A Culturally Responsive, Transnational Middle Grades Teacher Education Program in American Samoa

Over 50 years of articles related to the middle school movement in the United States were examined and analyzed in order to uncover the movement's primary themes associated with practice, research, and policy. Using a qualitative content approach, researchers created themes to represent the movement decade by decade. The years 1963-1979 were identified as the beginning of the Middle School Movement and its search for an identity. The next decade, 1980-1989, was a time of advancement and progress, and the movement became identified with practices, such as team teaching, interdisciplinary curriculum, and advisory. The years 1990-1999 saw pressure on the movement advancing from national policies, but the movement persisted with a sense of hope. To combat challenges to the middle school movement's core beliefs and practices, an era of research on middle school practices emerged, and this research focus characterized 2000-2009. The current decade continued the research focus with an international perspective and efforts to identify and describe a "signature" middle school pedagogy. From this historical perspective, it was determined that core middle school practices must continue to grow and thrive in order to meet the social and academic needs of future generations of young adolescents.

show abstract

An Historical Overview of the Middle School Movement, 1963–2015

Schaefer

Malu

Yoon

2016

RMLE Online

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“We Need Both”: Combining Video‐Cued Multivocal Ethnographic Methods and Traditional Fieldwork in Samoan Head Start Policy Research

Henward

Turituri

Tauaa

2019

Anthropology & Edu Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article describes how, in our research with Head Start teachers in American Samoa, we combined video‐cued multivocal ethnographic method (VCE) with traditional ethnographic approaches to understand our interlocutors’ perspectives on curriculum and pedagogy, and the contrast between them and mainland US teachers using the same federally endorsed curriculum. We provide illustrative examples of how the inclusion of VCE allowed for meaningful dialogue among informants and researchers, revealing Samoan teachers’ cultural sustainable approaches to curriculum. [Policy, Head Start, multivocal video‐cued ethnography, post‐colonial theory]

show abstract

Contextualizing child-centeredness: Lessons from an American Samoan Head Start

Henward

Tauaa

Turituri

2018

Policy Futures in Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Child-centeredness is a pedagogical approach common in US early childhood education, one that advocates young children should direct their own learning and excercise individual choice in activitites. This approach is reflected in national US Head Start policy. Using multivocal, video-cued, and traditional ethnographic methods, this study presents an analysis of interview data collected from three focus groups with American Samoan teachers to argue that the child-centered approach in newly adopted performance standards may not actually be child-centered, particuarly when ignoring the knowledge base and cultural expectations for children in culturally diverse communities. Analyzed through post-colonial theory, which recognizes the erasure of indigenous approaches to educating young children, we focus on Samoan teachers’ understanding of child-centeredness. Results indicate Samoan teachers had drastically different understandings of child-centeredness, instead pointing to optimal pedagogy as collaborative, community-oriented, and structured, and stressing the value of learning from each other. In forgrounding the voice of Samoan educators, we complicate the existing and pervasive binary positioning of child-centered and teacher-directed instruction in early childhood curriculums, to offer another alternative, an expanded notion of child-centeredness that is contextually bound and locally determined.

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

A Culturally Responsive, Transnational Middle Grades Teacher Education Program in American Samoa

Cited by 4 publications

References 2 publications

An Historical Overview of the Middle School Movement, 1963–2015

An Historical Overview of the Middle School Movement, 1963–2015

“We Need Both”: Combining Video‐Cued Multivocal Ethnographic Methods and Traditional Fieldwork in Samoan Head Start Policy Research

Contextualizing child-centeredness: Lessons from an American Samoan Head Start

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About