Community Partnerships

At meetings with Native American community leaders, educators in the University of Washington’s College of Education repeatedly heard the same question — what can be done to improve educational outcomes among Native learners?

Even as family liaisons and other cultural brokers play an increasingly important role bridging between schools and the families they serve, well-intentioned efforts frequently reinforce deficit-based approaches to historically marginalized communities.

A new study from the University of Washington College of Education published in the American Educational Research Journal describes cultural brokering approaches that flip the usual script and offer avenues for creating more equitable avenues of family-school collaboration.

"Run, fat rabbits! Run, run, run! That fox wants to eat you, one by one! Dinnertime!"

Children lean forward on the floor of Bothell Library, enthralled as children's librarian Mie-Mie Wu brings to life Sue Williams' tale of a hungry fox on the prowl.

After singing a counting song and listening to Wu read Eve Merriam's "12 Ways to Get to 11," the children are joined on the floor by their parents. Together, children and parents cut out pictures of rabbits and then group them in different ways to add up to 11.

Washington is home to 29 federally-recognized tribes, with approximately 64,000 Native American students represented in nearly every community in the state.

Yet most of these students have never been in a classroom with a Native American teacher. Today, Native Americans represent only one percent of the state's teacher workforce.

Four University of Washington College of Education projects focused on expanding access to great STEM teaching and learning were featured during this year's NSF Video Showcase "STEM for All."

The open and free event features three-minute video presentations from more than 150 projects aimed at improving STEM education that are funded by the National Science Foundation. The public was invited to view the videos, join the discussion online with presenters, and vote for the most effective presentations May 17-23.

A new partnership between the University of Washington College of Education's Institute for Science + Math Education, UW Bothell’s OpenSTEM Research collaborative, Pacific Science Center, Red Eagle Soaring and The Seattle Public Library has received a $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a three-year project called Backpacks for Science Learning.

Learning science, especially under the rigorous new Next Generation Science Standards, comes with complex linguistic demands for students.

For English language learners (ELLs) and their teachers, those demands can present a barrier to engaging in complex forms of scientific sense-making and decrease students’ future opportunities in STEM disciplines.

For the past several decades, education research typically meant conducting a study, publishing a paper about what the researcher learned and hoping practitioners would actually put it to use in a school or classroom.

Philip Bell is working toward a future where education research and practice is an intertwined, ongoing partnership. Where researchers and teachers work together improve student learning and solve issues as they arise.

In Washington's growing Sumner School District, spring is crunch time for Marc Brouillet.

Sumner's assistant superintendent for human resources is looking to hire approximately 80 teachers to fill its openings for the coming school year while the state contends with a teaching shortage that has put many districts in crisis mode.

What keeps kids strong? How can a sense of brotherhood support young men of color and empower them to thrive? Is it possible to make school bureaucracy a key driver of improved learning?

These and other pressing issues in education were the focus of EDU Talks, a fast-paced series of talks by University of Washington College of Education faculty members working to unlock the potential of all students. Each faculty member had five minutes and one image to explore their current research partnerships with schools, districts, families and community organizations.