Scholarly Works, School of Education

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Research articles, presentations, and other scholarship

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Zambian Teachers’ Perceptions About Schools’ Preparedness to Integrate Entrepreneurship Education Into the 2023 Curriculum
Mukuni, Joseph Siloka; Libingi, Petros Kaluwe; Samanenga, Marvin Anthony (Allied Business Academies, 2025-07-09)
In 2023, the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) revised its curriculum framework to, among other things, promote entrepreneurship education by integrating it into other subjects at primary and secondary levels. This study sought to determine Zambian teachers’ perceptions about the preparedness of schools to implement the integration of entrepreneurship education as stipulated in Zambia’s new curriculum of 2023. The following questions drove the study: a) How familiar are teachers with the concept of entrepreneurship education? b) To what extent are schools prepared for the integration of entrepreneurship education into the curriculum? c) What suggestions do teachers have for effective integration of entrepreneurship into the curriculum? The study was based on a mixed-method design using electronic questionnaires, focus groups, and lesson observations. The population sample was 115 teachers of various teaching subjects, with a wide range of years of teaching experience. The data collected were from both male and female teachers. The findings of this study seem to suggest that schools and teachers were not quite ready because of issues relating to teaching- learning materials, facilities, teachers’ content knowledge in Entrepreneurship, pedagogical knowledge, and the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Zambia. Despite these challenges, teachers welcomed the new emphasis placed on entrepreneurship education and it was in that spirit that they made the suggestions presented in this paper.
Secondary school students’ perceptions of entrepreneurship education and career options in Zambia
Mukuni, Joseph; Libingi, Kaluwe Petros; Samanenga, Anthony Marvin (Academic Journals, 2025-05-22)
The central question of the study was “What are Zambian secondary school students’ perceptions of entrepreneurship and career options?” Quantitative data were collected using a Google form to collect students’ career options from 113 secondary school respondents and focus group discussions involving 40 students were used to determine in-depth students’ perceptions concerning the concept of entrepreneurship and students’ likelihood of considering entrepreneurship as a career option. In addition to stating their career preferences, students made some suggestions regarding how future curriculum reforms could make schooling more effective in preparing students for their future as formal sector employees or as self-employed entrepreneurs.
Integrating sacrificial listening and children's literature
Allen, Amy E.; Engelhardt, Mason (2025-06-15)
Sacrificial listening is the practice of listening attentively to unfamiliar voices and adjusting one’s own interpretations to adapt to what a speaker (or, in some cases, a text) is saying. This ongoing act promotes “listening for understanding” rather than focusing on “listening to respond.” Sacrificial listening can be used to frame instruction through its application as an underlying framework. When implemented as part of social studies instruction strategies, including read-alouds and group discussions, sacrificial listening can assist students in developing positive relationships with peers, promote a high level of understanding of other perspectives, and reduce bias in active listening. One key way this can be achieved is by applying its ideas and tenets to the selection and reading of children’s literature books. In this article, we provide examples where the framework of SL might be paired with specific children’s literature books to help students build empathy, reconsider the interconnectedness of people and the world, and think critically. We also provide questions that can be used to guide discussions about literature situated in a sacrificial listening frame.
Discourse Within the Interactional Space of Literacy Coaching
Dunham, Valerie; Robertson, Dana A. (MDPI, 2025-06-04)
Reviews of literacy coaching show positive outcomes for teaching and learning, yet also that coaching’s impact varies widely, especially at increased scale. Thus, some scholars argue the quality of coaching interactions may matter more than broad coaching actions (e.g., co-planning, observing). Situated within Habermas’s notion of “public sphere”, we used discourse analysis to examine video-recorded pre- and post-interviews, coaching meetings, and coach retrospective think-aloud protocols of a literacy coach and elementary school teacher who described their partnership as “successful”. We examined participants’ values expressed about coaching; how each participant positioned themselves, each other, and the coaching context; and the nature of the coach–teacher discourse therein to answer the following question: what occurs in the interactional space between a coach and teacher when engaged in coaching meetings? We found four categories of values focused on participatory choice, their sense of connectedness, knowledge development, and their approach to working with/as a coach. Further, participants’ positionings signified agency for both the coach and teachers in the interactional space. While bracketing and leveraging their own authority, the coach’s language choices promoted teachers’ agency within the interactional space, providing insight into how language functions to shape the “public sphere” of coaching interactions.
