Hello OCEAN Community,
Welcome to the Spring quarter. I hope each of you is doing well. I'm hopeful that improving conditions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic means we might all see each other in person in the near future. We're really excited to share some new perspectives and news from the past quarter. Our community research seminars have been going so well, and we encourage you to sign up for the Spring seminar series (see below). Thank you to all of the community panelists, faculty, and students that have led seminar sessions so far (and those upcoming). We are all thankful for the teachings you have given us. To our community partners, we are always appreciative for your partnership work we continue to do together.
Best,
Director & Associate Professor
UCI School of Education
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Community Based Research Seminar
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We are now collecting registration for the Spring 2021 OCEAN seminar. School of Education graduate students, faculty, and interested community partners are invited to attend. The seminar will occur bi-weekly on the following dates from 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.: April 1, April 15, April 29, May 13, and May 27.
We look forward to seeing you in attendance!
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Research Update: Network Improvement Community Formed to Support Housing Insecure & Foster Youth
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In August, 2020 the Spencer Foundation awarded OCEAN and project leads Dr. June Ahn, Dean Richard Arum, and Samueli Academy Executive Director Anthony Saba to work with local schools and community organizations. The grant supports the implementation of systems to support housing insecure and foster youth across Orange County. Fall quarter, Graduate Student Researchers Chris Wegemer, Lora Cawelti, and Verenisse Ponce-Soria and Post-doctoral Scholar Erica Van Steenis, recruited educators and practitioners from schools and organizations across Orange County to form a Network Improvement Community (NIC). We held meetings to establish team structures and norms, brainstormed ideas to connect with partners, and interviewed practitioners and educators to better understand the issues they face.
After interviews were conducted, the team took partners’ responses and organized our first convening, which included 10 core partners from 7 different schools and organizations. The 2-hour session began with an overview and timeline of the project and continued to an activity where partners reflected on how equity manifests in their work with housing insecure and foster-youth. The activity set the stage for the relationship-building exercises that followed. Partners connected with each other via Zoom break-out rooms and reflected on the pressing issues they face in their work. We then collectively discussed the scope of issues we could work on as a team.
With so much energy and enthusiasm from partners, the 2-hour session flew by. The team left the session feeling energized and excited to continue refining the research focus. After months of uncertainty and living in ambiguity, this project, like the world around us, is giving us energy and hope for the future.
~Written by Graduate Student Researcher Verenisse Ponce-Soria
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Forming an RPP: Jiwon Lee Offers Her Perspective
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Beginning a research-practice partnership is no easy feat. How do you begin? How do you establish a partnership? And once the partnership has been established, what do you need to do to sustain the partnership? Currently, as a fifth-year doctoral student, I am engaged in a second year research-practice partnership (RPP) with my faculty advisor, Rossella Santagata. Our partners are an elementary school principal, a district administrator, and a math coordinator/teacher educator. I hope I can share some useful insights based on my own learnings over the past few years.
Intentionality matters
After some on-and-off conversations that spanned a couple of years, we decided to work together as a team with a vague understanding that we would collaborate on something related to math teaching and learning. There was some understanding of what each of us would bring to the table, but the details were ambiguous, intentionally. As researchers, strove to come to the partnership without an agenda Rossella and I were conscious of the perception practitioners may have about researchers coming into their school context, giving practitioners little to no power in the research design. At our first meeting, we mapped on a white board our values and goals around math teaching and learning to see where we converged. This process allowed us to not only get buy in from our partners but also to begin to create a community united by shared values/goals. During this affinity mapping activity, I noticed how we were mindful of the space we took up, voices that weren’t heard, and made the effort to be inclusive.
(re)Imagining my role
I’ll be honest. I felt very uncertain if I had the right set of skills to be a contributor to this partnership. As a PhD student, you are initially positioned as a novice researcher. The research tasks you are assigned shift in complexity and depth over time. As a fourth year student (at the time), I felt that I had accumulated sufficient knowledge and skills that could be useful for the group, but I didn’t think I was a research “expert.” I still have much to learn. If the practitioners ask, I can’t respond immediately to questions about what’s in the literature for something specific. Overtime, I noticed how frequently the phrase “I don’t know” was spoken by those who were experts in my eyes. “I’m not familiar with that literature. I’ll need to read more about that.” Hearing these phrases made me realize that our partnership team is genuinely engaging to learn together and that it’s okay to not know everything. Our collective shift to embrace a learner mindset greatly contributed to our trust and relationship building. Now, this doesn’t mean you should show up to your meetings unprepared. You still need to do your work (e.g. reading up on relevant literature, asking colleagues and knowledgeable others for advice, and seeking whatever necessary resources). But it’s okay to shift fluidly between being a learner and a knowledgeable partner. (Your partners might be negotiating the two or more identities as well.)
