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1 month ago | 
kappanonline.org | Teresa Preston |PDK Connection
Late in 2024, PDK International introduced its newest membership category: the PDK Prestige Membership. This complimentary membership is available to individuals who have been honored with an “of the year” award from any organization. The goal is to recognize those who exemplify PDK International’s core values of excellence and leadership, particularly those who may not have discovered PDK in a collegiate or professional setting.
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2 months ago | 
kappanonline.org | James Lane |PDK Connection |Teresa Preston
This edition of Kappan features an interview with former Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. He gives an insider’s perspective about the national landscape of education as he experienced it during his time serving in the Joe Biden administration.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | Teresa Preston |Editor's note |PDK Connection
Back in the 1990s, Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie. Each doll was programmed to say four phrases, randomly selected from a list of 270. Alongside comments about shopping, clothes, friends, and pizza was the phrase “Math class is hard.” Controversy ensued. Critics believed that this statement fed into stereotypes that girls can’t do math. Mattel listened and removed the phrase from the possible selections for future versions of the doll. In the grand scheme of things, this may seem trivial.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | Teresa Preston |PDK Connection
Bring on the games! That’s the message Alice P. Wakefield, an associate professor of early childhood education, shared with Kappan readers in her 1997 article on encouraging numeracy in the early grades. “Dice, cards, and board games offer perfect opportunities for children to practice adding small numbers together repeatedly without growing bored,” Wakefield notes.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | William Smith |Teresa Preston |PDK Connection
I have wide-ranging professional interests and curiosities. Each time I begin exploring a new academic area, I always return to Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines to help me make sense of the new intellectual terrain. The learning theory this book offers — the “threshold concept” — is straightforward: In each academic discipline, there exist ideas or concepts that serve as portals into the discipline.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | Thomas S. Dee |PDK Connection
The sharp and sustained rise in chronic absenteeism among U.S. students is arguably the most striking and unanticipated challenge of our ongoing academic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many strategies are available to meet the challenge of improving school attendance. However, credible evidence on the impact of these approaches is uneven. Also, growing financial constraints limit the capacity of many schools to implement the often-costly reforms.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | PDK Connection
We asked our Educators Rising students what motivates them to come to school each day, what they think keeps some students from coming to school, and how they’ll encourage students to come to school when they become teachers. Growing relationships What makes me come to school is the opportunity to socialize and seeing the teacher and student relationships that are being built. It’s always fascinating to see the connection grow.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | James Paul Gee |PDK Connection
While reading The Ignorant Schoolmaster, I kept thinking: This is either the most brilliant or the most ridiculous book on education I’ve read. Rancière builds his argument on the experiences of Joseph Jacotot, a 19th-century French teacher who taught Dutch students French without knowing any Dutch himself. Jacotot discovered he could successfully teach French without being able to explain in Dutch anything about French grammar or literature.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | Andrew Kwok |Brendan Bartanen |PDK Connection
We desperately need teachers of color. But throughout the U.S., we have not gotten them, despite decades of knowing this and making massive investments to attract them. Teachers have remained predominantly white, with the national average hovering around 80% as the percentage of students of color in our schools steadily rises.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
kappanonline.org | James Lane |PDK Connection
This fall has been exciting, with some national exposure for our Educators Rising program in Pennsylvania. Thanks are due to the Pennsylvania State Education Association, which has taken the lead to address the teacher shortage in the state by establishing more Grow Your Own programs in districts, using Educators Rising. A three-year $750,000 grant from the National Education Association is helping to establish new chapters across the commonwealth.
