Research & Creative Showcase

Our last Research and Creative Showcase was heavily influenced by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning.

As scholars living through a pandemic, we used our scholarship to think about how the pandemic was reverberating in educational contexts in ways that often magnified rather than ameliorated inequities. We documented ways that the pandemic presented mental health and learning challenges at the same time it required innovation and creative adaptation.

As the Spring 2023 semester comes to a close, we turn our attention to other educational challenges and opportunities, while staying steadfast in our commitments toward equity and inclusion. This newsletter is a showcase of recent research and creative work organized around our SOE signatures—as well as two books to add to our ever-expanding faculty bookshelf.

Our signatures—Experiential Pedagogy and Practice, Digital Pedagogy and Practice, and Inclusive and Anti-Racist Pedagogy & Practice—have helped to showcase our individual and collective scholarship and offered exciting new opportunities for affiliation and collaboration.

Sharing this work continues to inspire us and makes us #ProudToBeSOE.

Beth A. Ferri, ADR

Kelly Chandler-Olcott and Sharon Dotger co-authored “Leveraging Lesson Study for Disciplinary Literacy: Studying and Planning for Scientific Modeling” in Reading Teacher (in press), in which they describe the practice of lesson study, illustrate with data from a lesson-study cycle conducted with colleagues from a nearby school district, and explore how to leverage the plan and study phases of lesson study for disciplinary literacy.

Jen Heckathorn and Charlotte Sharpe published “Teacher Educators’ Learning in Mediated Field Experiences” in The Teacher Educator, exploring sudden and drastic changes to praxis that teacher educators experienced when reorganizing their courses and programs around mediated field experiences. 

Sultan Kilinc co-authored “A Quasi-Experimental Examination of Drama Frames: A Teacher Professional Development Program Targeting Student Reading Achievement” in the International Journal of Education and the Arts, studying the impact of drama based pedagogy on early grades reading achievement.

Louise Wilkinson and colleagues published “Teachers Attending to Student Reasoning: Do Beliefs Matter?” in The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, reporting on the results of a quasi-experimental study of pre-service elementary teachers’ learning to recognize students’ mathematical reasoning from classroom videos as influenced by their beliefs about mathematical reasoning.

Xiaoxia (Silvie) Huang co-authored “Cognitive and Motivational Benefits of a Theory-based Immersive Virtual Reality Design in Science Learning” in Computers and Education Open, looking at the effects of an immersive virtual reality (IVR) nature-trail tour on participants’ science learning, self-efficacy, cognitive load, perceived enjoyment, and perceived usefulness, as compared to actual walking tours.

David Knapp, John Coggiola, and colleagues published “Soundtrap Usage During COVID-19: A Machine-learning Approach to Assess the Effects of the Pandemic on Online Music Learning” in Research Studies in Music Education, studying the rise of web-based digital audio workstation during COVID-19 pandemic and the role of machine learning and artificial intelligence as a method for research in the music education field.

Beth Ferri co-authored the chapter “DisCrit Recovery: Correcting Disability Erasure for Black Girls in the School–prison Nexus” in the co-edited volume Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities, as well as “Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the Intersections of Race and Dis/ability” in the co-edited third edition of Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education.

Yanhong Liu co-authored “Childhood Psychological Maltreatment, Sense of Self, and PTSD Symptoms in Emerging Adulthood” in the Journal of Counseling and Development and co-authored “Professional Identity Development of International Counseling Doctoral Students: A Hybrid Approach of Deductive and Inductive Thematic Analysis” in Counselor Education and Supervision, addressing the constellation of identities and experiences that international students bring to the counseling profession.

Melissa M. Luke co-authored “Application of Anti-Oppression with Group Work” in the Journal for Specialists in Group Work (in press), a call to action for group counselors to apply 10 principles of anti-oppression into group work. She, along with Yanhong Liu and Qiu Wang, co-authored “Cultural Humility and Cultural Competence in Counseling: An Exploratory Mixed Methods Investigation” in the Journal of Counseling and Development.

Caroline O’Hara co-authored “Foreign-born Counselor Educators’ Professional Identity Development” in the Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy, exploring the professional identities of 11 foreign-born counselor educators and share implications for doctoral programs.

Zaline Roy-Campbell published the chapter “Who Decides What Is Legitimate Literacy? Affirming the Importance of African Languages in the Global Literacies Field” in the edited volume Critical Perspectives on Global Literacies: Bridging Research and Practice. She considers post-colonial African contexts and languages as legitimate conveyers of literacy and contributors to global literacies.

Derek X. Seward co-authored “Black Women’s Help-seeking and Self-care Strategies: A Phenomenological Exploration” in the Journal of Counseling and Development reporting findings of a phenomenological study of 16 Black women aimed at understanding their mental health needs, barriers to mental health care, and help-seeking and self-care practices. He also published “Using Educator Self-Disclosure in Training to Model Cultural Dispositions” in Teaching Practice Briefs along with doctoral candidate Linzy Andre.

George Theoharis, Leela George, and Courtney Mauldin co-authored “The House Is on Fire: A Reckoning of Leadership and DEI Initiatives in Predominantly White Schools” in the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership. Along with SOE doctoral candidate, Kimani Kibriani, Theoharis coauthored the chapter “Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Leadership Practice” in Equity Doesn’t Just Happen: Stories of Education Leaders Working Toward Social Justice, and with Christy Ashby and colleagues, the chapter “Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Leadership Practice: Engaging in Collaborative Equity Audits” in the same volume.

Julia White, Qiu Wang, and Meghan Cosier G’10 published “Exploring Factors Related to Access to General Education Contexts for Students with Intellectual Disability: A Survey of District Special Education Administrators in One State” in the International Journal of Inclusive Education, addressing similarities and differences in school district special education administrators in more and less inclusive districts.

Michael Gill has been awarded an Engaged Communities Mini-Grant by the College of Arts and Sciences. The funding allows Gill to collaborate with Brady Farm, located in Syracuse’s South Side neighborhood, to explore how communities use food fermentation as a culture-making practice.

Dean Chandler-Olcott, along with colleague Sarah M. Fleming, has been awarded a National Council of Teachers of English research grant for “Revisioning Assessment in ELA: A Critical Community of Teachers for Equitable Assessment Practices.”

Savannah Stocker ’23, an Inclusive Education and Special Education major, is among 12 seniors named 2023 Syracuse University Scholars, the highest undergraduate honor the University bestows

Graduate Student Awards

Please see this listing of our Graduate Student honors and awards. We are proud of all of our graduate students and their many impressive accomplishments this year!

Also, thank you to all of the graduate students and faculty who participated in our first and very successful Graduate Student Research Symposium. It was an impressive showcase of our graduate students and their scholarship.

We hope to see you at next year’s symposium!