Maria K McKenna

Educators' expectations and understandings of parental involvement in our nation's schools are often disconnected from the reality of students' home lives. This qualitative study purports that educators often lose opportunities to more fully understand and serve students, particularly when perceptions of parental involvement and home-school-community relationships are not accurate or expansive enough to appreciate the nuances of different cultural, economic, or geographic circumstances. Parent (or caregiver) engagement, as we define it, encapsulates both parent voice and parent presence. Parent voice implies not only that parents have ideas and opinions about their children, but also that educators are receptive to this voice, allowing for an open, multidirectional flow of communication. Similarly, parent presence refers to actions related to the voices of caregivers. Based on a grounded theory model of qualitative research, we used a small, theoretically derived sample of parents involved with a local parent education program to further understand parent engagement, presenting detailed descriptions of conversations and writing done by participants through focus groups and interviews. From these data, new models of parent voice and presence emerged. These models act as precursors to a reconfigured and more comprehensive model of parent engagement. Crucial to the final model is an understanding of parent participation in children's lives that is fluid, robust, and specific to context and culture. The final model presented herein is a combination of parent voice and parent presence, whereby children's well being is central to the interactions. (Contains 3 figures and 3 endnotes.)

Johann Pestalozzi’s philosophies and writing on child rearing and educational practice constitute a major influence on modern educational thought throughout the Western world, particularly on seminal American education pioneers such as Joseph Neef, William Maclure, Horace Mann, and Edward Sheldon (Barnard, 1859). Despite this, the work of Pestalozzi is no longer part of the popular cannon of educational philosophy or pedagogy in American teacher training programs nor is it present in most continuing education opportunities for practitioners. The lack of
contemporary familiarity with Pestalozzi’s work in education circles is disheartening since his work has a great deal to offer to modern educators. Pestalozzi’s oft stated goals 1. making the world better for children and 2. treating children with dignity and compassion were eloquently outlined in his writing for future generations to discover and are worth reconsidering today.

Book can be found at: https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Pedagogy-of-Vulnerability
The purpose of this text is to elicit discussion, reflection, and action specific to pedagogy within education, especially higher education, and circles of experiential learning, community organizing, conflict resolution and youth empowerment work. Vulnerability itself is not a new term within education; however the pedagogical imperatives of vulnerability are both undertheorized in educational discourse and underexplored in practice. This work builds on that of Edward Brantmeier in Re-Envisioning Higher Education: Embodied Pathways to Wisdom and Transformation (Lin, Oxford, & Brantmeier, 2013). In his chapter, “Pedagogy of vulnerability: Definitions, assumptions, and application,” he outlines a set of assumptions about the term, clarifying for his readers the complicated, risky, reciprocal, and purposeful nature of vulnerability, particularly within educational settings.

Creating spaces of risk taking, and consistent mutual, critical engagement are challenging at a moment in history where neoliberal forces impact so many realms of formal teaching and learning. Within this context, the divide between what educators, be they in a classroom or a community, imagine as possible and their ability to implement these kinds of pedagogical possibilities is an urgent conundrum worth exploring. We must consider how to address these disconnects; advocating and envisioning a more holistic, healthy, forward thinking model of teaching and learning. How do we create cultures of engaged inquiry, framed in vulnerability, where educators and students are compelled to ask questions just beyond their grasp? How can we all be better equipped to ask and answer big, beautiful, bold, even uncomfortable questions that fuel the heart of inquiry and perhaps, just maybe, lead to a more peaceful and just world?

A collection of reflections, case studies, and research focused on the pedagogy of vulnerability is a starting point for this work. The book itself is meant to be an example of pedagogical vulnerability, wherein the authors work to explicate the most intimate and delicate aspects of the varied pedagogical journeys, understandings rooted in vulnerability, and those of their students, colleagues, clients, even adversaries. It is a work that “holds space.”

