“It’s total chaos here, trying to support [Fordham College at Rose Hill] operations and third grade in my dining room,” Rachel Annunziato, Ph.D., associate dean for strategic initiatives at FCRH, a psychology professor, and a mother, said in an email.  

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government closed all New York City public schools last week. Last Monday, the school system’s 1.1 million students — the largest school system in the country — transitioned to remote learning, which will last until at least April 20.

But many parents and educators have been struggling with their new normal. How do you work remotely from home while caring for your kids? How do you connect with your students on an online platform? How do you help students who don’t have access to computers or the internet? 

Seven members of the Fordham community, from professors to current students, shared tips on how parents and educators can navigate remote learning throughout this pandemic. 

“This is a new experience for a lot of teachers,” said Alesia Moldavan, Ph.D., an assistant professor of mathematics education in the Graduate School of Education who has taught remotely through Fordham’s partnership with the 2U program. “But I think it’s also going to push the way we look at education. We can broaden our resources and really make use of what is out there.” 

Advice for Parents 

Create a schedule with your kids. It can provide structure, routine, and momentum for children — especially those with disabilities and developmental delays, said Annie George-Puskar, Ph.D., an assistant professor in curriculum and teaching in the Graduate School of Education who supports children with autism spectrum disorders and their families. A schedule should include getting up at the same time each day and having a set bedtime. “Turn it into a family activity and write it down — similar to how children have rules and expectations at school,” said George-Puskar. “If something doesn’t work, give yourself grace to readjust and figure it out as you go.” 

John Craven, Ph.D., an associate professor of education in the Graduate School of Education, and his family are following schedules, too. When the pandemic began, he and his wife asked their five boys, ages 11 to 19, to create a schedule for themselves. 

“It’s not a two-month-long snow day. Get up. Have breakfast. Check your Google Classroom. Prioritize the work that you have to do. Insert the breaks — get out and stretch, walk around the block. That’s all with the caveat that you’re not congregating with friends,” Craven said. “This is not a break — this is the new normal for now.” 

Develop a designated workspace for your child. This can help children separate their school time from recreational time. Listen to your child’s input, too. A productive place to complete homework could be a closet, as it was for David Rufo’s nephew. “Children are predisposed to think more divergently than adults,” said Rufo, Ph.D., an artist and clinical assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education. “Adults tend to rely on formulas, whereas children approach tasks in ways that are creative and imaginative. Therefore, children should be considered integral to the problem-solving and decision-making processes.” 

Create check-in times with your household. Set up a convenient time when family members can congregate and share what they’re up to. At the end of the week, take turns sharing something you learned; perform a skit, read a personal essay, or conduct a science experiment. “These types of dynamic and performance-based group share activities provide ways to celebrate learning and also have that communal family time so valued by children,” Rufo said. 

Don’t be afraid to relearn tough topics like calculus. When your child asks you for help with homework, you might not know where to start. “The National Council of Teachers in Mathematics provides a lot of resources,” said Moldavan. “You can type in the search word for what you’re interested in looking at, like finding the limits or a derivative. It will walk you through all the steps.” 

You don’t always need technology to learn. “Math can be part of cooking or baking. Reading can be done using newspapers and magazines and school textbooks. Think a little bit creatively about how we can still do some academic learning through the resources we may have more readily available in the home,” said George-Puskar.  

Annunziato and her sons are finding ways to stay creative at home, too. 

“We have built a sand pit in the backyard, cleaned the basement today so they could scooter there in the rain, and there are crafts galore going on. We also have been doing a ton of baking and cooking for picnics and meals. My boys are enjoying too finding ways we can help my parents and our elderly neighbors,” she said in an email. “As a mom-psychologist, I am trying to cultivate a sense of security and structure with whimsy that maybe is missing during the usual hustle and bustle.”

Convey a sense of safety and care. Be sensitive to your child’s losses, from plays to concerts to sports events to graduations. “School is very, very important. But I think the impact of this pandemic on students emotionally may run in deep, quiet waters. We want to watch for that,” said Craven. 

