Paula Beckman (Professor, Special Education) plans to develop and offer an experiential, academically grounded study abroad course specifically for teachers (both at the preservice and inservice levels). As part of this course, she will work with teachers to discover aspects of this experience that they might integrate into their own teaching and how they can apply what they have learned in their work with the children and families in their schools. In addition, through the course she is teaching this spring, “Families, Culture, and Disability” she hopes to help her students develop a better understanding of the children and families from various parts of Central America in order to develop strategies for working with them more effectively.
Lea Ann Christenson (PDS Coordinator, Early Childhood Education) plans to redesign EDHD 314 and 315 Reading in the Early Childhood Classroom: Instruction and Materials: Parts I and II through the lens of global education while still meeting the mandates for these reading courses from MSDE. She will make global education a foundational part of the courses and part of the redesign will include assignments for students that embrace the principles of understanding and respect for diverse cultures.
Lawrence Clark (Assistant Professor, Math Education) plans to continue the work he started in Ethiopia in 2002 and 2003 assisting faculty at the Abbyi Addi Teacher Training College in northern Ethiopia in their efforts to rethink and revise mathematics teacher preparation courses (and the pedagogical practices of instructors of those courses) to better reflect national teacher education reform efforts. He hopes this year’s activities will lay the groundwork for a future exchange program between prospective teachers at teacher training colleges in Ethiopia and Maryland. His planned activities include organizing a local forum of Ethiopian immigrants to discuss and document their experiences as mathematics learners within the Ethiopian educational system and identifying African mathematicians and African mathematics education researchers in the local Maryland, DC, and Virginia areas.
Mariam Jean Dreher (Professor, Curriculum and Instruction) has collaborated since the early 1990’s with an international colleague, Riitta-Liisa Korkeamäki, on teacher education, curriculum, and classroom instruction in Finland. Together they have made numerous research presentations on these topics, and have published 8 research articles, with another in press, all focusing on literacy. As a GATE Fellow, she will undertake transforming the courses she teaches in reading education so that they incorporate an international perspective beginning with our reading specialist program.
Sherick Hughes (Assistant Professor, EDCI, Minority and Urban Education) will focus he attention as a GATE Fellow on the co-creation of an undergraduate course to investigate global targets of economic, political, social, and cultural marginalization. This course will incorporate marginalized voices and/or critically reflexive allies to serve as discussion leaders including international doctoral students in the College of Education and across the campus. These students will not be mere guest speakers; rather active participants and co-equal partners in the creation of the course and conceptualization of marginalization.
Victoria-Maria MacDonald (Assistant Professor, EDCI, Minority and Urban Education) will internationalize the required diversity core course in EDCI, originally framed more narrowly as EDCI776 (U.S.) Urban Education. In so doing, she will seek to continue grounding the course in its key broad areas concerning inequality, social stratification, poverty, linguistic, racial, and cultural differences, indigenous peoples, resistance and reform, and the socio-political and economic contexts shaping literacy, formal and non formal educational opportunities but will also utilize these themes to draw in fresh theoretical perspectives on schooling and non-formal education through a global prism. Specific new themes include the impact of war and terrorism, gender and educational rights, religions, environmental racism, transnational migration, postcolonialism, economic crises, and international security.
Beatriz Quintos (Lecturer, EDCI) will design one section of the Mathematics Methods for pre-service teachers, EDCI352 Curriculum and Instruction in Elementary Ed.: Mathematics. Her goal is to create a balanced curriculum that includes: learning in mathematics, learning about mathematics, and learning through mathematics focusing on mathematics topics in connection to global issues such as global warming, endangered species, or wealth disparities. I also hope to capitalize on my identity as an immigrant to the United States to connect pre-service teachers with the increasing number of Latina/o students and other immigrants in the area. It is important to address the relationships established within the classroom and with students’ families as central to the learning process, especially in multicultural settings.
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