teaches English I, dual college credit AP Language and Composition, and Journalism. In March 2022, she was recognized as Washington State Journalism Advisor of the Year. Her other academic accolades include South Sound Magazine Teacher of the Year in 2016 and Bellarmine Preparatory School Elizabeth Kelley Exemplary Teacher of the Year in 2002.

Elaine

’71,

’71) founded New Morning School in Plymouth, Michigan, in 1973. The seeds for the school, one founded on innovative teaching methods, sprouted at the Martha Cook Building, as the magnolia trees bloomed in the side yard. She was completing an independent study of the work of Jean Piaget and took to heart his message of children constructing their own knowledge. New Morning School is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Over the years, New Morning has become

known for Kennedy’s work with brain-education research and innovation. In 2006, she earned recognition as a Japanese Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholar. This award included a three-week experience in Japan as the guest of the Japanese government.

As an educator of over 50 years, Kennedy has seen many children grow and learn. This school year, 2022–23, will be her last as Head of School as she begins the next phase of life, which assuredly will include working with children.

Schuldt Kennedy (BSEd

TeachCert

To submit class notes, update your contact information, communicate with the editors, or connect with the School of Education, please visit soe.umich.edu/magazine.

Julia Lindsey (PhD ’21) has published Reading Above the Fray: Reliable, Research-Based Routines for Develop ing Decoding Skills (Scholastic, 2022).

The book, which includes a forword by SOE professor Nell K. Duke, provides evidence-based routines to help young readers decode words efficiently so they can spend more energy on com prehending—and enjoying—what they read. “Elementary teachers have been waiting for this one!” says Katharine Noonan, English Language Arts Instruc tional Coach, District of Columbia Public Schools. Anne Cuningham, Professor of Learning Science and Human Development at UC Berkeley, says “ReadingAbove the Fray is a wonderful resource, a book I read from cover to cover. The scholarship is impeccable, citing the central and most impactful studies surrounding foundational skills and their importance to reading acquisition.”

Following a national search, Melita Pope Mitchell (AM ’99) has been selected as Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs (AVPAA) at Johnson C. Smith University. In this role, she will be responsible for developing and leading strategic partnerships and innovations that support and foster student academic success outcomes for a diverse student body.

Mitchell is a veteran educator and advocate for adults and underresourced populations in higher education. Originally from Gary, Indiana, she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in African American World Studies from the University of Iowa.

In addition, she holds a Master of Arts degree in Higher Education Administration from the University of Michigan. She completed her Doctor of Education degree in Adult and Community College Education from North Carolina State University.

Throughout her 24-year career in higher education, Mitchell has held positions in both student and academic affairs at the University of Michigan, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Johnson C. Smith University. She has worked with traditional and nontra ditional students in higher education. Mitchell previously served as interim dean of the Metropolitan College of Professional Studies at Johnson C. Smith University. In this role, she oversaw the Business Administration, Evening and Online, and Health and Human Performance departments.

Caren M. Stalburg (BS ’88, MD ’92, MedRes ’96, AM ’06), is the founding director of the first online Master of Science degree program in the Univer sity of Michigan Medical School and Rackham Graduate School. The Health Infrastructures and Learning Systems (HILS) online degree program evolved from the Learning Health Sciences PhD program that began in 2016. The degree program focuses on the sciences necessary to develop Learning Health Systems, which are organizations or networks engaged in continuous self-study and adaptation using data and analytics to generate knowledge, engage stakeholders, and implement behavior change to transform practice. HILS learners focus on addressing the social and technical challenges systems face in making continuous health improvement routine. HILS Online was developed with support from the Academic Innovation Fund from the Center for Academic Innova tion and matriculated its inaugural cohort in 2021. The first learners from HILS Online graduated in August 2022.

Supervisory Customs and Border Protection Officer Danny D. Trieff (AM ’03) received the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner’s Award for Workforce Engagement and Inclusion. This award recognizes an employee who champions CBP’s commitment to a bias-free work environment; particularly, those efforts that exemplify the principle of equal opportunity.

IN MEMORY

Lillie Mae Naglie Thurman (ABEd ’63) passed away on June 26, 2022. Born in Manchester, New Hampshire, she grew up in Peterborough, New Hampshire. After receiving an Associ ate of Arts degree from Boston Univer sity and a Bachelor of Arts in Education degree from U-M, she taught for many years in Michigan and Georgia.

She and husband William R. Thurman, Jr. raised their five children (Rebecca, Kathryn, Victoria, Jennifer, and Christopher) in Americus, Georgia, where she was active in many organiza tions. Among her great loves were animals, especially cats. She enjoyed traveling, reading, cooking, and writing. Thurman was a loving mother and grandmother, who always welcomed everyone into her home.

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and af firmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, dis ability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/ Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office of Insti tutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

university of Michigan Regents

Jordan B. Acker, Huntington Woods

Michael J. Behm, Grand Blanc

Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor

Paul W. Brown, Ann Arbor

Sarah Hubbard, Okemos

Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms

Ron Weiser, Ann Arbor

Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor

Santa J. Ono (ex officio)

Speakers and panelists representing the u-M School of Education, The School at Marygrove, Marygrove Early Education Center, The Kresge Foundation, Starfish Family Services, the Marygrove Conservancy, and Detroit Public Schools Community District celebrated the opening of The School at Marygrove Elementary in October 2022.

610 East University Avenue Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1259