Try to maintain a sense of normalcy. Ask your child what they did in school today, said Craven. What did they learn? Did they have any issues or troubles? 

Have access to your child’s email. Make sure your child is staying on top of all the messages they are receiving from their teachers and school. “It’s really important for the parents to monitor that email with the student,” said Craven. 

Tips for Educators 

Keep things simple in the beginning. Get students comfortable with navigating the new system. “Have a routine in your instruction as you set up your Google Classroom,” said Craven. That might mean starting every class with stating the purpose of the day’s lesson, the outcomes, and how they’ll be assessed. 

Think about the best way to support your students and their families. “The way we’re doing that is through sending positive messages, allowing them the time to interact with us, whether that’s on the phone or text messages or a Google Classroom,” said Emma Salandra, a fifth-grade teacher in Manhattan and a student studying general and special education in the Graduate School of Education. “If they’re struggling with a worksheet we’ve sent home, I’ve FaceTimed or talked on the phone with them.”

Visual check-ins are important. By seeing a student’s face through video chat, you pick up on nonverbal cues that demonstrate whether or not a child understands the material. “A shrug may indicate, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’; raised eyebrows may show someone is puzzled. A smile can indicate ‘Yes, I do understand what’s being received,’” said Fran Blumberg, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and a professor in counseling psychology in the Graduate School of Education. 

Online programs can allow students to advance at their own pace. “This allows students who might need that extra time to review material multiple times, but also allows other students to go on to the next lesson or think about how they can expand on that topic and make it more challenging for them,” Moldavan said. 

Reach out to your colleagues for help. That includes math specialists, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists. “No educator is an island. I know you’re at home by yourself, but reach out to your colleagues and other teachers or providers so that you are working together,” George-Puskar said. 

Online Resources for Families 

When looking for online resources, students and their families should first refer to their local district, said George-Puskar. This will keep children aligned with the district curriculum. Local districts may also provide physical resources to students, including laptops and tablets. In the meantime, providers like Spectrum are offering free Wi-Fi access for a limited time to households. 

GSE educators suggested more resources that could be helpful for parents, caretakers, and teachers to keep students engaged at home. Among them are the New York State Education Department, the New York City Department of Education, BrainPOP, PBS KIDS, Khan Academy, and Common Sense Education’s resources for families and educators during the coronavirus pandemic. 

“Keep an open mind that the curriculum is a guide. And while we need to follow that, we can embed other resources into it to make it stronger,” Moldavan said.

Perhaps above all, many educators agreed that it’s important for parents and teachers to have patience with the whole process. 

“Under the current COVID-19 situation, teachers now face pressure to develop plans in a matter of days at most,” said George-Puskar. “So it is important to have some patience with the process as we figure it out together.” 

Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition, 

In his new book, Strate, professor of communication and media studies, examines how smartphones, apps, and social media shape us as human beings. He expands on an intellectual tradition, one spearheaded by Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan (who taught at Fordham), that’s about much more than understanding any one particular medium.

“It starts with the understanding that those things we pay attention to, like screens, are not just gadgets,” he said. “We think we can turn them on or off, but when you look at them as part of our environment, we can’t escape them.”

Even people who don’t use social media will be inadvertently affected by it, said Strate, because its use is ubiquitous—much the same as persons who don’t fly and yet must content with planes continuously flying overhead. “We are living in an environment that is full of these mediations that influence us.”

“We all speak with a language we didn’t create. That influences how we express ourselves and in how we think,” he said.e

Forensic Social Work: Psychosocial Legal Issues Across Diverse Populations and Settings, 2 ed., co-edited by Tina Maschi, Ph.D., and George Stuart Leibowitz, Ph.D. (Springer Publishing, 2018)

“We’ve come a long way from forensic texts just being about expert testimony in court, but to include the systems of care,” said Tina Maschi, Ph.D. associate professor in the Graduate School of Social Service, the book’s co-editor. “Whatever angle or systems you are looking at, the problems still emerge.”

A collection of articles by leading academics and professionals, Forensic Social Work looks at the latest research and practices in the field. Readers learn to integrate socio-legal knowledge when working with diverse populations, and to become familiar with common forensic issues in the major settings of health care, social and protective services, the child welfare system, the criminal justice system, school systems, immigration services, and addiction treatment facilities, among others.