Storying the FEW Nexus: A Framework for Cultivating Place-Based Integrated STEM Education in Rural Schools
Scherer, Hannah H.; Azano, Amy Price (MDPI, 2025-06-13)
When education in STEM, social science, and the humanities are disconnected from each other and from place, it is inauthentic and nonresponsive to the lived experiences of people and communities. In rural spaces, the Food–Energy–Water (FEW) Nexus, a framework for problem solving and decision-making around these central resources, is salient because of the concentration of FEW resource production and extraction present. Storying the FEW Nexus is an interdisciplinary pedagogical framework that is theoretically rooted in a critical pedagogy of place and socio-ecological systems. Storying the FEW Nexus brings together these two related but distinct frameworks, calling attention to the need for relevant, place-based, and rural-focused narratives within STEM instruction. Developed for K-12 learners in rural places, Storying the FEW Nexus positions STEM knowledge and skills as resources that, alongside local narratives, are vital to the sustainability and viability of communities with unique and intertwined environmental justice histories and current realities. The FEW Nexus is leveraged to support rural learners in developing sustainable solutions to local socio-ecological systems issues. In this conceptual paper, we review the literature base supporting this integrated approach, describe the framework within the context of these aims, and make suggestions for researchers and practitioners.
Report of the American Psychological Association’s Board of Scientific Affairs Task Force on Promotion, Tenure, and Retention of Faculty of Color in Psychology
Azmitia, Margarita; Martin, Michelle Y.; Blue, Shawn; Bookwala, Jamila; Johnson, Marcus Lee; Perez, Marisol; Pham, Andy; Shear, Paula (American Psychological Association, 2025-06-05)
Recruitment, promotion, tenure, and retention of faculty of color remain significant challenges in academia. Despite an increasingly diverse population, the representation of faculty of color in tenure-track and senior faculty positions remains disproportionately low. Structural barriers, including bias in hiring and faculty evaluations, misalignment between academic culture and cultural values, unequal distribution of service labor, and limited access to mentorship and leadership opportunities, continue to hinder the advancement of faculty of color across academic ranks. This report summary from the American Psychological Association’s “Task Force Report on Promotion, Tenure, and Retention of Faculty of Color in Psychology” examines these systemic issues. It provides actionable recommendations for institutions to foster an equitable academic environment. Key strategies include enhancing recruitment efforts, implementing transparent and equitable tenure and promotion policies, addressing bias in evaluation metrics, and strengthening mentorship and retention initiatives. Additionally, the report emphasizes the importance of recognizing nontraditional scholarship, ensuring fair distribution of service responsibilities, and supporting leadership development for faculty of color.
The Power of Storytelling: Creatively Facilitating Conceptual Change in the Classroom
Rose, Mackenzie S.; Johnson, Marcus Lee (2025-05)
Conceptual knowledge encompasses understanding the interrelationships among multiple pieces of information. Misconceptions of these interrelationships illustrate the need for effective educational strategies to facilitate conceptual change, with the goal of facilitating changes in learner understanding to appropriate, accurate, and complete concepts. Strategies, such as refutation texts, have proven effective in addressing science misconceptions, yet there is a prominent gap in research on conceptual change in nonscience subjects and the use of storytelling to facilitate such change. Storytelling, presented in a range of educational subjects, invites learners to engage in social discourses and problem-solving exercises. Prompted by classroom storytelling practices, creativity, flexibility, and high levels of motivation support learners in approaching ambiguous or complex instructional material as well as promote abstract conceptualization. Despite storytelling’s oral tradition, diverse formats using technology and digital platforms position storytelling as a multidimensional, multidisciplinary pedagogical strategy for conceptual change.
