December 2020 Newsletter

Kevin Gee: Strategies for Preparing for the Second Half of the School Year and Beyond

The School of Education and PowerSchool, Inc. co-sponsored a discussion featuring Prof. Kevin Gee on promoting digital learning, community engagement and equity for the remainder of the school year and beyond. Dr. Gee and co-presenter Kellie Ady of PowerSchool discussed how to support student and educator well-being as well as educational outcomes; engage parents, students and the larger community with technology; and promote equity for students, teachers and families. The event was hosted and moderated by Education Week. Register here to receive an immediate viewing link via email.

Graduate Group in Education Brown Bag Series 

The Graduate Group in Education’s long-running Brown Bag Series went virtual this fall, opening up the events to a wider audience. All five speaker presentations are available online here or can be selected individually below.

Dr. Michael Singh, Department of Chicana/o Studies
Subverting the Neoliberal Role Model: Examining the Performance of “Positive” Latino Manhood in Schools

Dr. Darnel Degand, School of Education
Golden Legacies vs. Trivializing Tropes: Africans, Toussaint L’Ouverture, & Comic Books

Dr. Ga Young Chung, Department of Asian American Studies
Destabilizing the “Undocumented Korean Box”: Race, Education, and Undocumented Korean Immigrant Activism for Liberation

Dr. Megan Welsh, School of Education
Average is Overrated: What Factors Affect Means and Variation in Performance?

Dr. Alexis Patterson Williams, School of Education
Sustaining Disciplinary Literacy in Science: A Transformative, Just Model for Teaching the Language of Science

Michal Kurlaender: Race and Class Inequities in Higher Education

Prof. Michal Kurlaender was a panelist in a discussion hosted by the UC Davis Center for Poverty and Inequality on Race and Class Inequalities in Higher Education. Presenters covered cutting-edge research on important issues related to race, ethnicity and economic inequality in higher education, including the college admissions process, affirmative action policies and college persistence. Watch the panel discussion here.

Wheelhouse: Diversity in Community College Faculty and Leadership

Achieving a diverse faculty that comes close to matching the diversity of the students they teach is a major goal of California’s public universities. But the faculty-student diversity gap remains unacceptably large, including at California’s community colleges. This in-depth discussion sponsored by Wheelhouse: The Center for Community College Leadership and Research in partnership with EdSource examined what California’s community colleges are doing to increase the diversity of their faculty and leadership, why it matters and what more needs to be done. View the webinar here.

Lauren Lindstrom: Career Transitions for Youth with Disabilities

This fall, Dean Lauren Lindstrom presented a three-part international webinar series hosted by the University of Johannesburg’s Department of Educational Psychology and Division for Internationalisation. Dr. Lindstrom presented on Career Transition and the World of Work for Youth with Disabilities: An Inclusive Perspective. Each 1.5-hour webinar is available online: Session 1, Session 2 and Session 3.

Peter Mundy and Nicole Sparapani: UC Davis Neurodiversity Summit 2020

Two School of Education researchers participated in UC Davis Neurodiversity Summit 2020, presented by the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain and the UC Davis MIND Institute. Prof. Peter Mundy moderated the Schools and Education Panel, with panelists whose perspectives included those of a community organizer, parents of children with autism, people with autism and a special education teacher. Watch the video here.

Prof. Nicole Sparapani  presented on teacher-student interactions in preschool through 3rd grade general and in special education classrooms that serve students with autism, particularly on the amount and types of “teacher talk” that teachers use with their students with autism. Watch the video here.