Among the topics discussed are the use of restorative justice around the globe; the application of “cultural humility,” in which social work practitioners are mindful to put aside biases when working with clients with cultural differences; and the importance of teaching ethics in forensic social work environments.

(Listen to Tina Maschi speak about the book.)

Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts, co-edited by Fran C. Blumberg, Ph.D., and Patricia J. Brooks, Ph.D. (Elsevier Science & Technology Books, 2017)

Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts provides a survey of the impact of digital media on key aspects of children’s and adolescents’ cognitive development pertaining to attention, memory, language, and executive functioning.

The co-editors sought to present content pertinent to how children and adolescents evaluate the content presented to them via different types of screen media; what many scholars see as an aspect of media literacy, according to Blumberg. Both women had a goal to highlight how cognitive development was impacted by exposure and use of digital media.

“This focus has surprisingly remained largely neglected amid societal concerns about pathological media use and vulnerability to media effects such as demonstrations of physical aggression, cyberbullying, and Internet addiction,” said Blumberg, associate professor in the Division of Psychological and Educational Services at the Graduate School of Education.

The intended audience includes educators, researchers, policymakers, and media designers dedicated to examining and promoting children’s and adolescents’ cognitive growth in the digital era.

Essays in International Money and Finance: Interest Rates, Exchange Rates, Prices and the Supply of Money Within and Across Countries, by James Lothian, Ph.D. (World Scientific Publishing, 2017)

A collection of papers by Lothian, Distinguished Professor of Finance and holder of the Toppeta Family Chair in Global Financial Markets, Essays in International Money and Finance focuses on the empirical performance of international monetary and financial theory. Within the broad scope of topics, one paper focuses on a study of exchange-rate behavior over the 200-year period from 1791 to 1990.

The featured papers were written over a 40-year period and have received the attention of other scholars, said Lothian, which is why he decided to assemble them together.

“The papers share a broadness in scope of another sort, with concerns for both history and in some instances, the history of economic thought and with emphases on both open-economy and closed-economy models of economic behavior,” he said.

Ethics in Anthropology of Business, co-edited by Timothy de Waal Malefyt, Ph.D., and Robert J. Morais, Ph.D. (Routledge, 2017)

Malefyt, a clinical associate professor in the Gabelli School of Business, said that the anthropology of business is a relatively new field that takes a “cultural perspective of how people in groups may fit particular patterns.”

The timely collection of essays examines ethical challenges for anthropologists working in industries such as advertising, market research, and design. In a contributed chapter on advertising, Malefyt writes that ethics in that field can often prove complicated. He cites the popular Virginia Slims ads, which, in spite of being advertisements for cigarettes, had a positive effect on the feminist movement with their “You’ve come a long way” tag line.

“Anthropologists are good at studying cultural issues and how they impact business,” Malefyt said. “Adding ethics can be very valuable.”

Think Big with Think Alouds, by Molly Ness, Ph.D., (Corwin, 2017)

In her new book, Molly Ness, Ph.D., associate professor in the Graduate School of Education, helps elementary school teachers focus on five strategies to develop strategic reading habits and improve K-5 students’ comprehension. These include: (1) Asking questions; (2) making inferences; (3) synthesizing information; (4) understanding the author’s purpose; and (5) monitoring and clarifying. The book builds on Ness’s long-term research on reading comprehension instruction.

Specifically, she presents a three-step planning process to build teachers’ ability to “think-aloud”. In a think aloud, a proficient reader models the thinking process that s/he uses to understand a particular piece of text. The new book is based on a yearlong research study that Ness undertook with public school teachers who were simultaneously enrolled in GSE classes.  Findings from the research study showed that, although think alouds are highly effective, they are not yet commonplace in classrooms today.

(Tom Stoelker and Veronika Kero contributed to this report.)

Esquivel joined the GSE in 1982, and taught in the Division of Psychological and Educational Services for 30 years, before retiring in 2012.