Personality traits in describing entrepreneurial intentions: a sequential mixed methods study
Neupane, Sagar M.; Bhattarai, Prakash C.; Lowery, Charles L. (2025-05-09)
Entrepreneurship is shaped by personality traits and driven by personal intention, and it is crucial for economic mobility and societal progress. Despite being an underexplored area, the relationship between traits and entrepreneurial intention is vital for understanding how educational entrepreneurs differ from non-entrepreneurs. This study used a mixed-methods approach to investigate how personality traits influence entrepreneurial intentions. The study’s first phase was a survey of 171 teachers and 125 school owners, employing a validated scale to identify traits such as need for achievement, ambiguity tolerance, enthusiasm, creativity, locus of control, and risk-taking. The results showed that these traits collectively explained 89% of entrepreneurial intention, with enthusiasm as the strongest predictor. The second phase involved case studies of four individuals with extreme trait scores, revealing that school owners possessed stronger traits and excelled at resource utilization and overcoming challenges, unlike the schoolteachers—the non-entrepreneurs. Findings revealed that stronger personality traits significantly impact entrepreneurial intention. The contrasting result was found in individuals with weaker traits characterized by their favor toward traditional job security. The findings enhance our understanding of the psychological drivers behind entrepreneurial intentions and the implication of cultivating these traits through program interventions for entrepreneurship. Recommendations include policy makers fostering specific traits by creating enabling environments and supporting educational entrepreneurs in developing personal confidence and traits like risk-taking and adaptability. The study also calls for a cultural shift to prioritize entrepreneurship over traditional employment.
Technology Education and Designerly Ways of Knowing: The Pedagogical Goal of Design is Understanding
Wells, John G. (2019-11)
Improving student understanding by connecting content and practices through curricula that integrates science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been a national priority in the United States for well over half a century. This educational reform has resulted in the U.S. now fully embracing technological/engineering design based learning (T/E DBL) strategies as a means of ensuring STEM integration and achievement of student understanding. Student understanding is the principal learning outcome to be attained through T/E DBL where the instructional goal is explicit in “having students design to understand” when working toward the development of a viable technological and/or engineering solution that meets a human need (Wells, 2016, pp. 14-15). Immersing students in T/E DBL experiences develops their habits-of-hand (designerly abilities) that intentionally leads to their developing the habits-of-mind (designerly ways of knowing) requisite of true understanding. As an approach to acquiring knowledge and achieving understanding, designerly ways of knowing (Cross, 1982) is unique to the T/E design based learning approach. This article provides classroom exemplars as a means of demonstrating how T/E DBL uniquely imposes on learners a need-to-know requiring them to draw on multiple STEM subjects as they move between convergent thinking (what they know) and divergent thinking (what they need to know) when working to learn the content knowledge and practices needed in designing technological or engineering solutions.
Design Based Biotechnical Learning: Distinct Knowledge Forms Supporting Technology and Science Conceptual Understanding
Wells, John G. (Brill Sense, 2021)
Schooling is the means through which literate populations are prepared. Literacies developed in the humanities, sciences, maths, and technologies all reflect different forms of knowledge (Hirst, 1965). Each knowledge form has their own distinctive ways of coming to know, which employs a discrete set of intelligent actions recognized as a Knowledge Acquisition Heuristic (KAH) unique unto that knowledge form. STEM education reform over the past several decades has given rise to design, technological and engineering specifically, as an accepted knowledge form, inclusive of its own discrete knowledge acquisition heuristic. Accepting design as a distinct knowledge form calls for a paradigm shift in technology education that recognizes understanding as the primary learning outcome of design where solving ill-structured design problems, tame or wicked, is the pedagogical framework within which learners design to understand (Wells, 2016a). A logical step toward acceptance entails a pedagogical paradigm shift to (a) recognize design as a unique knowledge form, (b) distinguish problem solving in science from that in design, (c) intentionally teach, with disciplinary fidelity, inherent co-occurring disciplinary concepts, and (d) unpack the instructional strategies used in guiding learners through phases of design toward conceptual understanding. Biotechnology is a content area within the field of technology education that is well suited for explicating the elements of just such a pedagogical paradigm shift where conceptual understanding is the primary learning outcome of design. Biotechnical systems reflect a complex and dynamic set of relationships between the biological requirements and the technological systems necessary to support the biology. Designing biotechnical systems naturally imposes on the designer a need to be knowledgeable of the disciplines inherent within the development of a functional artifact proposal. The biotechnical designer must be able to draw on the full breadth of their disciplinary content and practice knowledge associated with thinking and working across differing disciplinary perspectives. These cognitive demands foster the seamless development of critical thinking necessary for achieving a conceptual understanding of systemic relationships among the biological and technological components. As a pedagogical approach, Design Based Biotechnical Learning engages learners in design with the educational intent of having them achieve deep understandings of targeted technology and science concepts – learners design to understand.
