Lance Billingsley

Annotated Bibliography
For my topic I chose social emotional intelligence in the classroom, and specifically the importance of both teacher and student understanding of intrinsic motivation. I have worked to the best of my ability to present a range of perspectives from both top-down and bottom-up approaches and understandings to learning.

Evidence-Based Research: Emotional Intelligence in Teacher and Student Learning 1. Hoffman, L. L., Hutchinson, C. J., & Reiss, E. (2009). On improving school climate: Reducing reliance on rewards and punishment.International Journal of Whole Schooling, 5(1), 13-24. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/61896844?accountid=14524 The study presented by Hoffman, Hutchinson, and Reese sought to find that if elementary teachers were trained in what they refer to as Conscious Discipline teaching and learning methods, they would then both value and apply these methods in their own classrooms. Conscious discipline in this context refers to teaching/learning locus of responsibility, job satisfaction, and level of support for innovation in the classroom. Over the course of 7 months, 200 teachers from 4 school districts were trained during once-a-month, one day, weekend seminars under the training of Dr. Becky Bailey (Educational Specialist). Each session covered one specific skill (I.E. improved emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, self-control). Through testing, the study found that at the end of the 7-month training teachers found both an improvement in their school climate, and a larger improvement in their students skills in emotional intelligence. The outcome of this study advocates the training of teachers in classroom management approaches that foster more intrinsic motivation to behave, learn, and excel. The use of these emotional intelligence principles such as those taught via Conscious Discipline lead to more positive school climate perception (Hutchinson et al.). This article emphasizes the importance of valuing the social curriculum in the classroom and its contribution to overall more positive school climate. The article clearly demonstrates how having a command of emotional intelligence skills (including intrinsic motivation) and knowledge of how to teach them can help our students become more successful learners. The traditional rewards and punishments for behavior no longer cut it in the classroom, and as teachers we must be prepared to teach our students these crucial skills. Its important to note that the article does fall a bit short in its literature references by citing several articles that are over 10 years old, however I feel the article justifies itself in its presentation of new and compelling research data. Additionally, the article does present some information that is already understood and taught by this program here at UCSD, therefore I look to it as more of a contributing structure of information rather than groundbreaking news. Overall this is a solid article that has helped contribute to my growing understanding and commitment to teaching social and emotional intelligence in my own classroom. 2. Reeve, J., & Jang, H. (2006). What teachers say and do to support students' autonomy during a learning activity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98(1), 209. This study presents an interesting example of how teachers who chose to use different teaching styles can have very real and different effects on their students. Specifically, 72 pairs of

Lance Billingsley pre-service teachers were selected and randomly assigned either the role of student or teacher, then teachers were asked to use either a controlling (teacher-centered agenda which may impose external goals to learning) or autonomy-supportive (encourage student input, reinforcing students sense of autonomy and relatedness) teaching style. The point was to see which styles better encouraged student learning and motivation in relation to their feelings of autonomy in the classroom (ability to work on their own, motivation to complete tasks for their own good/ intrinsic values, and a stronger perceived ability to solve ones own problems. The study found that teachers who used an autonomy-supportive teaching style produced more students who experienced greater perceived senses of autonomy, reported more positive functioning in terms of their classroom management, emotionality, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and conceptual understanding, while teachers who used a more controlling style produced students whom did not report the same level of positive feelings. Overall their results helped contribute to the larger idea of the importance of quality teacher-student relationships. Specifically, relationships rich in attunement and supportiveness can help students lead a better sense autonomy, which may be a crucial skill in todays classroom. I found this journal a bit intuitive to be honest. An autonomy supportive teaching style that focuses on students as individual learners in our classrooms has been taught to us since day one of the EDS program. I suppose a take-away from this study would be that it has reaffirmed what we already suspected as future teachers, and backed it up with real data. It only makes sense that students will perform at their best for the intrinsic value of learning when once they feel that they are known and their opinions are respected in the classroom. I plan to support my students commitment to learning for the sake of education by letting all students in my class be heard. Furthermore, I feel that all students should be allowed to integrate their creativity into class work throughout their education. 3. Adams, C. M., & Forsyth, P. B. (2013). Revisiting the Trust Effect in Urban Elementary Schools. The Elementary School Journal, 114(1), 1-21. This study sought to determine how a culture of trust may or may not trigger in students an internal agency for learning (intrinsic motivation, self-regulation). The author begins by drawing from current literature to give an overall feel to the direction of the study and illustrate how trust has been shown in the past to contribute to a positive performance culture in schools. The study then surveyed over 1000 teachers, and over 1500 students throughout 56 school districts in the US to determine their various cultures of trust. They used surveys to question students and teachers on their perceived levels of trust in one another, parents, students, parental support, honesty, and secretiveness. They found that a large percent of variances (>20%) in schools differences in self-regulated learning was correlative with schools levels of trust. In other words, students in high-trust schools had on average stronger self-regulatory, and intrinsic motivation beliefs than students in low-trust schools. For me straight away I noticed that this article was clearly pro-trust culture in schools. This is not necessarily a negative thing in the case of this study, but an important bias nonetheless. Its also important to note that this study only surveyed urban schools; therefore it may not be representative of all schools. For myself the most useful information was regarding the importance of trust between not only student and teacher, but teacher and other teachers as