Rene Cordero, her husband of 31 years, said that Esquivel, a fellow refugee from Cuba who fled to the United States with her brother when she was 11, was energized by her research, which centered on bilingual students.

“She loved the stimulation of the environment and she loved the students,” he said. “And as I understand it, the students loved her.

“A lot of people might not know it but she had a real artistic side, too. Early on she used to play the flute. She liked to paint also; it was something she picked up later as a hobby.”

Esquivel earned her Doctor of Psychology in 1981 from Yeshiva University and joined the GSE faculty shortly afterward. She served as chair of Psychological and Educational Services, coordinator of school psychology programs, and director of therapeutic Interventions masters program, director of the psychology of bilingual students masters program, and director of the bilingual school psychology program.

In her research, she explored the ways in which positive psychology might be incorporated into the field of school psychology. In an Inside Fordham article in 2011, she discussed the role that spirituality might also play, noting that at the time, psychologists had neglected to consider constructs like hope, optimism, creativity, resiliency and forgiveness.

“Psychologists are now looking at spirituality as an inherent aspect of human life. Spirituality doesn’t mean just religiosity,” she said.

“It also implies an inherent sense of a person to relate to a higher being, to search for meaning, and to discover aspects of life that are transcendental.”

Fran C. Blumberg, Ph.D., professor of education who worked with Esquivel for 22 years, said she was a mentor to young female faculty, including herself, and a fearless leader who believed in social justice before the term became popular.

“She believed very much in process. She believed that you do the just and right thing for individuals, that everybody is given a voice, and that everybody is treated equally based on merits,” she said.

John Houtz, Ph.D., Bene Merenti Professor of Educational Psychology, noted that Esquivel was the first educational psychology professor—and the first woman—to rise from adjunct to full professor status.

“She came to play a major role throughout a decades-long time of transition from ‘old’ GSE to the ‘new’ GSE. Giselle wasn’t just part of the change, she was transformative to and for the school,” he said.

In 2002, Esquivel was honored with a Bene Merenti medal for 20 years of service. In her citation, she was lauded for giving Fordham “national prominence in the areas of bilingual psychology and educating culturally-different gifted students, and for publishing over 100 academic works and mentoring more than 80 doctoral dissertations.”

It also stated:

“In addition to her scholarly achievements, Giselle, with humor and a bent for thinking “out of the box,” has served for five years as chair of the Division of Psychological and Educational Services, responding creatively to the challenges of leadership, including the careful nurturing and mentoring of junior faculty.”

In addition to Cordero, Esquivel is survived by her son Daniel, her daughter Kristen, GSS ’14, and her brother Ruben Esquivel.

Cards and letters can be sent to the Cordero family at 106 Dellwood Rd., Edison, New Jersey 08820.

]]> 66205 https://now.fordham.edu/education-and-social-services/advertising-to-children/ Mon, 24 Nov 2014 20:26:00 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=1609 When it comes to advertising tactics, it’s challenging enough for adults to spot the schemes and resist buying into sales pitches. Do the youngest and most vulnerable members of our society even stand a chance?

That question is at the heart of Dr. Fran Blumberg’s newly-published Advertising to Children: New Directions, New Media (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014), which was co-edited by Drs. Barrie Gunter (University of Leicester, U.K.), Mark Blades, and Caroline Oates (both University of Sheffield, U.K.).

“Vulnerable audiences, such as kids, may not be aware that they are being subjected to advertising,” said Blumberg, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education. “[It’s now] another aspect of the child’s environment that they are increasingly exposed to which probably requires their understanding of the goal of marketers — that is, that they want you to buy their product and may make false claims or present unrealistic imagery associated with their product to make it desirable.”

Because of this increased exposure, especially to new “stealth techniques” that target youth, there is an urgent need to study how advertising affects development, Blumberg said. And yet, despite this growing need, there is a dearth of information about the impact of new-age advertising on kids.

“The goal of the text is to understand the factors that contribute to children’s understanding of advertising, and elucidate at which point in [their growth]that [they develop an]understanding of advertising messages,” she said.

