Meredith Bittel
A Photovoice Study with Jamaican Science Teachers about the Role of Science Education in Their Communities
Through participatory photovoice methodology (Latz, 2017; Wang & Burris, 1997), eleven primary and secondary science teachers in Jamaica creatively explore how they see and experience the role of science education within their communities. Situated in a postcolonial context that affirms participants' self-determination and agency (Boisselle, 2016), this research applies a justice-oriented lens (Morales-Doyle, 2024) and a community-driven science conceptual framework (Ballard et al., 2023) to explore how teachers define meaningful outcomes for science education in their local contexts. This presentation will share findings from the participatory data analysis and reflect on the process and affordances of photovoice as a transformative tool for 1) challenging damage-centered narratives in science (Tuck, 2009) and 2) amplifying diverse visions of justice in science education (Tuck & Yang, 2018). Ultimately, this research seeks to advance a vision of justice-oriented science education that honors, sustains, and reflects the rich cultural heritages of the communities it serves.
Jake Brillhart
Higher Ed, Higher Risk? An Exploratory Study of the Crime Contagion Model in College Towns
The crime contagion model is a contemporary theory to describe community crime patterns. First described by Ludwig & Kling (2006), the framework positions crime as a learned and socially-validated behavior. It has gained recent traction as an explanation for violent crime including global piracy (Salvatore, 2018), gang-related events in Los Angeles (Brantingham, Yuan & Herz, 2020), active shootings (Brantingham, et al., 2021), and public official corruption (Goel & Nelson, 2007). This exploratory study tests the crime contagion in an innovative empirical setting: the American college town.
I built a custom panel dataset using information from campus annual security reports (ASR) or Clery Act reports and from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report (UCR), as well as institutional data reporting county-level, out-of-state, and international student enrollment. Using this panel data, I test for a multivariate correlation between increased non-county student enrollment and reported campus and community crime. This presentation presents preliminary findings and discusses methodological limitations for testing the crime contagion model on college campuses.
Kiya Ma
Decoding Test-Optional Admissions: Institutional Perspectives and Practices
This quantitative study investigates the perceptions of undergraduate admission decision makers regarding the increasingly prevalent test-optional policies in higher education. The research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these policies in achieving their intended goals within a competitive admissions landscape. As institutions consider maintaining test-optional policies long term, college and university admissions must balance the needs of students, institutions, and the broader system. By assessing the extent to which admissions staff incorporate institutional factors into their perception of test-optional policies, the research findings directly address the stated intentions and actual outcomes of such practices. This study raises concerns about test-optional policies as they pertain to both institutions and the students they serve. The findings suggest that admission decision makers and policymakers should account for the varied efficacy of test-optional policies across different institutions when deciding how to proceed with their implementation.
Alex Bittel
Educational Expansion in the United States: Institutional Drivers of Change, 1870-1920
Scholars have long discussed the rapid growth of American school attendance around the turn of the 20th century, but this literature remains fragmented. This study offers a comprehensive, quantitative framework based on census data to investigate the relative effects, shifts, and relationships of several factors on school attendance from 1870 to 1920. A fixed effects multivariate regression on county-level attendance rates shows institutional forces, rather than occupational shifts and population growth, drive increases in school attendance: changing ideas about children and education was more important than changing laws, economy, or population dynamics. This suggests that contemporary institutional change – towards justice, remedy, and repair – may require we first change our conception of what education is and what it is for.
Nolan Schad
Beyond the Classroom: Why Students Choose SI
Co-curricular instruction, known as supplemental instruction (SI), has been a popular peer learning model following its introduction the the University of Kansas City-Missouri in 1974. As SI grew and expanded to universities across the country, so has a healthy body of scholarship, investigating the effectiveness of the model, especially as it relates to academic performance. Much of this work has been quantitative and comparatively little time has been spent investigating SI qualitatively, which the authors are interested in. Through semi-structured interviews with students actively participating in SI we aim to understand the decision-making process of choosing to attend the non-mandatory program, and also further our understanding of what benefits students feel they receive from attending SI, and finally we are interested in understanding what students think makes SI effective.
Oby Siakpebru
The Biafra War and the Null Curriculum: Addressing Historical Shadows of Nigeria's Past
The null curriculum refers to what has been excluded from the curriculum, including the absence of certain disciplines at a specific educational level. By this definition, the null curriculum in the context of my research refers to the absence of the Biafran War in Nigeria's educational system. This war lasted from 1967 to 1970, resulting in significant human suffering, political instability, and unresolved grievances. Unfortunately, Nigeria's current academic curriculum does not cover the war, creating a "null curriculum." This paper shows that the Nigerian-Biafra war is an example of the null curriculum, representing the omitted aspect of the formal educational curriculum. It aims to show the importance of including the significant events that led to the civil war and the events of the war into the curriculum of the Nigerian Primary and secondary educational system through transformational learning, creating an avenue for dialogue and reconciliation.
In addition, incorporating the Biafra war into the curriculum can encourage critical thinking and dialogue about Nigeria's challenges, past and present, and the best way forward.