IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks :: Browsing by Author "Liu, Laura B."

Browsing by Author "Liu, Laura B."

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11

Aesthetic Inquiry into Chinese University Student Fatherly Life Lessons: “Roots” and their Implications for Educational Contexts
(2017-04-07) Liu, Laura B.; Education, IUPUC
Globally, teachers are trained to educate and assess children through matrices based on comparative competition, a practice that thrives on ranking. In an era of glocalization, how might educational systems cultivate classroom connections embracing diverse student gifts? This arts-based narrative inquiry explores fatherly life lessons of 17 undergraduate and six graduate students enrolled in an introductory qualitative research course at a large urban Chinese university. Building on the course instructor's model, students engaged in arts-based narrative inquiry to develop children's books on treasured fatherly life lessons that they then shared with second grade students at a local Chinese school. Drawing upon the "Confucian Analects" and Laozi's "Tao Te Ching," this study evidences empathy as rooted across cultures and ecologies, and that many fatherly life lessons take place in natural settings. This study encourages teacher education practice and research to engage arts-based autobiographical inquiry, and to explore empathy conceptualizations and expressions across cultures and ecologies. As "glocalization" brings together diverse groups, this work is important to create shared spaces for international connection and meaningful inter-institutional explorations.
Cultivating Civic Generosity in Elementary Youth Across Glocal Cultures, Ecologies, and Generations
(IGI Global, 2018) Liu, Laura B.
This research explores cultivation of civic generosity in elementary youth as a cultural, ecological, generational practice developing global-local connections and enhanced by arts-based pedagogies, including reading, creating, and sharing children's books. In this study, 2nd grade students across two public school contexts (rural middle-income and rural low-income) reflect on learning generosity from a grandparent/parent to create a children's book presented in a public library. This study draws upon perspectives of participating elementary school teachers, administrators, and librarians to understand how the curricula and their partnerships enhanced student understanding, appreciation, and expression of generosity as a glocal civic practice.
Cultivating teacher professionalism in Chinese and U.S. settings: contexts, standards, and personhood
(Taylor & Francis, 2021-07-12) Liu, Laura B.; Conner, J.M.; Li, Qiong; Education, IUPUC
Our global era invites research on teacher reflection that is grounded in local contexts and enriched by cross-regional collaborations. Teacher professionalism is a shared global interest that is shaped by unique cultural factors in local settings. This study examines Chinese and U.S. undergraduate teacher education student views on the criteria for and standardised measures used to assess teacher professionalism. Data analyses of participant products, specifically group rubrics and individual reflections, involved constant comparative analyses to highlight convergent and divergent themes in student conceptions of teacher professionalism within and across the U.S. and Chinese university contexts. Findings demonstrate similarities and distinctions across participant views on the professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions involved in becoming a teacher, and reveals teacher professionalism as a dialectic among contexts, standards, and persons. Context distinguishes professional practice in ways that bring meaning and relevancy to local student needs. Standards provide a shared foundation for global discourse around key elements of a profession. Maintaining a person-centred view helps ensure assessment practices keep education’s broader civic goals central. Engaging in international dialogue on the meaning of teacher professionalism across regional cultures expanded understandings of professionalism, and how it may be fostered and evaluated more effectively in teacher education.
Examining the Relationships between Student Teacher Professional Identity Tensions and Motivation for Teaching: Mediating Role of Emotional Labor Strategies in China
(MDPI, 2022-10) He, Wenjie; Tian, Guoxiu; Li, Qiong; Liu, Laura B.; Zhou, Jingtian; IUPUC Education
Learning to be a teacher through teaching practicum is viewed as a highly complex process in which multiple dilemmas and tensions emerge. These tensions may influence student teachers’ motivation for teaching. However, previous studies on teacher motivation have mainly focused on social status and welfare, seldom taking their emotion regulation into account. Sampling 752 student teachers from 15 teacher education institutes in China, this study examined the relationships between student teachers’ emotional labor strategies, professional identity tensions, and motivation for teaching during their practicum. The results indicated that emotional labor strategies were found to be important resources for student teachers to cope with the challenges brought by the tensions of professional identities in teaching practicum. In particular, deep acting and expression of naturally felt emotions enhanced student teachers’ intrinsic motivation to become a teacher. The results indicated that student teachers should perform emotional labor strategically, which may motivate them to be a teacher intrinsically.
Farming Practices as Funds of Knowledge
(Science Education & Civic Engagement International Journal, 2022) Liu, Laura B.; Russell, Taylor; Economics, IUPUC
This study examines farming practices across regions as funds of knowledge that may be integrated into K–12 curricula and instruction. Funds of knowledge, as conceptualized by Moll, Amanti, Neff, and González (1992), include the knowledge students bring from their families and home communities to the classroom, and serve as resources to enhance curricular relevancy, concept and skill development, learner and family engagement, and a positive learning environment. Funds of knowledge include home language use, family values and traditions, caregiving practices, family roles and responsibilities, and professional knowledge, among other factors identified by González, Moll, and Amanti (2005). This qualitative study interviews four participants with U.S. and international farming experience to invite reflection on practices across cultures and regions. Constant comparative analyses of interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) highlight ways culture and farming are connected and present farming practices as important funds of knowledge. This inquiry offers valuable implications for elementary curricula and instruction.