Lance Billingsley well as higher-up faculty (principals, admin). This is something I had not previously considered, and will now take away with me. Equity: 4. Kohn, A. (2011). Poor teaching for poor children in the name of reform.Education Week, 30(29), 32-33. Here I chose one of the few articles published by Alfie Kohn that actually references some hard data. Although it is not a typical academic journal it still includes what I believe to be reputable information and represents a strong secondary resource. Here Kohn questions teachers approaches in underserved community schools. He hypothesized that teachers in such schools often use methods of teaching that encourage children to acquiesce and follow everything that the teacher lectures at them (be nice, work hard), rather than critically question the system, classroom, and educational practice to demand the methods that they learn best as individuals in which is linked to lower test scores, trust in school, motivation. By allowing this type of teaching to take place we actually further disadvantage those underserved students and communities. What he concluded through data review was that in fact his hypothesis was correct, data presented by Natalie Hopkinson showed that many underperforming schools were using plug and chug data presentation that did not encourage rich conceptual understanding. Kohn concludes that our current education system focus on testing is not helping our underserved schools, but rather hurting them further by encouraging teachers to teach to the test in hopes of raising test scores, not real knowledge acquisition. Straight away its important to note that Kohn has a very clear agenda towards education reform. His bias is ever present, and understanding his background and other publishings on education I feel is important in not perceiving his perspective as the only correct one in education and education reform. That being said I feel that Kohn often jumps around idea to idea, which I feel takes away reader focus and understanding of his argument. He often presents compelling arguments for reform throughout his articles, but this one in particular may be too overwhelmingly biased to be adequately referenced. My take-away is that I will have to be careful referencing Kohn in future papers and assignments in education. 5. Miron, G., Urschel, J. L., Mathis, W, J., & Tornquist, E. (2010). Schools without Diversity: Education Management Organizations, Charter Schools and the Demographic Stratification of the American School System. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved [9/13] from http://epicpolicy.org/publication/schoolswithout-diversity This article took a closer look at Charter schools and the Educational Management Organizations (EMOs) that operate them, to see if they promote equity or inequity in their schools. Specifically, the study explored whether EMO-operated schools integrate or segregate students by four demographic characteristics: ethnicity/ minority classification, socioeconomic status, disabling condition and English language facility, and their implications. Of the 968 schools surveyed (89% of schools operated by EMOs) Miron, Mathis, Tornquist found that in comparison to surrounding schools district, the charter schools surveyed were substantially more segregated by race, wealth, disabling condition, and language. Both white flight, and minority

