Niceness is a socialized disposition, particularly amongst white women, that prioritizes comfort and neutrality while preventing resistance against oppressive systems. Given the demographics of teachers and teacher educators, niceness and whiteness are deeply embedded in programs and institutions. As eight white, female teacher educators, we drew…

Understanding the needs of students who are English learners (ELs) and are also students with disabilities has become an area of policy and research in recent years. Uncovering the needs of this student group requires a closer examination and understanding of the Individualized Education Program (IEP). The IEP is a foundational process and…

Taking the form of three papers, this dissertation seeks to elaborate the role and experience of Black educators by shifting primary research perspective away from the classroom teacher to consider the systemic and organizational roles of racialized faculties. The first paper historicizes the 20th- and 21st-century stories of Michigan's Black…

Paraeducators frequently support children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) but often lack access to effective training opportunities. Similarly, special education teachers are responsible for supervising paraeducators but often lack effective training on AAC and paraeducator supervision. The POWR+ (Prepare the activity and…

This paper highlights how inter-institutional faculty relationships can strengthen student transfer between two-year and four-year programs. This article stresses the value of such efforts and some of the opportunities, benefits, and challenges of getting started. This type of relationship is important to ensure that courses will transfer…

This conceptual essay explores three "moments" related to our collective efforts as white teacher educators to respond to proposed anti-critical race theory legislation in Michigan. These moments made visible institutional tensions and limits related to taking a stand against racist policies. We explore how we might obstruct flows of…

Effective communication about science is a core skill undergraduates should learn, but little research has explored how students communicate about culturally controversial science topics. In this study, we explored how Black undergraduate science students took on the role of science communicators in their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Physicists, physics students, and community members come together and engage with physics content through various forms of informal education programming. Our prior work has shown that the landscape of informal physics programs in the United States has a variety of formats, audience demographics, and content. Informal physics programs have many…

This paper will discuss a Virtual Exchange (VE) between the University of Michigan (USA) and the High Institute of Technological Studies of Béja (Tunisia) that took place between October and December 2019. Students from Tunisia and USA were enrolled in two entrepreneurship courses in their respective universities and joined together to work in…

Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) partnered with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to conduct a multi-year study of Michigan's implementation of competency-based education in K-12 schools. This mixed-methods study seeks to investigate the implementation and effectiveness of CBE using data from surveys administered to 21j…