Strong literacy skills are needed to be successful in the 21 st century. All teachers are charged with developing students' literacy skills and abilities. To help better prepare preservice teachers for this task, students at the University of Missouri are required to take a Reading in the Content Area (RICA) course. This intrinsic case study focused on preservice agriculture teachers who were nearing completion of the RICA course. Two focus groups were conducted with a total of nine participants. Four themes emerged from the data: 1. students held misconceptions and concerns that were dispelled, 2. the structure and content made it an impactful, yet incomplete, experience, 3. they recognized the importance of literacy in agricultural education, and finally 4) they were still hesitant to use literacy in their future classrooms. Recommendations for practice include: adding a literacy component to microteaching experiences, developing confidence surrounding literacy assessment abilities, and providing preservice teachers with literacy strategies specific to agricultural education.
This qualitative case study explored the unique ways recent college graduates serving as full-time, near-peer mentors supported students along the path to college in three different urban public high schools. By applying the theory of figured worlds to school spaces and practices, this study sought to both define the physical and figurative ways mentors helped students envision and enact college-bound identities and compare and contrast the differences in these spaces across schools. Data and thematic analysis indicate that promoting the development and enactment of college-bound identities requires intentionality about how school culture, people, and policies enable real and figurative spaces for college-bound exploration and support.
The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease–2019) pandemic disrupted the education of students across the globe in the spring of 2020. Students who were previously at most risk for falling behind their peers and through the cracks because of academic, financial, racial, and/or generational disadvantage faced a wide range of additional obstacles in the pursuit of their college goals. This qualitative study sought to uncover postsecondary advising implications for students through the perspectives of near-peer college advisers (n = 23) serving in high-need schools in two different states as intensive, in-person advising was forced to adapt to virtual formats. Two key thematic findings reveal that advisers faced new communication challenges and existing systemic barriers for marginalized students became even larger. For seniors who had not yet made final postsecondary decisions or who had remaining to-dos, the impact of school closures and distanced advising may have fatally widened existing cracks in the path to college.
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