Gilbert Valadez recalls how, when he was a 1st grade teacher, he worked with a student to overcome a situation related to her gender identity. He suggests that any teacher working in public school adopt an inclusive attitude about all students and help students become comfortable with their own gender expressions.

In this response to Kalenic-Craig's (2017) article, "The Rights of the Learner: A Framework For Promoting Equity through Dynamic Formative Assessment," I consider what implications the RotL framework has for the work that teachers and students must do in learning environments where these rights flourish. The RoTL emphasizes student…

Individualized instruction and differentiation are fundamental concepts of the Dalcroze approach to music education. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze believed that students learn to be musical by different modalities. His three core branches, eurhythmics, rhythmic solfège, and improvisation, are intertwined with active listening, positive self-expression,…

Many teachers in Asian EFL situations report difficulties integrating communicative tasks into their classrooms. This study reports on an innovation in which opinion gap tasks were used to support the regular classwork of a middle school English class in Seoul, South Korea. The task had to reflect the learning objectives of the state-mandated…

The voice of children aged 4 to 8 years is seldom heard in research circles, within the constraints of high-pressure academic model which is the current education system in England. Children are rarely listened to but expected to listen in the current normative societal cycle. This deficiency of active listening as an everyday occurrence impacts…

Previous research on adolescents and singing has focused on understanding the physiological changes in the voice during the age range 11-16 [Cooksey, J. M., and G. F. Welch. 2008. 'Adolescence, singing development and national curricula design.' British Journal of Music Education 15 (1): 99-119], and addressing the lack of male participation in…

Contemporary societies, whether in the United States or the Pacific are overwhelmingly visual in character. Yet, schools at all levels continue to privilege written text as demonstrations of learning over any other form of communication. A visual curriculum has the potential to strengthen instruction across disciplines and offers students another…

Pedagogy that centers primarily on oral and written language significantly limits the educational progress of students with disabilities because it may not regularly afford them opportunities to express what they have learned. It stands to reason that increased opportunities for expression through multiple ways or modes of meaning-making will lead…

This dissertation considers the supportive and complementary relation between Mark Johnson's embodied realism and Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do as a philosophical practice. In exploring this relationship, the emphasis on one's embodiment condition and its relationship with metaphor and self-expression are the primary focus. First, this work involves…

Working as an ethnographer with graffiti writers in Boston, the author has collected a range of materials, and experiences. Graffiti writing is a patently spatial practice, and existing scholarship across disciplines has emphasized this situated relationship between graffiti and the production of, and resistance to, contemporary, neoliberal…

Digital storytelling has many implications in teaching and learning. As a way to communicate ideas, experiences, beliefs, and topics to an audience through the use of technology and multimedia, digital stories help storytellers acquire many different skills and literacies. The most important aspect is that the storyteller learns to create stories…

One of the few recurring characteristics in school shooters' stories is their expression of existential concerns. Many discuss their hatred of the world and existential loneliness in their manifestos, suicide letters, or social media updates. These expressions--called leaking--are made during the planning period preceding their deed. They are not…

Students from all over the world, from various ethnic and racial communities, make up the student population of the schools in the United States. Each one of them brings to the classroom several unique characteristics. Creative writing and art are both empowering tools that meet the commonality of self-expression. Both are processes "in which…

Children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties have been shown to constitute a unique class of Special Educational Need, where their 'challenging' behaviour can often result in a disproportionately punitive response, rather than one characterised by a needs-based understanding of behaviour as communication. Such an understanding…

The present study examined whether and to what degree empathy increased in adolescents who participated in a high-intensity writing program over the course of a year. Data for this study came from writing samples of a randomly selected group of middle-grade students (n = 61) collected at three different time points to answer whether: (1) it was…