GSE Publications
The Graduate School of Education Publications series has released seminal research monographs by UB scholars for twenty years. Now, in collaboration with SUNY Press, GSE Publications will continue to produce short, cutting-edge research monographs by UB faculty on key contemporary issues in education. Publications in this new imprint series will feature the SUNY Press logo.
New Arrival!
Facing Down Four Decades of Standardized Educational Reform
Corrie Giles and Martha Foote
$24.95
After nearly four decades of failed educational reform, we are at long last beginning to have conversations
about sustainability. Indeed, informed conversations along these lines are long overdue if U.S. schools are to
produce productive citizens capable of living and competing in a global economy. But what do educators
really understand by the word sustainability? Does sustainability mean resisting change and keeping things
the same? Are we simply talking about overcoming resistance so as to implement and then maintain
externally imposed accountability mandates? Or is there a necessity for a deeper debate about the sort of
schools that are needed in a rapidly changing world, and how policy makers can work with educators to
support a process of continuous self-renewal?
Self-renewing schools require resilient individuals, resilient organizational conditions, and a supportive
external environment—we are really talking about the resilient capacity for self-renewal when we use the
term sustainability. Yet, in a constantly changing and increasingly standardized policy environment, resilient
capacity, unlike the capacity for resistance, is difficult for even innovative and activist schools to sustain over
time.This volume presents a case study of one such U.S. school (Durant) that participated in the Change Over
Time project funded by the Spencer Foundation. Recently completed in Ontario and New York State, this
eight-school research project explored the perceptions of change over time of three cohorts of urban
teachers and administrators from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Durant is an important longitudinal study of how one small alternative urban high school developed and
sustained sufficient resilience to survive, rather than merely resist, nearly four decades of socio-economic
change and externally mandated reforms that undermined its founding vision. This case highlights the
cumulative and detrimental long-term effect of increasingly standardized reform on the capacity of schools
to self-renew in increasingly complex circumstances. Arguing that federal, state, and district policies that
focus on overcoming teacher resistance to reform are fundamentally flawed, authors Corrie Giles and
Martha Foote identify the personal, organizational, and contextual conditions necessary for successful
school self-renewal.
Corrie Giles is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy in the Graduate School of Education
at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Martha Foote is the Director of Research for the
New York Performance Standards Consortium and a doctoral candidate in education at the University
of Rochester.
March 2007 / 56 pages / Paperback
Also Available
How National Data Help Tackle the Achievement Gap
Jaekyung Lee (Ed.)
$44.95
The achievement gap constitutes an important barometer in educational and social progress. This topic is critical at a time when school accountability reforms under the No Child Left Behind Act are concerned with closing achievement gaps among different racial and socioeconomic groups of students. Research using secondary analysis of national data can help us address three fundamental questions: (1) Where are the achievement gaps and how large are they? (2) Where do the gaps come from? (3) What educational and social interventions can help narrow the gaps? Studies in this book help us better understand the nature and degree of the achievement gap, identify the sources of the achievement gap, and design educational policies for closing the gap.
The studies draw on several large-scale nationally representative sample data in K-12, including National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), and Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), that contain reading and math test results as well as complex arrays of student, family, teacher and school variables. The book challenges many conventional beliefs and previous findings with new evidence. It also discusses the utilities and limitations of existing national education databases to inform educational policies and practices for equity.
Jaekyung Lee is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Abebayehu A. Tekleselassie is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Georgia Southern University. Elizabeth N. Chilungu, Reva M. Fish, Jeff Fox, Eben Schwartz, Soomin Sohn, and Jie Wang are doctoral students in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
January 2007 / 130 pages / Paperback
Why Multimodal Literacies?
Designing Digital Bridges to 21st Century Teaching and Learning
Suzanne M. Miller and Suzanne Borowicz
$25.00
The computer has transformed the world and shaped new literacy practices. Moving beyond the technologies of the pencil and the printing press, the computer offers a dazzling assortment of digital forms, which have not only extended the material basis for literacy, but also its social processes and cultural contexts.
This volume provides a rationale for a multimodal view of literacy and demystifies its supporting theory and practice. Drawing on an array of emerging theories and work, Suzanne Miller and Suzanne Borowicz argue that digital video authoring is a multimodal literacy that presents students with opportunities to bring the cultural and digital resources they have acquired outside of school into school learning. It helps them connect to the curriculum, build a deeper understanding of subject-matter concepts, and develop new identities. The authors offer an overview of the multimodal new literacies the digital world has generated, analyze the digital denial of schools and the disconnect of students, and examine the uses of digital video authoring as professional development for teachers as well as for influencing engagement, identity, learning, thinking, and achievement for students. They contend that a multimodal view of literacy will both meet academic goals and transcend into students' future personal and civic spaces by encouraging critical power and consciousness.
