Oregon has been highlighted as a state with large student enrollment changes after the pandemic, as well as persistent learning loss. Unlike many other states in the nation, this learning loss has persisted. This paper goes beyond the statewide trends to examine regional and district level patterns in both enrollment changes and learning outcomes. One major finding is that while districts in all regions experienced enrollment changes, Large Urban and Suburban districts had notable enrollment declines. These declines were driven by a decrease in White students. Meanwhile, Suburban districts had increases in Asian, Black, and Multiracial students. Another finding is that while student proficiency rates in ELA and Math declined across the states, some large Urban districts, such as Portland Public Schools, were able to mitigate pandemic challenges while other Suburban districts struggled to do so. Finally, the growth of enrollment in Virtual Schools is also described.
This paper attunes to the stated focus of this special issue—teacher subjectivities on a terrain of freedom—to consider the qualities, possibilities and limits of teachers’ praxes and development upon this ‘terrain.’ In response to the call, we explore three critical questions: 1) Where does the teacher’s freedom lie amidst required protocols and standardization?; 2) Can teachers transcend how they have been conceived and conditioned?; and 3) How can teachers engage in transformative development? Through a "poetics of teaching," inspired by Hansen (2004), we frame teaching as a curricular and pedagogical art form that melds interdisciplinary, intellectual, aesthetic, and moral dimensions to enrich the professional and personal livelihoods of teachers and, in turn, students. This approach supports UNESCO's (2021) principles of lifelong professional learning and the nurturing of the different global and local ecosystems that connect to our K-12 classrooms. Drawing on empirical research from a pilot study, this article highlights the transformative practices of two secondary school teachers as they navigate and expand upon their professional “terrain of freedom,” demonstrating different institutional possibilities and constraints. Our findings suggest that teacher education programs should cultivate environments that encourage innovation, critical reflection, and ethical engagement, aligning with UNESCO’s calls for a new social contract that advocates for teachers as agents of change in reimagining education for more just and sustainable futures. These lessons learned from our pilot study underscore the need, as we suggest, for teacher education to nurture, support, and sustain professional educators capable of transforming curriculum, their pedagogical, and classroom communities toward and on behalf of the public good.
The increasingly culturally diverse settings present within today’s P-12 schools necessitate improved pedagogical practices to develop more culturally inclusive and equitable learning environments. Third-space pedagogical practices demonstrate potential as an approach for increasing educational equity by promoting cultural hybridity among diverse students and stakeholders through negotiated sociocultural perspectives and interactions. This literature review summarizes recent scholarship surrounding third-space pedagogy, including discussions of how educators can foster third-space relationships and design third-space learning opportunities in diverse educational settings. In addition, lessons from COVID-19 third-space learning opportunities are discussed as a model for re-envisioning equitable instructional practices post-pandemic.
Many teachers in the current public education system in the United States do not fully consider the unique societal and cultural aspects of African American and Latinx learners. As a result, many teachers could benefit from developing skills that strengthen their understanding of authentic engagement, cultural competency, and cultural congruency to aid in implementing culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogical practices that benefit the diverse learning styles of these students. Additionally, some African American/Black teachers have adopted a standalone Eurocentric approach to teaching that could further alienate and disenfranchise students of Color. To address these issues, I describe and explain the decisions and actions taken by an all-African American teaching staff at a school in North Carolina that educates a 100 percent minority student population. This autoethnographic study also highlights the cultural and academic challenges that many students face due to the shortage of teachers who understand and apply methods and approaches involving cultural competency, cultural congruency and authentic cultural engagement.
Exploring the role of diverse young adult (YA) literature in fostering social justice awareness, this paper focuses on the YA novel Firekeeper’s Daughter as a tool for understanding decolonization and our own individual privileges and responsibilities as they relate to colonization. Three researchers, each with differing positionalities and worldviews, employ a polyvocal methodology of duoethnography to examine the text's challenges to settler colonialism and its illumination of historical and systemic injustices. Through our dialogic exchange, we aim to contribute to a wider conversation about the potential of literature storytelling, and authentic, vulnerable conversations to inspire transformative change.
