“Enhanced” PSC-CUNY Research Grants Awarded to School of Education Faculty
School of Education faculty members Kathryn Struthers Ahmed and Rhonda Bondie received “Enhanced” PSC-CUNY Research Grants. The Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York (PSC-CUNY) Research Award Program was established as a major vehicle for the University’s encouragement and support of research and to leverage external funding. It seeks to enhance the University’s role as a research institution, further the professional growth and development of its full-time instructional staff, and provide support for both the established and the younger scholar.
Kathryn Struthers Ahmed
Kathryn Struthers Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Childhood Literacy, received the grant for her project “Asian American Novice Teachers’ Learning about Literacy Teaching in Urban Schools: Experiences and Influential Factors Over Time and Across Contexts.” This project explores the experiences of Asian American novice teachers as they learn to teach literacy in urban schools. Currently, there is an acute shortage of Asian American teachers, and there is a dearth of research on their experiences. This study begins to fill gaps in the knowledge base by utilizing qualitative case study and participatory research methodologies to investigate the experiences of six Asian American novice elementary teachers. Specifically, the study focuses on their learning about teaching literacy in urban schools, an area of particular importance given the policy press around teaching literacy as well as the central role literacy plays in students’ lives. Drawing on individual interviews, focus groups, classroom observations, and relevant documents, the study aims to uncover how various factors shape novices’ learning over time, thereby furthering the field’s understanding about how to prepare, support, and retain Asian American teachers in urban schools.
Rhonda Bondie
Rhonda Bondie, Associate Professor of Special Education and Director of Hunter College Learning Lab, received the grant for her project “Artificial Intelligence to Build Equitable Learning (AIBEL): Measuring Impact of Innovations in Teaching Practice.”
Growing teacher shortages and student learning concerns, especially among historically marginalized students, underscore an urgent need for innovations in teacher preparation. Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language processing offer new approaches to challenges in teacher education. Using funding from previous grants (e.g. CUNY’s Computer Integrated Teacher Education, CITE), Rhonda Bondie, special education associate professor, developed with software engineer, Bill Ferster, open-source freely available new virtual tools for teaching practice. Bondie and Ferster developed an AI- powered virtual classroom for teaching practice, called Teaching with Grace (TwG), and an online collaborative game to develop teacher capacities to effectively respond to students with different learning strengths and needs, called Agility. Available at agileteacher.org, these tools are currently used by Hunter College teacher-candidates in special education teacher preparation courses. These tools have the capacity to transform teaching practice, a critical component of teacher education.
The PSCY-CUNY enhanced grant, “Artificial Intelligence to Build Equitable Learning (AIBEL): Measuring Impact of Innovations in Teaching Practice” examines how AI-powered teaching practice may increase novice special education teacher provision of equitable feedback and may transfer to daily teaching when serving students with disabilities. Through special education teacher-candidate randomization to different AI-powered practice conditions, AIBEL tests AI-powered personalization and collaboration on teacher implementation of research-based high leverage teaching practices, teacher efficacy, cultural awareness and responsiveness, and AI curiosity. AIBEL research advances teacher education beyond rote preparation, to nurturing teacher presence, precision, and responsiveness to spontaneous student needs. The PSC-CUNY grant provides a data analysis consultant and research assistant to accurately measure teacher learning, specifically in teacher provision of equitable feedback to students. The affordances of AI-powered teaching practice require immediate investigation given the urgent need for novice teachers to succeed in quickly-evolving classrooms. The rapid development of AI provides an opportunity to explore vehicles to prepare teachers in new ways and for teacher educators to be leaders in how AI-powered teaching practice is used in the field of teacher education.