SUNY Oswego: Recent submissions
Now showing items 1-20 of 152
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Accelerating Reading Growth in the Wake of the Pandemic: Research and SolutionsData is showing that student reading outcomes have been negatively impacted by the pandemic and corresponding disrupted learning. These findings highlight the need for an acceleration in evidence-based learning to foster stronger reading. The Science of Reading (SoR) provides a solution for effective and efficient pedagogy that is proven to produce significant gains in reading. Educational legislation is shifting to support the use of evidence-based approaches based on the SoR through policy changes including funding, professional development, and certification requirements. Districts are exploring innovative programs, such as 1:1 tutoring utilizing pre-service teachers and summer programming, to try to further accelerate learning gains. We recommend a concerted approach for stakeholders involving legislation, higher education, and districts to ensure that evidence-aligned instruction is being effectively used. Only with a unified approach incorporating all of these elements will we be able to counter the impact that the pandemic has had on the reading ability of our students.
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Transformative Features of Teacher Residency Programs: A Textual Narrative SynthesisAlthough teacher residency programs (TRPs) are increasing in prevalence, the scholarly literature on these programs has not been systematically synthesized to demonstrate consensus regarding benefits of teacher residency programs for teacher preparation over traditional models. This literature review provides a textual narrative synthesis of empirical research on teacher residencies from 2014-2019 and summarizes features of TRPs, including enhanced mentoring, immersive resident learning, and a transformative third space for teacher preparation. The literature synthesis confirmed that TRPs have the potential to transform teacher preparation and improve upon university-school partnerships to bolster theory-to-practice connections. As TRPs innovated and developed their residency programs, the reflective process was essential.
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Teacher candidate self-efficacy and ability to teach literacy: A comparison of residency and traditional teacher preparation modelsThis comparative study explored self-efficacy and ability for scientifically-based literacy instruction between a traditional and residency model of teacher preparation. Pre-/post-survey data was collected using the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy for Literacy Scale. Mentor teachers completed a modified version of the survey on candidates’ abilities. Data were analyzed using paired sample t-tests, independent sample t-tests, and a trend analysis. Results revealed that candidates in the Residency Model held higher levels of self-efficacy for literacy instruction than in the Traditional Model. Mentor teachers rated candidates in the Residency Model as more able to teach literacy than those in the Traditional Model. There was alignment amongst the mentor rating and the resident perception of ability. In the Traditional Model, the mentor and student teacher were not as aligned in their perspectives of student teacher ability to teach literacy. Teacher preparation programs should consider the potential of teacher Residency Models to prepare pre-service teachers for the use of the Science of Reading for teaching literacy.
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The Beast with Two Backs: Bestiality, Sex Between Men, and Byzantine Theology in the Paenitentiale TheodoriToday, the comparison of male homosexuality to bestiality is unfortunately too well-known from homophobic polemics. Yet this comparison has a history in the Anglophone world, and it emerged in the early European Middle Ages seemingly not in order to dehumanize men who had sex with men but in order to make bestiality appear serious by comparing it to male-male sexual acts. The eighth-century Paenitentiale Theodori—which collects the judgments of the Byzantine-born Archbishop Theodore—is the earliest extant English text to connect male-male sexual acts with bestiality. This comparison does not occur in the previous penitentials, but, after its appearance in the Paenitentiale, this comparison traveled throughout Western Europe. No scholarship to date examines the global origins of such a comparison. This paper argues that later medieval views of bestiality as perverse and as a serious sexual offense emerged from bestiality’s early comparison to same-sex acts (rather than vice-versa). Prior to the Paenitentiale Theodori, European theologians described bestiality as a minor sin akin to masturbation. Theodore borrowed the comparison of bestiality and male-male sex acts from a Latin mistranslation of the 314 Greek Council of Ancyra and from the Byzantine theologian St. Basil the Great. Since the early penitentials accorded male-male sexual acts some of the most serious penances, the comparison of bestiality to these acts elevated bestiality for the first time in Western Europe to the status of a serious and unnatural sin. Through connection to effeminizing male-male sexual acts, bestiality gained a reputation as a serious, boundary-violating sin in its own right.