Lance Billingsley flight were also found in the schools examined. Miron et al. conclude with recommendations for reform directed specifically to policy makers: If we are serious about making change in our highly segregated neighborhoods, then we must consider the economic, social, and ethnic segregative effects of charter schools along with potential segregation that may be driven by other forms of school choice. Overall this was a very comprehensive article with a wealth of current, applicable data towards equity and school reform. For me this article brought charter schools into a new light, I previously had no idea that they were often so highly segregated and non-inclusive to specific groups. We so often only hear about positive contributions that charter schools make in education, so its important view their impact through a different lens. I believe this article to be reputable and as plan to reference it when applicable for future assignments. Pedagogical Resources: 6. Charney, R. S. (2002). Teaching children to care: Classroom management for ethical and academic growth, k-8. 305-338. For this book I chose to focus on one chapter in particular titled Teachers as Mirrors: Using Social Conferences. The Chapter reinforces the notion that all children must be seen in order to feel safe in the classroom, and then focuses on social conferences as a significant means of solving students issues in the classroom with an emphasis on self-efficacy. Charney believes students self-efficacy is critical to having a successful classroom, and as such teachers should be constantly reinforcing this social quality. Specifically, she outlines five steps to establishing a successful social conference: 1. Establishing what the teacher and student notice 2. Naming the problem and the need to solve it 3. Understanding the problem 4. Generating alternatives 5. Establishing an agreement to try. Rather than focusing on the student as the cause of the problem and instructing them on what they must do, the teacher is reflective and open to the students input, opinion, and ideas to solving the problem both on their own (self-efficacy), and collaboratively. I believe that this book as a whole is a great guide for beginning teachers. Although it does not present hard data as done in the previous journals reviewed, it does offer great, practical, and balanced advice for us teachers. This chapter is particularly useful for its direct situational examples and advice. Although I wouldnt use this source for writing an academic journal or research paper, it is very useful as a practical reference guide in the classroom. Overall, Charney presents some great information in a very digestible format for teachers, parents, and anyone involved in elementary education. 7. Flocabulary is educational hip-hop. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.flocabulary.com/ Flocabulary.com is a private, for profit educational media company. They create streaming media videos connected to educational rap, from contemporary issues in the news to particle matter in physics. They are a fairly new company (less than 5 years old), but have some great reviews from well-known educators (Ryan Vernosh; Teacher of the Year 2012). The idea is that by integrating fun topics (sports, food, games, social media) into real educational lessons (math, science, literature) students will become more actively engaged, interested, and take away

Lance Billingsley more than they may from a traditional lesson. Additionally, the website lists the common core standards that each individual video lesson aligns with. The continuously updated library of videos and media are available to individual teachers for around $70 per year without individual student access. Once you get past the initial cost of this program I think its a great idea. I feel that I could really use these videos to help break-up the monotony of the day, by either using as part of my morning news or possibly after lunch to regain students focus in the classroom. Some of the facts I remember most vividly from elementary school are those we learned when connecting facts or formulas with songs and rhymes (PEMDAS, FOIL). Its important to note that I dont feel its required to use such media to get students attention, but rather its another fun way of introducing information and learning in the classroom. Some of these videos are even available for free online, but the selection is limited. 8. Rss. National center for literacy education. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.smartbrief.com/news/ncle/index.jsp?categoryid=B4DBA2C5-4587-4E0D-A31120433C9B3357 The National Center for Literacy Education was created by a coalition of educators including: The International Reading Center, International Society for Technology in Education, National Writing Project, and many more organizations that we have previously discussed in this course. The source from this site that I focused on specifically is called SmartBrief, and like many RSS feeds it provides links to a wealth of articles and information for teachers. NCLE designed this resource specifically for educators and advocates of literacy teaching and learning. It works by sending subscribers a twice-weekly email summary of the current happenings in the education industry along with links to the correlating news, journal, magazine articles, etc. As a future educator I could use this source as a sort of summary of contemporary information and news in education across our nation. There is a wealth of information on the Internet, and this could help save time searching for the real meat out there. I noticed several articles on teaching literacy across content areas that I feel could be very useful in helping adapt my classroom to the new Common Core Standards. I would be curious to know this organizations political stance. As it is a collaborative creation, I find it hard to determine exactly what their agenda may be, and as we know this often has significant effects on the type of data they publish and support. Maybe someone from the EDS department may have more information or be more familiar with this organization than I am. 9. Twitter Feed. #4thchat (n.d.). Retrieved from http://4thchat.wikispaces.com/ #4thchat is a hashtag where 4th grade teachers can post and discuss topics of interest in the 4 grade classroom (its important to note that the same hashtag also exists for every grade from kinder- 12th). Specifically this hashtag was designed by a group of 4th grade teachers in the US to help connect 4th grade (9-10yr olds) educators across the world on a weekly topic of
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Lance Billingsley choice. On the web link I found a variety of sources that educators had posted from all over the world, including lesson plans, innovative topic ideas, and the use of various technologies in the classroom. The site moderators encourage weekly topic ideas, and anyone can post that has signed up with a twitter account. I feel that in the 21st century classroom we will all need to be prepared to use various social media technology and twitter is no exception. This is a great resource for lesson plan ideas, and topic discussions of interest from various perspectives all over the globe. Its important to note that not all media presented may be credible and free of bias (news, journal articles), therefore this will not be my primary source for finding current news rather I will use it for its social merits and ideas/ inspiration in the classroom. The site creators mention specifically 1st year teachers are encouraged to post discussion topics and issues or concerns in the classroom, which I feel could be really useful in terms of classroom support from cyberspace.