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According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the 2014-2015 academic year marked the turning point of a major shift in student demographics (Hussar & Bailey, 2013). For the first time, students of color (50.3%)--largely Asian and Hispanic students--outnumbered their White peers (49.7%) in public schools in the United States. This trend is expected to continue. By 2022, White students are expected to comprise 45% of public school students. Unfortunately, the teacher demographics are not keeping pace. White teachers comprise 82% of public school educators (Hussar & Bailey, 2013). This raises important questions about teacher preparation and professional development to effectively educate the students of color in our classrooms. This article presents the findings from a collaborative practitioner inquiry project that investigated student learning in three asynchronous, online teacher education courses about issues of diversity that explored the following question: How do preservice and inservice teachers "make sense of" and reflect upon issues of diversity in online teacher education courses? The authors examined White preservice and inservice teachers' engagement with multicultural content. The findings from this study offer implications for online multicultural education courses in promoting preservice and inservice teacher learning and understanding of issues of diversity and social justice.

This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Social Network Analysis to examine an online peer mentoring site created to unite first-year and third-year preservice teachers enrolled in an undergraduate teacher education program. The peer mentoring site was developed to provide both first-year preservice teachers and more experienced peers the opportunity to discuss, share, and learn both from and with one another. The study demonstrated that the online peer mentoring site supported valuable interactions and professional communications among first-year and third-year students. In particular, the preservice teachers engaged with one another to share their experiences and learning as they prepared to be teachers. This study has implications for the field of undergraduate education in its demonstration that an online peer mentoring site can allow for the cultivation of learning, ideas and knowledge exchange, and support of students learning in informal environments. This research also has implications for future research to determine how different populations of students use an online peer mentoring site to interact with their peers and the outcomes that emerge. Such data could inform future development of peer mentoring sites and similar learning spaces. [Paper presented at the Special Interest Group on Online Teaching and Learning (SIG-OTL), American Educational Research Association (AERA) Centennial Annual Meeting (100th, Washington, D.C., April 8-12, 2016).]

This manuscript provides an overview of the findings of an ongoing qualitative exploratory study that examined how preservice and inservice teachers in two different online education courses (ED 600 and ED 500) developed an understanding of the multifaceted issues that affect diverse learners. The study also investigated the instructors' reflections about their courses through their individual journals. An analysis of the study participants' Discussion Board posts and interactions online revealed how the Discussion Board forum was used as a critical, reflective space for participants' to engage in self-reflection and to exchange and challenge one another's ideas. The journals also revealed the instructors' overall aspirations for the course, and their role in cultivating an online community in their courses.

In this qualitative study, I explored the socialization experiences of eight teachers in two suburban high schools, and how they described their in-school identities. The findings from the study revealed how the participants constructed their identities differently for reasons that included wanting to deflect particular stereotypic images of their cultural/ethnic group or mitigating their own discomfort in revealing more private aspects of their core identities. The study offers implications for teacher education programs and the critical role that they play in preparing preservice teachers of color to work in suburban school settings, and in exposing all teacher candidates to diverse representations of teachers. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure, and 3 footnotes.)

When the author began the present study, she was discouraged to learn that little research exists that captures the professional experiences of teachers of color, particularly in suburban schools. Yet studies about teachers of color in these settings are critical in light of the fact that they comprise only 16.9% of the total teaching force in the U.S. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2007). These statistics illuminate the skewed representation of European-American teachers compared to teachers of color in most public schools. More specifically, the field lacks an understanding of how teachers of color are socialized into predominantly European-American suburban schools. According to Burant et al. (2002), teachers of color face "powerful socializing pressure to minimize their cultural capital...to be (or at least appear to be) just like all the other (mainly Euro-American) teachers to be successful" (p. 6). The literature on African-American teachers who taught during desegregation in the U.S. (Fairclough, 2007; Foster, 1997) and, more recently, those in the research conducted by Mabokela and Madsen (2003, 2005) support Burant et al.'s argument that teachers of color are often expected to emulate the teaching styles and behaviors of European-American teachers. In this article, the author discusses the findings of a qualitative study that examined the socialization experiences of eight teachers of color who taught in two predominantly European-American suburban high schools in the Northeast region of the U.S. The findings from the study offer critical insights into the specific issues and challenges that the participants encountered in their schools. (Contains 2 tables and 1 note.)

Two teachers and 49 students aged 5 to 8 completed an inquiry-based project formulated around Neuman's I-LEARN model, a learning model that builds on and expands traditional information-seeking models specifically to address the processes and outcomes of learning with information. The study's results indicated that the model is a useful tool for helping young urban children understand and complete research projects. They also revealed that the 5- and 6-year old kindergarten students in the study--whose fairly young teacher had a background in school libraries--achieved higher levels of digital/information literacy than did the 7- and 8-year-old second-graders--whose veteran teacher did not have such a background. The school library had been closed because of financial constraints, and the findings have serious implications for educating urban students in other schools facing similar situations., Background The Fairmount School (a pseudonym) is one of two university-assisted schools (Borthwick et al., 2003; Harkavy et al., 2013; Thorkildsen & Stein, 1996) affiliated with Drexel University--a large, private [...]

This manuscript provides an overview of the findings of an ongoing qualitative exploratory study that examined how preservice and inservice teachers in two different online education courses (ED 600 and ED 500) developed an understanding of the multifaceted issues that affect diverse learners. The study also investigated the instructors' reflections about their courses through their individual journals. An analysis of the study participants' Discussion Board posts and interactions online revealed how the Discussion Board forum was used as a critical, reflective space for participants' to engage in self-reflection and to exchange and challenge one another's ideas. The journals also revealed the instructors' overall aspirations for the course, and their role in cultivating an online community in their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]