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Body-worn cameras: Technological frames and project abandonmentThis case study examines the technological frames of administrators and users regarding the implementation of body-worn cameras at the Pennybridge Police Department, a mid-sized police organization (<300) in the Mid-Western United States. Using semi-structured interviews, a patrol survey, and ride-along observations; we found that different actors based on their hierarchy and function framed body-worn cameras differently over time. Administrators implemented body-cameras to protect officers from frivolous complaints while at the same time holding them accountable for their behavior. Users felt, for the most part, that the technology had become a “gotcha mechanism” as body camera footage was used to placate the public, monitor officer behavior, and charge them with minor infractions. Adding to their frustrations, users felt increasingly dispirited by the technical shortcomings of the cameras and the backend storage system provided by the vendor. At the same time, administrators were vexed by the financial and logistical burden of the program, ultimately leading to project abandonment and a search for a new system. Our findings have important implications for policymakers and future research.
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The Pennybridge pioneers: understanding internal stakeholder perceptions of body-worn camera implementationSince body-worn cameras (BWCs) were catapulted into mainstream discourse, they have diffused rapidly across police agencies in the United States. Research followed swiftly, providing a wealth of information about how the police and citizens make sense of these technologies. Moreover, we have learned how these technologies have impacted important policing outcomes, such as citizen complaints and the use of coercive force during citizen encounters. However, despite the growing body of research, very little is known about how police stakeholders make sense of the implementation of BWCs and about their decision-making throughout the implementation process. Therefore, this research examines the decision to implement BWCs in one mid-sized municipal police department in the United States through the lens of Rogers (2003) Diffusion of Innovations theoretical framework. We rely on semi-structured interviews and observations with 17 stakeholders to address this question. Our findings show that BWC technology generally posed little uncertainty for stakeholders in terms of what it could offer conceptually. However, because the agency was an early adopter, decision-makers were confronted with significant uncertainty about practical matters such as the financial and logistical costs of implementing the technology, in addition to policy creation. These findings have important implications for scholars and practitioners.
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Body-Worn Cameras and Internal Accountability at a Police AgencyExisting research on body-worn cameras have primarily focused on certain policing outcomes (e.g., citizen complaints and use-of-force), however, only a handful of research to date has considered how the implementation of body-worn cameras have impacted internal organizational processes at police departments. Using semi-structured interviews, a survey, and ride-along observations, we examined how body-worn cameras impacted the way police officers were held or felt accountable for their behavior. The study was conducted at the Sunnyvale Police Department (pseudonym), a small city agency in the United States that had been using cameras for two and a half years. Particularly, we describe how body-worn cameras impacted accountability at Sunnyvale within different organizational contexts that included reporting, citizen interactions, training, and supervision. Consistent with the hopes of reformers, body-worn cameras did seem to raise the general sense of accountability as they became a part of training, citizen encounters, reporting, and supervision. However, these changes were not like reformers would have imagined, as the department did not intently use cameras in a way to hold officers any more accountable for their conduct and performance on the street.
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The effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice: a theory-based analysisThis study applies the technical/rational model of organisations to help explain the effects of body-worn cameras on police organisation and practice in a single police agency in the United States. Consistent with the technical/rational model, cameras had enhanced those people processing and environment-changing features of the police organisation which had tangible goals and well understood means for their accomplishment. In comparison, body-worn cameras were less successful in changing supervision and training, which were not well developed technically. We posit that improvements in these people changing aspects of police work will likely require public pressure for higher levels of police professionalism, rigorous evidence on how these cameras can make training and supervision more effective, and police agencies willing to experiment with their strategic implementation.
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“As Black as They Were Before”: The History of Skin Colour and the History of the Holy Rood-TreeA twelfth-century manuscript preserves an English homily known as the History of the Holy Rood-Tree. In it, the three Rods of Moses perform a number of miracles, including turning the skin of several Ethiopian men and their sons white. The Ethiopian mothers, however, remain Black. The History is perhaps the earliest surviving English text to create a hierarchy of skin colour, and to explicitly state that white skin is more beautiful than black skin. This article frames the History as an early chapter in the history of European depictions of Blackness. The Ethiopians know and respect God, and the History represents their Blackness as abject yet affording insight into God that white characters do not have. At the same time, they implicitly desire whiteness, in an uncanny precursor to the internalized feelings of inferiority that Frantz Fanon described for modern Black people. The History reminds us of the truth of Fanon’s claims that the European past holds modern Black people prisoner, and that it is important to write long histories of race and anti-Blackness.
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Supporting First-Gens in the Library ClassroomAs librarian instructors our goal is to ensure that students have the tools they need to successfully navigate the research process. In this session, I present some strategies I use to create a more productive and inclusive library classroom. Session attendees will come away with enhanced skills for engaging with and empowering first-generation (and other) college students in their library instruction sessions to become better researchers and more confident members of the college community.