“Lots of talk, but nothing formal”: Exploring administrators' sensemaking about the recruitment and retention of women of color faculty in STEM
Lane, Tonisha B.; Woods, Johnny C.; Johnson, Whitley M.; Johnson Austin, Saundra (2023-10-02)
Exploring institutional retention support initiatives for retaining women of color STEM faculty
Lane, Tonisha B.; Woods, Johnny C.; Huggins, Natali; Darko, Samuel; Tahir, Faika; Johnson Austin, Saundra; Kos, Lidia (2023-06-25)
Exploring the Importance of Bonding and Bridging Capital for Graduate Women Accessing Academic and Professional Pathways in STEM
Lane, Tonisha B.; Lewis, David Bruce; Woods, Johnny C.; Steele, Rebecca (ASEE Conferences, 2023-06-25)
Characteristics of effective models for classroom demonstrations
Johnson, Marcus Lee; Burns, Emma (Routledge, 2023-07-05)
Use of peer models during classroom demonstrations can be an effective teaching practice to support student learning and self-efficacy. According to social cognitive theory, modeling is a form of vicarious experience: those experiences through which students are able to learn and acquire knowledge through observation. As a critical source of self-efficacy, vicarious experiences involving peer models are likely to support students’ efficacy. Although qualities of effective peer models have been identified, there has been less translational work that discusses the tensions between best practice and the practical considerations by educators in identifying, selecting, and using peer models for classroom demonstrations. The aim of this paper is to review the qualities of peer models research and discuss how effective peer models can be implemented in diverse classrooms. Here we pay particular attention to the perceived similarity of ability and identity between the model and student observers. This paper also outlines gaps in the research and identifies pathways for future research.
Polytrauma and Executive Functioning: A Review of Cognitive Protective Mechanisms and Resilience
Rose, Mackenzie S.; Johnson, Marcus Lee (Elsevier, 2025-03)
Flexible Assessment in Higher Education: A Comprehensive Review of Strategies and Implications
Barua, Lumbini; Lockee, Barbara B. (Springer, 2025-02-01)
The article highlights the growing significance of flexible assessment in higher education as institutions adapt to the increasingly diverse needs of their student populations. The demand for customizable educational experiences, heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, has made flexibility in assessment essential for sustaining and improving student engagement, satisfaction, and outcomes. This review explores various strategies for implementing flexible assessment, including flexible tasks, formats, weighting, deadlines, feedback, and deliberate planning. It also addresses the challenges, such as choice overload and increased instructor workload, that can arise when flexibility is not carefully implemented. Through a comprehensive review of existing and recent research, the article reiterates the proven benefits of flexible assessment while offering evidence-based recommendations for effective implementation. It calls for further research to develop assessment practices that can contribute to a more adaptable and equitable assessment environment for today’s modern learners.