Understanding first before responding
Another critical learning was that you need to deeply understand the problem of practice and the context it is situated in before jumping to a response. One thing I recall being intentional about when practitioners shared emerging tensions in their contexts was to ask questions to understand. Practitioners’ world seemed to move a lot more quickly than researchers’ world. There is typically a strong sense of urgency and a need for solutions. The strong urgency conveyed by the practitioners resonated with me creating a desire to be useful and helpful right away. What was helpful in navigating these situations were the standing meetings I had with my faculty advisor to make sense of the situation and share my thinking. She would remind me to pause before reacting and ask questions to understand the issues and the context before jumping to a solution. This also reinforced our (researchers) identities as co-learners and collaborators not solution providers. We aim to learn together understand the problems of practice in more nuanced ways, so that we can co-construct our responses.
Importance of shared experiences
Shared experiences with your partners take different forms: regular meetings, co-design activities, weekly email check-in, or a phone call. For us, it is Friday (very) early morning meetings. We find ourselves extending invitations to engage in various learning opportunities in each other’s worlds. The principal invited us to join staff meetings and connect with teachers to build relationships. The district administrator and the math coordinator/teacher educator invited us to join the professional learning experiences that the teachers were engaging in and in relevant district-level experiences. We invited our partners to be guest speakers for Education courses and meetings at the School of Ed at UCI. The lines that separated our contexts became blurred as we crossed boundaries. We immersed ourselves in each other’s work and deepened our understanding of each other’s contexts. These shared experiences have expanded our thinking and allowed us to engage in deeper, more sensitive conversations that are critical in strengthening our relationship as a research-practice partnership.
Being part of a research-practice partnership has been an incredible experience for me. I saw what I have read in the literature come to life and realized that I was equipped with knowledge to anticipate but needed to learn how to navigate it all. As one of the partner in our RPP team, my understanding and vision of collaboration and building trust/relationships expanded, and I expect my understanding and vision to continue to deepen.
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The COVID-19 pandemic required schools, educators, and families to pivot to new modes of learning and revealed pressing issues of access for families across Orange County.
In July 2020, the UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence awarded a group of School of Education professors a grant in its "Are We in This Together? Advancing Equity in the Age of COVID-19" program.
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Jennifer Renick, a fourth-year doctoral student, is one of 10 UCI graduate students honored as a 2021 Public Impact Fellow. As a part of her research, Renick will facilitate a youth-participatory action research project in partnership with a local middle school, where a group of students will identify an aspect of school climate that they would like to improve and then design their own research project to investigate the issue, implement a solution, and study its impact.
“Engaging adolescents as co-creators of research, rather than just subjects, allows us to leverage their expertise on issues they experience directly to generate research with greater accuracy and practical implications to improve their school community,” Renick said.
Congrats on receiving this award Jennifer!
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Reimagining Science Education with Climate Change
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For over a decade, Dr. Kelley Le has been in the educational field as a high school science educator, instructional coach, and educational leader. She is currently leading the UCI Science Project to support K–12 science educators and leaders. She currently develops and facilitates programs in the areas of climate change education, environmental literacy, science and equity, nanoscience, and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
She recently wrote the article Reimagining Science Education with Climate Change, in which she documents her use of storytelling with visuals to personalize climate change education and provide context to students. She argues that, "rethinking science education means that we need to ask deeper questions about whether or not schooling works or was designed for everyone." In her upcoming book, Teaching Climate Change for Grades 6–12: Empowering Science Teachers to Take on the Climate Crisis Through NGSS (Routledge, 2021), she supports educators in thinking through what using climate change as anchoring content should look, feel, and sound like.
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Graduate Student Chris Wegemer Publishes in Journal of Latinos and Education
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Graduate Student Researcher Chris Wegemer recently published his first author article, "College services, sense of belonging, and friendships: The enduring importance of the high school context in supporting the college success of marginalized students," in the Journal of Latinos and Education. Congrats to Chris on this publication!
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