CONTENTS
Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgments. Pedagogy of Vulnerability: Roots, Realities, and the Future, Maria K. McKenna and Edward J. Brantmeier. PART I: VULNERABILITY ACROSS DISCIPLINES. Barefoot Hope for Peace: Vulnerability in Peace Education, Hilary Cremin and Kevin Kester. Changing ... One Synapse at a Time, Nancy Michael. Inviting Vulnerability into the Religious Studies Classroom, Emily O. Gravett. The Self-Disclosure Tightrope Walk in Teaching and Teacher Education: Selective and Purposeful, Not Random, Matthew J. Moulton and Susan Y. Leonard. Vulnerability in Performance: Daring To Be Ourselves, Siiri Scott. PART II: VULNERABILITY AND IDENTITY. A Crack in Everything: Facilitation and Vulnerability, Norbert Koppensteiner. Ever Vulnerable: Intersectional Aspects of Black Feminist Thought and the Pedagogy of Vulnerability, Jacquetta Page. Brown Vulnerability and (In)Visibility in Predominantly White Institutions, Carlos G. Alemán. Pulling In and Out of My Daily Work: The Friction of Pedagogies of Vulnerability in a UK University Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Staff Development Programme (The Sheffield SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum), Rachel van Duyvenbode. Making It Personal and Learning con el Corazo n: Pedagogy of Vulnerability Within Mentor–Mentee Relationships, Lorena Mancilla. Becoming Vulnerable in the Era of Climate Change: Questions and Dilemmas for a Pedagogy of Vulnerability, Ute Kelly and Rhys Kelly. PART III: VULNERABILITY AND PLACE. Becoming Vulnerable With the Vulnerable: A Pedagogy of Hope for Incarcerated Students of the Liberal Arts, A. D. Seroczynski. A Personal Narrative of Courage and Vulnerability in Research: Peace Learning and Collaborative Art With Youth, Allison Paul. Unpacking the Pedagogy of Vulnerability in Three Contexts: Lecture, Intergroup Dialogue, and Study Abroad, Matthew R. Lee. Being Vulnerable in the Classroom: Presence, Power, and Pushback in Peace Education, Phill Gittins.

Book can be found at: https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Pedagogy-of-Vulnerability

This collective work explores the contours of learning amid a time-honored and profoundly human struggle with vulnerability -- being fully human and with what it means to know oneself and learn about the world around us. We begin with the premise that we are not alone in the work we are doing nor is this work isolated from the pragmatics of developing skills, knowledge, dispositions, or values clarification. In striving to be their authentic selves as educators, the authors of this book share elements and contexts of their crafts and their disciplines. This book is also a critique of sterile, fragmented, and disconnected learning - learning without the whole person--emotions, body, mind, and spirit (Miller, 2019). Understanding how to teach and learn with depth, meaning, and connection across differences of all sorts is the focus of this  learning journey.  We are ambitious in our attempt to support transformative learning and we share it with humility, acknowledging that our perspectives and aims in educational circles are diverse and complicated. Moreover, we understand that embedding educational practice within a context of vulnerability has differential, and often punitive consequences for some in comparison to others. In this volume, we strive to create space for sharing the interiority of pedagogical experiences, the inner life of the educator, and attempts to humanize higher education. Our hope is that the work also presents new opportunities for readers to consider personal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural transformation in their own teaching, research, collaboration, and learning practices.

This work focuses on the lived experiences of youth in educational spaces and how they understand the phenomenon of care in those spaces. Based on a yearlong intensive phenomenological study (Christensen & James, 2000; Moustakas,1994) of sixteen adolescents from urban public and private school settings, the concept of educational care, as first presented by Nel Noddings (1984), is “unpacked” via children’s art work, writing, interviews, and surveys.

Affective Teacher Education is one of the first books to provide teacher educators, classroom teachers, school administrators, and teacher candidates with research and recommendations related to affective education. All teachers want to become professional educators; they want find satisfaction and reward in their chosen careers. Likewise, all teachers want to show their students in all grade levels and in all subject areas how to acquire, apply, and appreciate appropriate dispositions or outlooks related to the course content and as a community of learners. This book guides and supports teachers to fulfill these two goals. Each chapter explores a different aspect of affective education and offers the reader useful suggestions to prompt self-assessment, professional conversations, and developmental activities. Affective Teacher Education helps teachers to visualize teaching and learning holistically, linking the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that students need to know, do, and feel, to achieve in school and become lifelong learners.

