While migration research tends to focus on migrants and the countries that receive them, Briana Nichols, a joint doctoral candidate in Education, Culture, and Society, and Anthropology, chose to focus her research on the community members who are fighting to stay.
As a complex era fuels urgent questions about the state of American democracy, faculty and students at Penn GSE are examining key issues of freedom, voice, and dialogue while helping foster respectful discussion within the classroom and beyond.
2018 McGraw Prize winner, Reshma Saujani is the Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, the international nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in technology and change the image of what a computer programmer looks like and does. Saujani is also a bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, and fierce advocate for girls and women.
Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher says that while Americans talk about the events of Sept. 11, not enough time is spent reflecting on policies like increased surveillance of Muslims and Arabs.
Penn GSE’s Amalia Daché has studied Afro Cuban life and educational opportunities under Cuba’s dictatorship. She says the world is seeing Afro Cubans’ frustration with the racist and classist society the regime maintains.
Educational and social inequities have long been top of mind for Penn GSE’s Professor Vivian Gadsden, who works with families and educators to uplift the underserved and develop a new definition of child well-being.
Sigal Ben-Porath spoke about the importance of guaranteeing free speech for young people. “You ought to be able to practice this, you ought to be able to make mistakes, correct them, try out ideas—even outrageous ones, even profane ones,” she said. “We have to support young people in developing their voice, and we’re not very good at doing that right now.”
In a new book, Penn GSE Dean Pam Grossman and GSE’s Zachary Herrmann, Sarah Schneider Kavanagh, and Christopher Pupik Dean say the approach can empower students to be engaged citizens and take on modern challenges.
Penn GSE graduate Nora Gross is turning her dissertation, which followed two years in a Philadelphia school where three boys died in shootings, into a book for the University of Chicago Press.
Jonathan Zimmerman talks about his latest book and the state of education in the U.S. In addition to failing to teach people how to distinguish information from disinformation, the education system hasn’t taught them to engage across differences, Zimmerman says. “The only institution that has even a chance of intervening in that,” he says, “is a school.”
Jonathan Zimmerman discusses a trend across higher education, where we’re relying on draconian penalties — especially suspensions — to discipline our students instead of working with them to help them get better.
Setting goals for learning a language can help you determine which tools will be most useful to you, says Dr. Anne Pomerantz, an expert in the teaching and learning of new languages at Penn GSE.
Sigal Ben-Porath discusses how our understanding of open expression and some of the boundaries of free speech that we find ourselves negotiating in this polarized time affects our ability to find common ground as a society, and what are some of the ways that higher education institutions and society more broadly can overcome polarization and mistrust and create a more engaged democratic community.
Sigal Ben-Porath spoke with host Jonathan Friedman, along with guest Vicka Bell-Robinson, director of residence life at Miami University, about how campuses can facilitate respectful and productive dialogue across political differences during this tense time
Sigal Ben-Porath wrote a piece about how teachers can approach the many issues that will arise around the general election in 2020, after the polls close and votes are counted, which could take days or weeks.
Sigal Ben-Porath participated as part of a panel discussion, along with Greg Lukianoff and Dr. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, about the current state of free expression on college campuses.
Nelson Flores said shifts in language often start with a small group of marginalized people, rather than with majority rule. “I think the relevant question for me isn’t whether people should be using the term. It’s how people who use the term Latinx are trying to differentiate themselves from people who use the term Hispanic and people who use the term Latino,” he said. “Why do they feel like those terms don’t really reflect the political identities they’re trying to articulate through the term Latinx?”
Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher and Deepa Iyer argue that 9/11 curricula should include lessons on the Global War on Terror, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, and community building.
Considered one of the foremost education historians today, Zimmerman has been listed among Education Week’s annual Top 100 "Edu-Scholars" who influence public discussion in the USA for the past decade.
When Ebola hit Liberia, Penn GSE student Jasmine Blanks Jones’ youth theater company took on conspiracy theories and a lack of trust in the government. If that sounds familiar, she has ideas for improving messaging during the pandemic.
Betsy Rymes discusses “citizen sociolinguistics,” an innovation in which online data are extensively used as evidence of how language and language usage are being understood and made meaningful socially.
Strong said African students are “learning what it means to be a citizen, developing political identities, and learning the extent to which their governments and societies will support them.”
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, expert in children’s literature, releases her 5th annual list filled with stories of perseverance, love, loss, and self-discovery that children and young adults can relate to, escape into, and cherish.