A review of strategies to incorporate flexibility in higher education course designs
Barua, Lumbini; Lockee, Barbara B. (Springer, 2024-08-20)
While the movement for flexibility in higher education can be traced back to the first corresponding courses in the 18th century, the recent pandemic has led to an unprecedented demand for flexible learning, particularly in higher education settings. This review of the literature delves into the evolution of flexible course design and defines flexibility as a multifaceted concept encompassing time, place, content, pace, and pedagogy, with learner autonomy situated at the core. This review explores the key components of flexible course design, including both pedagogical and logistical aspects, and their implications for developing a learner-centered approach to enhancing engagement and motivation. By synthesizing the current literature, this review highlights strategies to incorporate flexibility in course design through content adaptation, pedagogical modifications, assessment diversification, and adjustments in time, place, and pace of course offerings and learning. This review underscores the significance of flexible course design in light of the rapidly diversified learner demographic and their changing needs emphasizing the necessity of further research on flexibility for building more empathetic and adaptable learning environments.
Toward the Next Generation of Research in Adult Literacy Instruction
Clark-Stallkamp, Rebecca; Lockee, Barbara B. (University of Southern Mississippi, 2024-12)
In November 2019, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) from 2017 (Institute of Education Sciences [IES], 2019) depicted no significant change in the concerning status of adult literacy in the US. More than 52% of adults between 16 and 45 scored below functionally literate levels. While shortcomings are attributed to various factors such as high attrition rates in program, ill-conceived policy planning, and more, significant focus is placed on the impact of effective instruction. The study reviews core cognitive component theory experimentation and instructional intervention research in adult literacy to explain contributions and limitations in current research. To address limitations in research, the review further emphasizes the interdisciplinary role instructional design and technology, and associated research methods such as design-based research that may offer future research on instructional interventions for Adult Basic Education literacy.
Serving the Underserved Amid COVID-19: The Case of a Virtual, Culturally Responsive Summer Engineering Camp
Lane, Tonisha B.; Vomvoridi-Ivanovic, Eugenia; Cain, Leia K.; Willis, Selene; Ahmad, Salam; Gaines, Jonathan (Purdue University, 2023-01-23)
The societal disruptions due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are well noted, especially in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Absent a concerted effort to sustain hands-on learning opportunities in STEM amid the crisis, the consequences of COVID-19 may exacerbate existing inequities and racial disparities among youth of color further stratifying the STEM fields. In the current study, we applied a mixed-method descriptive case study design, using online learning theory and culturally responsive pedagogy as our conceptual framework, to describe how participants experienced this camp, held online due to disruptions of COVID-19, in the southeastern region of the USA. We also share findings from the implementation of a justice bots project, which enabled participants to connect social justice and engineering. Participants included middle school youth, undergraduate engineering students, and in-service math and science teachers. Data sources entailed focus groups, pre-post surveys, observations, and artifacts. Our results indicated that participants experienced gains in their communication skills, positive changes in attitudes toward STEM for middle school youth, established meaningful connections, and enhanced their technical knowledge. Middle school youth reported enjoying the online summer camp environment, though they had experienced more than a year of education online. Undergraduate engineering students asserted that it was challenging to communicate coding and other technical knowledge virtually but having to do so strengthened their capacity to teach others while honing their own competencies. Lastly, in-service math and science teachers reported a better understanding of the connection between engineering and social justice based on their experiences in the camp. We conclude this article with implications for engineering education.
Examining relationships that matter: A qualitative study of Black women in doctoral education
Lane, Tonisha B.; Patterson-Stephens, Shawna M.; Perez, Ebony; Pierre, Devona Foster (Texas A&M University Libraries, 2022-05-31)
The purpose of this study was to explore how and why various relationships bolstered the success of Black women doctoral students by contributing to their motivation and persistence in graduate education. Using the voices of 14 Black women doctoral students within the United States and community cultural wealth as a theoretical lens, this qualitative study sought to examine the nature and importance of supportive relationships that existed during their graduate studies. Findings from this study revealed that family served as a motivator for enrollment and degree completion, a sounding board during trying times, and a space for processing the doctoral experience. Friends and professional associations transmitted various forms of social capital, and mentors served as advocates and facilitators of professional socialization. Additionally, social media played a significant role in helping Black women establish networks when there was limited visibility of or access to other Black women in their graduate programs. From this study, academic programs may be able to glean which aspects of these different relationship types (e.g., family, friends, mentors) matter and develop mechanisms for incorporating them into the experiences of Black women (and other minoritized groups) in doctoral programs.

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