Teaching & Learning

The recent novel coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has affected humanity and education worldwide as continued learning amidst massive school closures required the unprecedented decision to make a rapid transition from inperson learning to remote online learning. This abrupt and temporary shift to remote online learning due to crisis circumstances was described as emergency remote teaching (ERT). Using a multi-method approach, this study aimed to explore college students' emergency remote teaching experiences during the COVID-19 crisis. Analysis of online survey data revealed the various detrimental effects of the recent outbreak of COVID-19 and emergency remote teaching on the participants' educational and personal experiences. The results revealed not only that the participants have experienced learning loss and lack of motivation, but also that the preexisting educational and social inequities seemed exacerbated and amplified during ERT and the COVID-19 crisis. Issues in terms of accessibility, digital divide, inequity, and mental/emotional/physical health that the participants, more likely females, experienced during emergency remote learning were especially concerning. The results highlighted the importance of addressing and combating the inequities, creating and maintaining a sense of community, and most significantly providing socio-emotional support, 'TLC' (Tender Loving Care; TLC (Tender Loving Care) is an expression, describing extra attention to make someone or something look or feel better), and compassion, to college students and the instructors during the uncertain times and as we move forward.

This qualitative study explored the ways in which mothers of children with Down syndrome interpreted their experiences of motherhood. The narratives of 19 mothers were analyzed. The findings indicate that their identities as mothers were negotiated in the context of the sociocultural meaning of disability and dominant narratives on motherhood. In institutional and interpersonal discourses, they became positioned as other. Their narratives shed light on their resistance to otherness, their contextualized understanding of mothering a child with Down syndrome, and the ways in which they negotiated access to the constructed category of normative motherhood. The study suggests that a conceptual shift is needed in understanding the familial experience of raising a child with Down syndrome. Moving away from assumptions of negative outcomes for these families, professionals need to acknowledge the embeddedness of their experiences in sociocultural beliefs and practices that devalue children with disabilities.

The notion that some parents may be ‘in denial’ is a pervasive theme in dominant
discourses on families of children with disabilities. In this analytic essay, I
deconstruct cultural and institutional master narratives on parental denial and discuss
their role in the marginalization of students with disabilities in schools. I
argue that discourses on parental denial privilege the perspectives of those in
positions of power and control, leave the practice of ability-based segregation in
schools unexamined, and discredit agency among families. Additionally, drawing
from existing narrative-based research, I explore alternative interpretations of
parents’ responses to their children’s differences, situating these in the framework
of critical disability studies.

In this narrative essay I describe the process and outcomes of a group of fourth graders' engagement in a critical inquiry into the constructed meaning of disability in society. Through selfdirected and guided learning, these students examined the historical roots of disability oppression and deconstructed ableist assumptions, and thus found their own understanding about community membership to be transformed. Positioning the need to infuse disability history in schools as an imperative, this paper invites disability studies scholars and social justice educators alike to confront the silences around the topic of disability in schools and to create spaces for children to engage in meaningful dialogues about society's responses to human differences.

Constructing the (M)other is a collection of personal narratives about  motherhood in the context of a society in which disability holds a stigmatized position. From multiple vantage points, these autoethnographies reveal how ableist beliefs about disability are institutionally upheld and reified. Collectively, they seek to call attention to a patriarchal surveillance of mothering, challenge the trope of the good mother, and dismantle the constructed hierarchy of acceptable children. The stories contained in this volume are counter-narratives of resistance - they are the devices through which mothers push back. Rejecting notions of the otherness of their children, in these essays, mothers negotiate their identities and claim access to the category of normative motherhood. Readers are likely to experience dissonance, have their assumptions about disability challenged, and find their parameters of normalcy transformed.

Conceptually grounded in disability studies and narrative theory, this volume is an invitation to rethink common assumptions about families of children with disabilities. It aims to further a dialogue across academic disciplines and professional practices about the constructed nature of disability. This book is a much needed resource for all professionals who seek to participate in the creating of socially just communities and inclusive schools.

This qualitative study explored the outcomes of five teachers’ engagement in a study group, the content of which was based in the radical/critical tradition of counter-narratives and social change, and which explicitly aimed to explore institutionalized ableism and the role of educators in the systematic segregation of students with disabilities in schools.  The findings indicate that teachers experienced significant and meaningful shifts in their thinking about the constructed meanings of disability in society, the nature of disability oppression, and the implications of inclusive education in democratic societies.

Authored by a university researcher, school practitioner, and high school student, this article examines how independent schools can utilize participatory action research (PAR) to bolster diversity and inclusion efforts. A case study approach was taken to showcase a two-year PAR project at a progressive independent school that sought to: (a) enrich institutional knowledge of student diversity, (b) capture the present-day schooling experiences of historically marginalized

This study describes the experiences of two preservice science teachers as they progress through their respective teacher education programs, and uses critical race theory to examine the manner in which conceptions about race and its pedagogical implications change over time. Using a longitudinal case study method, participants' conceptual ecologies of race and pedagogy are mapped both before and after student teaching, and each case is analyzed for evidence of conceptual change in these areas. Findings show that conceptions about race and the pedagogical implications of race changed in ways that likely would have gone undetected in earlier studies because they did not result in wholesale changes in beliefs or teaching practice. This study suggests that the difficulty of fostering an understanding of structural racism and difference may often be underestimated, as revising one's model about race is mitigated strongly by learners' existing conceptual ecologies.

h i g h l i g h t s This project concerns the relationship between funding schools and the democratic aims of education. A case is made for the necessity of teachers to understand the mechanisms for how schools are funded. The article describes a spreadsheet-based, collaborative school finance simulation used in pre-service teacher education. Students had difficulty distinguishing between positive and normative economics, even as many grasped school finance ideas.