The purpose of this study was to determine how trauma-informed approaches in an urban elementary school art room can foster empowerment in students who have been exposed to trauma and have developed Emotional and/or Behavioral Disorders. I implemented a pedagogy focused on promoting empowerment through art making, then collected data on the…

Let's face it--teaching can be stressful. In this generation of Common Core Standards and highstakes testing, educators are often left without the time to plan positive behavioral supports or the sanity to cultivate compassionate relationships with their students. Even though they understand the critical relationship between behavior and…

This cross-case qualitative study draws on poststructural notions of identity to explore the relationship between multimodal literacies of young children and their becoming identities. Although research focuses on the products or texts of multiliteracies, more research is needed to examine shifting identities in the process of students creating.…

Across the nation, educators continue to face challenges as they work to individualize instruction to meet the specific needs of their students. However, theory suggests that teachers who possess a clear vision for teaching creatively weave their personal convictions for teaching with instructional practices. Drawing upon a teacher's (first…

Describing students with disabilities as presenting "challenging behavior" is common in US schools. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the discourse utilized by teachers in order to understand their beliefs and practices surrounding young students considered to present challenging behavior. This study examines teachers' language in…

How can teachers balance early curricular demands and expectations while addressing the social and emotional needs of young children during times of crisis and stress? The author suggests that teachers need to redirect and engage children in learning activities that give them a feeling of control, competence, and empowerment in their own lives and…

Because elementary education is predominantly made up of women, it is interesting that not much research in the field has been conducted with an inherently feminist perspective. Lisa Goldstein notes that developmental psychology has been the theoretical foundation for early childhood education--an irony, especially considering the pervasiveness of…

This paper will examine the discourse of one experienced teacher of Indigenous children in lessons observed as part of the Conductive Hearing Loss (CHL) project conducted by Edith Cowan University in Perth. In the classroom observed, all the children were Indigenous and the teacher was aware that some children were suffering from CHL. This…

This ethnographic study's intent was to understand and interpret elementary teachers' evolving attitudes, perceptions and practices towards non-violence curriculum, the "Second Step" violence-prevention program, and a project model utilizing consultants to implement instruction. Findings included that the curriculum was not implemented as intended…