Faculty Publications and Research

This study examines the design and implementation of an AI Sales Assistant (AISA) in several companies to understand the relationship between value sensitive design and successful implementation of AI assistants. While the AISA was designed to help and support collaboration, this study found that rather than supporting sales associates, the AISA evolved into a system to exclusively track and monitor them. This study reveals that while values important to the sales associates were considered in its design, a Value Sensitive Design approach to include all stake-holders and their values in the design process might have led to better outcomes.

This article relates the story of a first grade teacher and a child who was the only deaf student in the entire school. Because he had no one who could communicate with him--not teachers, not students, no one, this situation tugged at the hearts of a committed team of professionals. A teacher of the deaf, a first grade general education teacher, a speech-language pathologist, an occupational therapist, and an interpreter, none of whom had worked with a deaf student before or co taught, began to work collaboratively to provide services. As professionals they looked back on the experience as one of their most rewarding--and decided to take a closer look and reflect on that year to improve their own practices and hopefully help others. Here they explore why this collaborative model worked and how a group of professionals from different disciplines, each with different goals for the student and with no experience working with a deaf child with a cochlear implant, came together to make Jeffery's year a success. Further, they wanted to see if they could use this experience to develop a co-teaching model to support other students with cochlear implants in a general education classroom. In retrospect they also ask one another, "What did we do just right?"

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement continues to bring attention and direct action to incidents of racially motivated aggression and police violence. Although BLM is a not a formal centralized organization, numerous branded bodies, such as the international BLM Global Network (BLM Global Network, n.d.), use the term “Black Lives Matter” to represent the mandate of their group. Regardless, BLM operates as a collection of individuals and organizations that commonly promote change aimed at combatting police brutality while supporting an overall agenda of Black liberation. The movement began in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of  Travon Martin, an African American teenager. Over the past eight years, BLM has taken action following law enforcement– related deaths of other African Americans across the United States (Day, 2015). In 2020, the movement gained national attention during protests that resulted from the killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. BLM has emerged as one of the largest social movements the country has seen to date (Buchanan, Bui, & Patel, 2020).

This chapter introduces Trauma-Informed Pedagogies: A Guide for Responding to Crisis and Inequality in Higher Education, which is an equity-centered, evidence-based guide to trauma-informed teaching and learning in higher education. First, the chapter contextualizes the book in understanding that trauma is not just in past but also in the present and discusses the prevalence and impact of trauma on college students and educators. Next, the chapter explores what it means to respond to trauma, crisis, and inequality using a trauma-informed approach. The chapter then describes the origins and aims of the book and the book’s contents.

This chapter introduces Lessons from the Pandemic: Trauma-Informed Approaches to College, Crisis, Change, a collection of narratives about trauma-informed approaches to teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, this chapter posits that COVID-19 has been a wake-up call on crisis in higher education and describes two main lessons learned: (1) that college teaching has always encompassed crisis and (2) that college students and educators are resilient. Next, the authors describe the rationale, aims, and intended audience of the book, highlighting the importance of amplifying diverse voices and representing multiple methods of meaning-making on the road to resilience and healing. The next section summarizes the book’s contents and helps orient readers to format and style differences among chapters. Lastly, the chapter concludes with a call to action.

The purpose of this article is to share the results of a qualitative research study designed to shed light on the perspectives of inclusive prekindergarten classroom teachers in the United States. This study used surveys, interviews, and classroom observations to explore understandings of recently adopted learning standards and accountability reforms, as well as perceptions of the benefits and challenges of today’s inclusive prekindergarten settings. Data revealed four primary themes: early childhood teachers in inclusive prekindergarten settings value collaboration; they believe inclusive settings have the potential to benefit all children; inclusive prekindergarten teachers are facing significant new challenges; and, they need additional resources to address the challenges and realize the benefits. Building on these data, the authors provide an argument for the field of early childhood education in the United States to help build the capacity of inclusive prekindergarten settings to meet existing challenges and new demands.

Aspiring physicians face a large amount of information that must be learned and retrieved in real time. The skills that helped medical students reach residency may not be the enough to succeed as a physician. For example, like many students, cramming the night before an exam probably helped achieve a satisfactory score. Unfortunately, cramming does not require that the information be retained and applied overtime. The content acquired in medical school is cumulative, that is, the information learned remains relevant months and even years later. Not only does content need to remembered, the knowledge must be constantly updated as new research makes some information more relevant and other information less important. Finally, the stakes as a physician are high. Forgetting a critical piece of information will not result in a lower test score, it can seriously harm patients. This article is a practical approach to teaching medical doctors, based on a literature review, including practical, scientific, and applied research and strategies ways in which teaching can be done that result in depth of learning in the resident.

The Grand Challenges for Social Work outlined by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare offer a multitude of opportunities for our profession to develop active responses for pressing societal ails. Each challenge charges social workers to engage in innovative and wide-reaching professional endeavors that span research, practice, and policy. Efforts for addressing the grand challenge to “eradicate social isolation” rely on the uniquely “social” dimension of our work pertinent to increasing and strengthening connections across diverse demographic groups (Lubben, Gironda, Sabbath, Kong, & Johnson, 2015).