SEE: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Caring-Education-Joyful-Learnin  to view.

Maria McKenna, director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame, believes education should be a source of joy for students, rather than a source of frustration. In this talk, she makes a solid case that we all need spaces where we can realize the exuberance and passion that is critical to learning, exploring, and creating.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

In this chapter, we address the conditions for creating spaces to foster youth's sense of agency as citizens in a democracy, particularly as youth learn to take on varied community, familial, and economic roles as we describe on our work with youth in a community-based research project of almost five years.

This collection of original research explores ways that educators can create participatory spaces that foster civic engagement, critical thinking, and authentic literacy practices for adolescent youth in urban contexts. Casting youth as vital social actors, contributors shed light on the ways in which urban youth develop a clearer sense of agency within the structural forces of racial segregation and economic development that would otherwise marginalize and silence their voices and begin to see familiar spaces with reimagined possibilities for socially just educational practices. Part I: Understanding Youth Perceptions of Civic Engagement and Resistance 1. Picturing New Notions of Civic Engagement in the U.S.: Youth-Facilitated, Visually-Based Explorations of the Perspectives of Our Least Franchised and Most Diverse Citizens Anthony Pellegrino, Kristien Zenkov, Melissa Gallagher, Liz Long 2. Speaking through Digital Storytelling: A Case Study of Agency and the Politics of Identity Formation in School Rebecca L. Buecher 3. "Truth, in the end, is different from what we have been taught": Re-centering Indigenous Knowledges in Public Schooling Spaces Timothy San Pedro 4. Publicly Engaged Scholarship in Urban Communities: Possibilities for Literacy Teaching and Learning Valerie Kinloch Part II: Creating Safe, Creative Spaces for Youth through Community Partnerships 5. "We want this to be owned by you": The Promise and Perils of Youth Participatory Action Research Lawrence T. Winn, Maisha T. Winn 6. Writing Our Lives: The Power of Youth Literacies and Community Engagement Marcelle M. Haddix, Alvina Mardhani-Bayne 7. "It help[ed] me think outside the box": Connecting Critical Pedagogy and Traditional Literacy in a Youth Mentoring Program Horace Hall, Beverly Trezek 8. Where Are They Now? An Intergenerational Conversation on the work of the Llano Grande Center for Research and Development Miguel Guajardo, Francisco Guajardo, Mark Cantu Part III: Literacies as a Civil and Human Right 9. Black "Youth Speak Truth" to Power: Literacy for Freedom, Community Radio, and Civic Engagement Keisha Green 10. Bilingual Youth Voices in Middle School: Performance, Storytelling and Photography Ruth Harman, Lindy Johnson, Edgar Escutia Chagoya 11. When Words Fail, Art Speaks: Learning to Listen to Youth Stories in a Community Photovoice Project Stuart Greene, Kevin Burke, Maria McKenna

The purpose of this review is to expand understanding of the ways culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse youth have begun to reimagine urban and rural spaces using digital storytelling and photovoice, two methods that often fall under the broad field of youth participatory action research. To explain the conditions under which these methods favor movement toward socially just ideas and actions, we also build on and extend research in critical youth empowerment to call attention to the relational nature of the kind of work that positions youth as coresearchers and democratically engaged citizens. Of importance are the availability of safe, nurturing spaces that foster youth engagement, the quality of relationships between youth and adults, and the extent to which decisions and actions remain in the hands of youth. Finally, this review considers the implications for further research and what it could mean to reimagine schools and communities as spaces where youth have a voice as...

... University of Houston, Clear Lake Sharon Lamson, University of Central Missouri Sylvia Martin, Monmouth University John McIntyre, Southern Illinois ... REVIEWERS Linda M. Holdman, University of North Dakota Jane McCarthy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Terrell M. Peace ...

In this chapter, we address the conditions for creating spaces to foster youth's sense of agency as citizens in a democracy, particularly as youth learn to take on varied community, familial, and economic roles as we describe on our work with youth in a community-based research project of almost five years.