Teachers have a responsibility to create and foster engaging learning environments which encourage underrepresented persons in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Outreach programs have been shown to increase STEM engagement of students. We use a positive psychology lens to investigate STEM outreach and teacher wellbeing. This exploratory study uses a survey and focus group to assess how a STEM outreach program can create teacher feelings of support, confidence, and enjoyment. Results demonstrate that most teachers felt more confident in teaching STEM following the STEM-mentor facilitated outreach sessions. The positive benefits to teacher wellbeing from outreach program mentorship, is discussed.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the already elevated stress levels among teachers, leading to contemplation of leaving the profession. As educators were compelled to transition to online teacher, they suddenly found themselves immersed in the households of their students, an entirely novel experience. This newfound proximity granted teachers insight into various aspects of the students’ lives, including family dynamics, home environments, levels of household stress, and the accessibility of essential resources. In addition to the teaching duties, educators were tasked with the development of online curricula, the acquisition of online learning resources, and providing support to parents and families during a particularly stressful period. The critical question arises: did these unique experiences influence teachers’ decisions to remain in the profession? The research findings suggest a number of teachers considering leaving the profession.
In preparation for the special issue: Cascading Crises: Power, Equity and Liberation, the Editors of NWJTE sat down for a conversation with Dr. Liza Finkel, a Science Teacher Educator in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College. Dr. Finkel’s passions include science (especially geology), finding intersections between science and social justice and helping new teachers learn to include those connections in their teaching, knitting, cooking, birding, and reading mystery novels with women protagonists.
This paper documents the efforts of an activist group that came to teach about activist efforts, climate change/climate justice/climate crisis issues, and to create leaders in one border community. The leaders of this three-day workshop are a part of an activist organization named SOMOS Sunrise, the Latine constituency of the Sunrise movement. In this paper, I will analyze the climate change workshop training days and components of the workshops. Secondly, this paper will document a climate cohort education group conducted with undergraduate students and pre-service teachers the following summer. This climate cohort helped articulate art activism and public speaking opportunities to advocate for change with the city council. The implications for teacher preparation programs and strategies to situate situate climate activism as a tool to reimagine border culture within the climate change/climate crisis will be discussed.
This research project sought to understand how preservice teachers explore their relationship with Science and confidence in teaching about climate change in Science education amid a culture of denial regarding the impact of the climate crisis. Using data from three cohorts of students in an elementary Science methods course, this paper shares the context of climate change acceptance in the province of Alberta, Canada, the fossil fuel economic hub of Canada, and how using Journell’s framework for controversial issues alongside a critical energy literacy framework using inquiry, supported preservice teachers to address their hesitancy in Science classrooms to engage with climate change education. Science education also needs to shift as our energy and economies need to shift in response to the climate crisis. Preservice teachers, therefore, need to be supported in this transition by better understanding their relationship with Science and how to respond to the climate crisis within regions that do not necessarily support renewable or sustainable forms of energy, such as Alberta, Canada.
As the effects of climate change are being felt more frequently, discussions on how to combat such a massive issue are increasingly prevalent. Finding solutions to the climate crisis requires an understanding of how mainstream economic systems have led to the climate crisis and using these same principles to get out of the climate crisis is misguided. Economic actions have inherent value biases that have real political effects. Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) as a theoretical model presents a better understanding of how values that are inherent in economic models such as reliance on efficiency, markets, and continual economic growth have created the foundation for the climate crisis. Solutions must remedy these value shortcomings to become more ecocentric, reciprocal, and foster a healthy common to make substantial progress on the issue.
In November, the Editors of NWJTE sat down for a conversation with Dr. Mindy J. Chappell, a Science Teacher Educator in the College of Education at Portland State University. Dr. Chappell’s passions include developing teachers who are prepared to disrupt normative science ideologies and provide young people with science instruction that encourages and empowers them to be leaders in their communities. She engages in arts-based educational science research through the methodology of Ethnodance (a term she coined). She places young people and their lived experiences at the heart of her work.
In this special issue of the Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, Richard Sawyer and I (the co-editors) examine a few of these consequences of climate change on the field of education. Specifically, we focus on teacher educators’ discussion of their work with their preservice students to understand and make a positive impact on climate justice education. All of the articles in this special issue take a realistic yet guardedly hopeful stance to the possibilities for climate justice.
