My PhD supervisor and lifetime mentor, Carl Leggo, was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and died March 7, 2019. The prospect of a shortened life brings a sense of urgency to the central existential questions of love, fear, joy, and loss--four prominent themes in Leggo's work. In this essay, I reflect on how his mentorship has transformed my…

The "distance" in "distance learning", however it is defined, normally refers to a gap between a learner and their teacher(s), typically in a formal context. In this paper I take a slightly different view. The paper begins with an argument that teaching is fundamentally a technological process. It is, though, a vastly complex,…

In this article, I respond to my father's 2005 article "From Here to Clare: Yearnings of a Scholar-Turned-Dad." My goal is to share whether and how I followed the guidance he set forth, and how those recommendations shaped my life and moral development as an undergraduate student and beyond. It is my hope that students find inspiration…

Trauma-informed teaching and learning has gained a great deal of prominence in higher education over the past three years. Typical approaches to trauma-informed work often start with a generalized set of ideas and principles that are then applied to very individualized and contexts. In this article, written as a dialogue between two educational…

The author describes and reflects on seven months of sharing one book with a child who is coming at reading in her own way.

The field of family engagement is being revitalized. Professionals in schools, libraries, early childhood and afterschool programs, and other organizations are turning away from programs and practices designed for families without their valuable input. Instead, today's family engagement leaders are striving to include parents and other family…

Two years after the onset of the pandemic, COVID-19 continues to take a toll on educators' morale and well-being. The need to strengthen relationships between educators and students is growing. The MyTeachingPartner-Secondary (MTP-S) program, which is a strengths-based coaching program for middle and high school teachers, helps educators respond…

Writing practitioners, researchers, and scholars are at a juncture where foundational assumptions about the teaching of writing, its place in higher education, and its ability to help foster a truly inclusive democratic society are increasingly contested. Trust in literacy has been eroded over the past decades, coming to an acute crisis in the…

Research influences policy more often than much of the academic community thinks, and more frequently every day. But its influence is less linear than researchers expect, and it is driven as much by relationships and organizational capacity as by the actual information studies produce. Research use operates through conversations, not code;…

In this interview, Sonia Nieto shares what she has learned from her long career in teaching, teacher education, and research about what motivates teachers to continue coming to the classroom each day. She shares the story of her early years as a teacher and how professional relationships helped her to thrive. And she describes the varied ways that…

This commentary discusses two papers in this special issue on "Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum" that consider strengths as well as difficulties of autistic people and seek to engage with their perspectives and needs: (1) "I Was Just so Different": The Experiences of Women Diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder in…

Kathleen Quinlivan is passionate about raising the profile and quality of sexuality education in schools. As a past secondary school teacher and current university associate professor she strives to bring research and practice closer together, keeping both connected with students' and teachers' everyday lives. In March this year Kathleen ran an…

Dewey famously believed that we learn through experience, through which we build up habits. Education should be about developing good habits. Experience for Dewey, is not an individual possession but grows out of social interaction, which always takes place in a given culture. Dewey's views on culture are significant in relation to a current issue…

This article presents reflections on a symposium on eudaimonia and music learning, from the perspective of one of the organizers. The symposium had been planned as a traditional, in person event in the United States, but was held online in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Despite shortcomings, the video-conferencing format possibly created…

Literacy coordinator Martha Sandstead finds inspiration for her coaching work in a quote from civil rights organizer Lawrence Guyot: "Let's say you're riding past a picnic, and people are cuttin' watermelons. You don't immediately go and say, "stop the watermelon cutting" and let's talk. … You cut some watermelons, or you help…