UCI School of Education Brownbag Lectures
The UCI School of Education Brownbag Series features guest speakers from across the nation presenting their latest research on a variety of pressing topics. To view all upcoming Brownbag Lectures, visit our Events page. Be sure to check back to this page regularly, as it will be updated with new recordings.
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Rita Kohli
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, UC Riverside Teachers of Color: Resisting Racism and Reclaiming Education With growing attention on the underrepresentation of educators who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of Color, many teacher education programs and K-12 schools have increased their focus on diversifying the teaching force. Yet recruitment efforts are often not paired with other policy, practice, or culture shifts in this predominantly white profession. This talk uses the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore the racialized experiences of justice-oriented teachers of Color. By demonstrating how they endure racism as they resist, reimagine, and reclaim education, this talk calls on teacher education programs, schools, and districts to disrupt cycles of racial harm as they create spaces that value the wellbeing and contributions of teachers of Color. |
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Natasha Quadlin
Assistant Professor, Sociology, UCLA ‘MRS Degrees’ for Whom? Racial Disparities in Women’s Household Economic Returns to College Quality Prior research on economic returns to college quality (a close substitute for terms like selectivity or prestige) often assesses returns in terms of individuals’ incomes. This approach overlooks the fact that college graduates often marry other college graduates who attended the same college or a college of comparable quality, pooling financial and other advantages within households. Such pooling may be especially important for college-going women, who receive lower individual income returns to college quality than men, consistent with research on gender inequality. In this study, we use data from the NLSY-79, NLSY-97, and IPEDS to investigate women's household income returns to college quality. We also assess the extent to which Black and White women receive equal household economic returns to college quality, and how these dynamics have changed across cohorts. Findings will be discussed, along with implications for the study of higher education, college quality, race, gender, and inequality. |
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James P. Huguley
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh Parenting While Black - Racial Socialization and School Engagements in Black Families Dr. James Huguley discusses his meta-analytic, qualitative, and intervention design work around African American parents’ experiences with racial socialization, and with supporting their children’s developmental and academic successes in racialized contexts.
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Marina Bers
Professor and Chair, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development, Tufts University Coding Playgrounds: Computer Science and Robotics in Early Childhood Dr. Bers presents an overview of her interdisciplinary research program by using the metaphor of playgrounds vs. playpens to understand the role of technology in children’s lives. Playgrounds are popular spaces for young children to play and learn. They are designed to promote exploration of the physical environment and the development of motor and social skills. Young children can be autonomous while developing different sets of competencies. Playpens, in contrast to playgrounds, corral children into a safe, confined space. Although they are mostly risk-free, there is little exploration and imaginative play. From a developmental perspective, the playground promotes, while the playpen hinders, a sense of mastery, creativity, self-confidence, social awareness and open exploration. This presentation will use the playpen/playground metaphor to explore the role of coding and computational thinking for young children.
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Matthew Rafalow
Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley's Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society; Social Scientist, Google Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era Education researchers struggle with the fact that students arrive at school already shaped by their unequal childhoods. Would we see greater gains among less privileged students if they had a more level playing field? This talk draws on a comparative ethnographic study of three middle schools to address this question, focusing the case of digital technology use. In the contemporary moment, kids’ digital skills appear in the form of their digital play with peers, like through social media use, video gaming, and creating online content. Drawing on six hundred hours of observation and over one hundred interviews with teachers, administrators, and students, I show how teachers treat these very similar digital skills differently by school demographic. I also illustrate the ways these social forces at school shape students' participation online, in and outside of school. The book updates class-focused theories of cultural inequality by showing how racism and school organizational culture determine whether students’ digital skills can help them get ahead.
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Natascha Buswell
Assistant Professor of Teaching, UCI Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Revealing Problematic Notions of Teaching Using Document Elicitation in Interviews With poor teaching quality being of concern in higher education in engineering, this research investigates an interview approach that aims to gain insight into an instructor’s teaching methods and conceptions. This interview approach is called document elicitation, a method based on the interviewing approach of photo elicitation. Understanding an instructor’s teaching conceptions and methods is useful in gaining insight into how and why people teach. Using document elicitation during an interview with two documents, (1) course syllabi, and (2) statements of teaching philosophy, this presentation demonstrates the generative descriptions of teaching syllabi and statements of teaching philosophy offer in a document elicitation setting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve assistant professors of engineering. The analysis focuses on the document elicitation portion of the interviews. Inductive-deductive thematic analysis was used to develop a codebook of teaching conceptions and methods. The teaching conceptions and methods that the participants describe include active learning techniques, inclusive practices, and challenges. Special attention is paid to the problematic notions that the participants describe, highlighting that instructors’ intended teaching practices may differ from their enacted practices. This research may particularly interest people who conduct interviews for research and/or hiring purposes. Document elicitation as part of a hiring interview seems a promising way to learn about candidates’ teaching conceptions and methods. |
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