Suzanne M. Miller is Associate Professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Suzanne Borowicz teaches at Canisius College and is Director of the Western New York Writing Project.
April 2006 / 50 pages / Paperback
Asian American Education Across the Class Line
A Multi-Site Report
Guofang Li
$10.00
In Asian American Education across the Class Line, Guofang Li attempts to understand Asian Americans' educational experiences from a sociological perspective. Asian immigrant children have become one of the fastest growing populations in North American schools, yet extant research on this group has been limited. Current research tends to treat Asian Americans as a homogeneous group, focusing almost solely on the role of ethnicity and culture and stressing perceived high educational attainment. Recent statistics show, however, that there are vast inter- and intragroup differences among Asian-American subgroups, including varying levels of income, employment, and educational attainment. Increasing socioeconomic gaps, together with increased evidence of Asian underachievement and dropout rates, suggest that centering on culture and ethnicity alone may not provide an adequate understanding of Asian-American education today.
Focusing on local narratives and articulations of social class as a lived reality, and viewing social class as a set of developing social relations, Li posits that social class shapes Asian-American children's everyday living and accumulation of cultural capital in and outside of school. Drawing on analyses of three studies of school and home literacy connections in different sociogeographic locations, Li further illustrates how Asian- Americans' educational achievements are intricately linked to their class, locality, and social positionings in the host society.
Guofang Li is Assistant Professor of Second Language and Literacy Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is the author of Culturally Contested Pedagogy: Battles of Literacy and Schooling between Mainstream Teachers and Asian Immigrant Parents and "East is East, West is West"? Home Literacy, Culture, and Schooling, and the coeditor (with Gulbahar H. Beckett) of "Strangers" of the Academy: Asian Women Scholars in Higher Education.
Currently Available GSE Publications
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New Scholars, New Directions: Proceedings of the Tenth Annual University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education Student Research Symposium (2004).
Edited by David Vater and Greg Dimitiriadis. $10.00. -
Learning Productivity: A New Imperative for American Education (2003).
By D. Bruce Johnstone. $10.00. -
What Do Teachers Learn from School-based Staff Development Programs? Three Case Study Evaluations (2000).
By J. Ronald Gentile, Sheila Stellrecht, David Caban, & Jane K. Miller $5.00. -
Benchmarking: A Study of School and School Districts and Efficiency (1999).
By Austin D. Swanson & Frank Engert. $20.00. -
Readings in Comparative Education (1999).
By D. Bruce Johnstone. $10.00. -
Readings in the Economics and Finance of Higher Education (1999).
By D. Bruce Johnstone. $10.00. -
Speed Bumps (1999).
Edited by L. Weis & M. Fine. $15.00. -
Handbook of Strategic Writing Instruction (1997).
Edited by James Collins & Kathleen Collins; Vol #8. $10.00. -
Programs and Centers in Comparative and International Education (1994).
By Philip Altbach & Eng Thye Jason Tan; Vol. #34. $15.00. -
Education in East-Central Europe (1992).
Edited by Arild Tjeldvoll; Vol. #30. $10.00. -
International Bibliography on Teacher Education (1992).
By Ching-Hwa Tsai; Vol. # 29. $10.00. -
Schooling and the Silenced Others (1992).
By Lois Weis, Michelle Fine, & Annette Lareau; Vol.#7. $10.00. -
Cases of Wise Practice (1991).
By Jeanne Ellsworth; Vol. # 5. $10.00. -
High School as a Site for the Encouragement of White Male Domination (1990).
By Lois Weis; Vol. #2. $10.00. -
Educational Reform & Development in China (1987).
Edited by Chen Shuching, Shu Hang-Li, & Yen- Bo Wu; Vol. #19. $10.00. -
Governmental and Institutional Policies on Foreign Students (1986).
By Y. G. Llulat; Vol. #16. $10.00.
Graduate Student Special!
GSE Publications is offering a special sale for graduate students only. We are offering two of our bestselling titles for the price of one— New Scholars / New Directions: Proceedings from the Tenth Annual Graduate School of Education Student Symposium (co-edited by David Vater Jr. and Greg Dimitriadis) and Speed Bumps: Reflections on the Politics and Methods of Qualitative Work (by Lois Weis). Please contact Catie (information below) to get the details on pricing!
New Scholars / New Directions features a wide range of graduate student work from all three of our departments. Speed Bumps features stories from graduate students about the complexities of qualitative research. Both of these books are ideal ways to learn more about the nature of graduate work and studies in GSE.
To Purchase Books
please contact:
Catie Lalonde
467 Baldy Hall
Phone: (716) 645-2471 x1099
email: clalonde@buffalo.edu
Director
Dr. Greg Dimitriadis
481 Baldy Hall
Buffalo, New York 14260-1000
Phone: (716) 645-2471 x1107
email: gjd3@buffalo.edu
