Computer-supported collaborative argumentation is an online activity that can engage students in deep discussion and analysis of complex problems. Given the potentially confrontational nature of argumentation, using polite language becomes a strategic approach to prevent breakdowns in group communication and nurture productive dialogues. This…

While much research has examined the role of individual and systemic racial bias in driving racial discipline disparities, less work has considered the significance of curricular environments in school discipline patterns. In this paper, I report on an ethnographic study of three kindergarten classrooms. Adopting a critical sociocultural…

Public engagement and collaboration through networked practices--known as networked participatory scholarship (NPS)--may influence academic culture to "support, amplify, and transform scholarship" (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012, p. 768). This study examined the open online scholarly community #FemEdTech as it engages in NPS to create,…

As Robin D'Angelo (2018) describes it, white normativity rests on the "definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm." Consequently, going beyond white normativity is not a simple feat. Racism and normativity have been an entrenched part of many of cultures, societies, and…

Larry Schaefer's history of civility is a succinct summary of the implicit and evolving definitions of civility over 2500 years of civilization. Beginning with the Romans and the root word "civitas," meaning the rights and duties of citizenship, civility appears in classical literature as integral to the roots of democracy in the context…

This instrumental case study explores educators in St. Elizabeth, a small Catholic elementary school in the Midwestern United States, learning to include students with special needs. Students with special needs--including but not limited to students with diagnosed disabilities--tend not to be treated as valued, full-fledged members of school…

Ginni Sackett delves into the many implications of grace and courtesy, from social relations and the basis of community to respect for the child's personality. Her point of departure is modern social living with grace and dignity. Hers is an exploration over two generations of seeing grace and courtesy as a comprehensive social view that is the…

Taking up the cause of grace and courtesy across the planes of education, Pat Schaefer tells of the grace and courtesy of successive planes within a school culture and gives a glimpse of how the Montessori vision of a new society can look. Grace and courtesy go well beyond the practice of manners and into the topic of deep observation and…

Pat Ludick's commentary on grace and courtesy is established by a philosophical orientation to development: Grace is oriented to the life of the interior that is consciousness and being, and courtesy moves outward to daily living where civility reflects on success with human interactions. Pat's projected grace and courtesy across the planes is…

Mary Lou Cobb gives a framework from a very practical point of view, leaning on the aspects of grace and courtesy that are fundamental and arise out of a Montessori administrative point of view. Her examples are pragmatic, such as the grace and courtesy of a greeting, of movement, as a whole-school culture, and the right use of language. She calls…

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has set out to expand existing partnerships and form new alliances in order to take on the most pervasive challenges of our time: improving the health and well-being of everyone in America. It has formalized its commitment by bringing together its work under the thematic efforts of "Healthy Children,…

Making use of hermeneutic phenomenology and morality critique as methodological navigation points, this paper challenges the phantasmatic prestige and power of normative orders and the education systems that are designed to keep them alive. It is suggested that what education needs is not morals and ethics, but a pedagogy of discernment that will…

Don't be fooled by Elise Huneke-Stone's disarming beginning where she implies that grace and courtesy is not normally associated with the elementary. She goes on to elaborate that grace and courtesy is indeed everywhere: in project-based learning, understanding of moral precepts, social and intellectual independence, in the utilization of empathy,…

Goldin et al. (2011) suggest nine 'engagement structures' for describing complex, 'in-the-moment' affective and social interactions as well as student beliefs. The study we report here examines the conjecture whether the 'engagement structures' construct can be appropriately adapted to allow such descriptions for secondary mathematics teachers. If…

Polli Soholt looks at grace and courtesy from the 3-6 classroom perspective with clear theory explanations as they pertain to the larger classroom culture. She discusses the link between older and young children and the presence of the teacher as a model for grace and takes a brief look to neural science for proof of the existence of social…