Funds of Knowledge in Storytelling and Recipes
(NYS TESOL, 2021) Liu, Laura B.; Brodey, Sari; Education, IUPUC
Glocalization, or the relationship between the global and the local, identifies cultural and linguistic inequities that may be addressed through bilingual, multilingual, and multicultural education programs, including the use of translanguaging as a resource for students (Joseph & Ramani, 2012). To support our glocal societies and classrooms, it is increasingly important for institutions of teacher education to prepare teacher candidates to recognize, value, and draw upon students’ funds of knowledge as resources for learning in the classroom. This article describes an autobiographical assignment inviting elementary ELL teacher candidates to reflect on and share funds of knowledge through a digital story and focuses on one candidate’s journey in connecting this process to valuing her ELL students’ funds of knowledge to meet TESOL standards for supporting ELLs in their sociocultural contexts.
Indifference-driven Discontent to Empathy-led Development: What Globally Minded Educators Can Learn from Stiglitz
(FCT, 2016-06-27) Liu, Laura B.; Education, IUPUC
Globalization and Its Discontents is a must-read for those in higher education seeking greater understanding of global economic policy’s key role in shaping globalization’s unfolding. Candidly and insightfully composed by 2001 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Joseph Stiglitz, this personalized narrative presents a brief history of the complex dynamic among global economic institutions and key regions of the world these institutions have impacted, for better or for worse. This review highlights that cultivating a shared global value for reducing inequality is as vital as it is challenging. Organizing shared approaches for addressing inequality present even greater challenges, as international political and economic systems differ enormously. In accessible language, Stiglitz (2003) approaches this complexity with a perceptive eye for trends. This review draws upon neurological and sociological bases for empathy as an active healing agent not only for persons (micro-level), but also for nations and our emerging global society (macro-level).
Learning Empathy: A Currere Reflection on Parenting, Medicine, and Education
(2020-12) Liu, Laura B.; School of Education
Empathy is a vital developmental skill and strategic pedagogical tool that entails having a generous regard toward fellow humans, whom we are willing to view with appreciation for their strengths and understanding for their weaknesses – and become part of one another’s relational support network (Brown, 2006). This was my mom’s gift as a person and as a professional: to see others for their strengths and welcome those strengths and that person into her life -- as a mom, doctor, and community member. I am grateful for these lessons in empathy, and aim to practice their applications across contexts and fields -- as a mom, educator, and researcher.
Poetry as Progress: Balancing Standards-Based Reforms with Aesthetic Inquiry
(2011-10-30) Liu, Laura B.; Education, IUPUC
The meaning of "progress" in U.S. educational institutions has undergone much debate (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Standards-driven practices have often promoted a search for "right" answers in place of critical and diverse thinking. Globalization and its impacts compel us to continue revising and articulating the meaning of progress for 21st century students, educators, and researchers (Ball & Tyson, 2011). This aesthetic empirical inquiry (Pinar, 2004; Ranciere, 2004) contributes to this process by creatively re-presenting teacher voice via bricolage (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003; Kincheloe, 2001), specifically poetic bricolage (Trueit, 2004). The pursuit of aesthetic approaches to research have the potential for re-shaping national notions of progress to emphasize the cultivation of creativity, understanding, and empathy across lines of difference, and thereby support 21st century global communities in collaborating to address inequity.
Silos to symphonies? Hopes and challenges implementing multicultural programme infusion
(Taylor and Francis, 2013-07-01) Liu, Laura B.; Milman, Natalie B.
The need to infuse multicultural education (ME) across teacher preparation programmes is well documented by research, yet institutions are at very different stages in this endeavour. While most programmes demonstrate a segregated approach to ME, confining diversity to specialty courses, ME programme infusion places diversity, equity and social justice at a programme's centre. This study presents triumphs and challenges faculty faced in integrating ME across one teacher preparation programme. Via one academic year of observations, interviews and document analyses, this study was informed by Cochran-Smith, Davis and Fries’ 12 factors for multicultural teacher preparation, Gay's descriptors for ME programme infusion and Melnick and Zeichner's promising programme practices for preparing teacher candidates effectively to teach in diverse twenty-first century classrooms. Findings show that the faculty members approached ME infusion by establishing a vision in support of diversity and ME and creating professional learning communities offering a safe context for critical reflection on attitudes and pedagogies supporting diverse populations. However, a lack of connection between the ME and the core programme courses, and discrepancies among participant perspectives, demonstrated the need for more extensive ME programme infusion. Implications for practitioners, policymakers and researchers are given.

Browsing by Author "Liu, Laura B."

Results Per Page

Sort Options