Current Research
Exploring how classroom controversies are handled worldwide
Who: Thomas Misco, Assistant Professor, Department of Teacher Education
What: All of Dr. Misco’s research projects, whether domestic or international, involve how assessment, curriculum design, and pedagogical strategies inhibit or encourage classroom discussions of controversies. For example, he recently studied Holocaust education in Romanian schools. After the fall of communism, Romanian society largely ignored the fate of approximately 270,000 Jews murdered by Romanians. With funding from the U.S. Department of State and Miami’s School of Education, Health, and Society, he examined the obstacles, challenges, and successes of recent Holocaust education initiatives in Romania and the ways in which the Romanian Ministry of Education, teachers, administrators, and community members supported or undermined the efforts. In the past he has conducted studies involving controversies in Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, and Japan. He is also conducting a study of Ohio social studies teachers and the ways in which standards and assessments affect democratic citizenship education. In addition, he is investigating the promises of reverse-chronological history instruction and how it can build student interest, invigorate teacher creativity, and close the achievement gap.
Why: Controversies exist in any society, but engaging them within a public school experience is critical to developing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for democratic citizenship in a multicultural and interdependent world. “International research, such as the Romania study, can offer transferable insights for other post-communist countries, as well as the challenges we face with teaching controversy in our society,” he said.
Go here for more information about Dr. Misco’s research interests.
Examining mental toughness in athletes and in business
Who: Robert Weinberg, Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health
What: Dr. Weinberg’s current research focuses on mental toughness. What is it? How can coaches and athletes develop it? Can sport psychology principles used to build mental toughness in athletes transfer to the business world?
Specifically, his recent studies are aimed at documenting anecdotal stories that show mental toughness developed by athletes is also advantageous in the business world and life. These attributes include self confidence, focus, motivation, and the ability to deal with pressure. He’s also developing a test that will measure mental toughness in both athletes and business people, and he has begun to identify techniques and strategies to help teach mental toughness in athletic and corporate settings.
He is co-editor of the world’s best-selling textbook on sport and
exercise psychology, past president of two national sport psychology
associations, and a frequent keynote speaker at sport psychology conferences
nationally and internationally, including Portugal, Greece, Spain,
Hong Kong, Australia, England and Ireland.
His
Why: “Businesses are always looking for ways to improve,” he said. One of my goals is to teach employees and managers how to develop mental toughness. Just as such training has enhanced success in the sports world, it can improve performance in the business world. In essence, mental toughness can not only help the “bottom line” but also improve feelings of competency.”
Go here for more information about Dr. Weinberg’s research interests.
Chronicling the impact of family poverty
Who: Alfred Joseph, Associate Professor, Department of Family Studies and Social Work
What: Dr. Joseph and Dr. C. Anne Broussard, a colleague at the University of New Hampshire, are editing a book that explores the issue of family poverty. “We believe that poverty is a powerful force in our society that is often ignored,” he said. The book, which is expected to be used as a textbook supplement, will discuss how such issues as health care, child development, education, aging, foster care, and immigration intersect with the urban poor, rural poor and working poor.
Dr. Joseph, who teaches an undergraduate course on poverty in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and is co-editor of the Journal of Poverty, explains that his current focus on poverty stems from earlier quantitative research he did on school tracking. Poor children are at greater risk of being placed in less academic, less stimulating tracks, he said, and this finding motivated him to investigate other ways that poverty impacts lives.
“Poverty is something we need to continually remind ourselves about,” he said. “It detracts from the quality of life and impacts all aspects of life—from education to health, employment opportunities and relationships.”
Why: “We have a tendency to demonize the poor, to blame the victim. On good days we just ignore them,” he said. His goal is to help us rediscover poverty.
Go here for more information about Dr. Joseph’s research interests.
Tracing the evolving role of the school principal
Who: Kate Rousmaniere, Chair and Professor, Department of Educational Leadership
What: School principals today wear many hats--counselor, psychologist, pseudo-parent, change agent, negotiator, leader, communicator, and business manager. The increasing ambiguity, intensity, and complexity of the role of principal mirror the public’s expectations about public schooling in general, said Dr. Rousmaniere. She is under contract to write The Principal’s Office: A Social History of the American School Principal, which will trace how and why leadership in America’s public schools has evolved from the “head teacher” model to its current state of complexity.
Why: “The multiplicity of roles facing building principals today reflects the multiplicity of social goals expected of American schooling by the American public,” she said. “My guiding purpose in this project is to further educational leaders’ ability to reflect critically about their role and work.”
Go here for more information about Dr. Rousmaniere’s research interests.
Monitoring literacy intervention strategies for low income, mostly Hispanic students
Who: Kevin Jones, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology
What: How schools identify learning disabilities is shifting dramatically from an emphasis on psychological tests to a response to intervention (RTI) model. “To the best of my knowledge, no one has standardized an RTI model for English as Second Language children,” said Dr. Jones.
To help bridge that gap, he and school psychology graduate students are monitoring an after-school academic program for more than 100 largely Hispanic, economically disadvantaged youngsters at Hamilton Living Water Ministry Hamilton Living Water Ministry. Additionally, they are looking at the impact of intense early literacy intervention on a subset of youngsters who are below benchmarks in pre-literacy skills. The youngsters are being helped with phonemic awareness (the ability to recognize the units of speech that allow us to segment and blend words such as pad, pat and bad) and with other reading and pre-reading skills. So far, test results indicate Living Water is having an important impact on the youngsters’ academic progress.
Why: “We would hope that beyond helping the community served by Living Water Ministry, we could advance and significantly improve the way schools address the supplemental instructional needs of children with limited English proficiency,” he said.
Go here for more information about Dr. Jones’ research interests.
Improving how mathematics is taught
Who: Iris Johnson, Chair, and Todd Edwards, Assistant Professor, Department of Teacher Education
What: Students who don’t “get” math concepts by 9th grade may not be doomed to sling hamburgers the rest of their lives, but achieving a good, solid background in mathematics helps keep the doors open on many important career opportunities. Through a $339,585 grant from the Ohio Department of Education, Miami is providing professional development for K-9th teachers from nearby Hamilton, Middletown, Talawanda and Winton Woods school districts. Dr. Johnson and Dr. Edwards and colleagues from Miami’s Mathematics and Statistics Department are co-principal investigators on the project.
Why: "This grant gives us the opportunity to bring together math concepts and new information about the way the brain functions to find new ways to teach students," said Dr. Johnson. "Many math concepts have moved from the higher grades to the lower grades. While students can learn the material, teaching it is new and this professional development partnership will allow us all to learn new techniques."
Go here for more information about Dr. Johnson’s research interests.
“My recent work with area school teachers has reaffirmed my belief in the power of teachers to change lives and build minds,” said Dr. Edwards. It is gratifying to see how our work at Miami directly impacts the mathematical knowledge of school teachers and their students, particularly in the school district where I was once a student (Middletown City Schools).
Go here for more information about Dr. Edwards’ research interests.