The book covers an array of topics surrounding children and advertising, including how children are affected by advertising for food and alcohol products, whether children are developmentally capable of identifying messages as persuasive, and what parents and educators can do to teach kids to become more critical of advertisements.

The book also discusses the ramifications of “stealth advertising,” such as embedded commercial messages in television shows and new forms of media that influence children without their conscious awareness. An example of the latter is the practice of “advergaming,” or the use video games to promote products or services — for instance, a cereal company that makes a game involving collecting pieces of the cereal for points.

“The message [in the book]is that children and adolescents… may be best served through media literacy, which includes understanding the persuasive intent of advertising and advertisers,” Blumberg said.

Held on Feb. 27, the second annual Subway Summit on Cognition and Education included scholars from Fordham, New York University, the City University of New York and Columbia University. The event was sponsored by the Fordham Graduate School of Education’s Center for Learning in Unsupervised Environments (CLUE).

“It was great for all of the participants, but particularly for the graduate students,” said William B. Whitten II, Ph.D., Distinguished Research Scholar and co-director of CLUE. “They are studying in New York, and sometimes think the whole world is wrapped around their university. This gave them an opportunity to possibly find something related to their research going on just a few blocks away.”

The conference also gave graduate students an opportunity to attend a top-notch academic research conference at a low cost—the cost of a subway ride, Whitten said.

“It’s a low-cost, local conference in which they can build linkages that might lead to future collaborations,” he said.

Whitten and Mitchell Rabinowitz, Ph.D., professor and chairman of the psychology and educational services division and co-director of CLUE, made presentations along with students, as did Fordham faculty members Fran Blumberg, Ph.D., and John Houtz, Ph.D.

The presentations included topics such as “Academic Lessons from Video Game Learning” and “Developing Student Argumentation and Inquiry.”

The goal of CLUE at the Graduate School of Education is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of learning in unsupervised environments. CLUE participants engage in applied educational psychology research to produce practical knowledge toward optimizing unsupervised learning, and to extend theories of learning, memory, and comprehension.

Video games are big business, an established part of the American cultural landscape and an unavoidable aspect of teenage life. But are they a teaching tool?

Perhaps, said Fran Blumberg, Ph.D., associate professor of education and coordinator of the educational psychology program in the Graduate School of Education. “Playing a video game … does promote skills,” she said. “But the extent to which these skills have direct relevance on what one does in school remains to be seen.”

The question is not merely academic. Ever since Pac Man gobbled up his first dots in 1980, teachers have wondered if there might be a way to harness the attention that children devote to video games.

“Educators have been very excited about having us come to their schools, because they themselves are concerned,” Blumberg said. “Why is it that the playing of video games holds kids’ attention and keeps them on task, whereas when you get into a school situation, it falls apart?”

Prominent researchers at the University of Wisconsin have proposed that games such as World of Warcraft promote everything from literacy to the scientific method. But Blumberg, who received her master’s and doctoral degrees in developmental psychology, and whose interest always has been in children’s incidental learning, is deeply skeptical that what someone learns in a game can be transferred elsewhere.

“We don’t know what kids are doing when they’re actually playing the game. We have a tendency to look at what happens afterward and make inferences,” she said. “If we’re going to say that playing video games has ramifications for academic learning, let’s find out what type of learning is going on while they’re playing.”

This is what she’s been exploring since 1993, not long after she had an insightful encounter with a friend’s 10 year old.

“Adam started to tell me how he was playing Super Mario Brothers. While he was playing, he was talking to me non-stop about what he was doing,” she recalled. “He was almost treating it like a Rorschach. I was amazed by the minutiae that Adam was negotiating.”

For her research, Blumberg asked children in middle school—and adults in a later study—to talk to her while playing Sonic the Hedgehog for 20 minutes. This technique has been used with people playing chess, but most video game research has focused on how games affect people after they play. Her most recent paper, Children’s Problem Solving During Video Game Play, was presented in August at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention.

“With the adults, we’ve gotten some great content,” she said. “When we analyze the information they and the children provide, we look at the extent to which their verbal protocols reflect a focus on strategies, a focus on how well they’re playing, a focus on short-term goals or a focus on an impasse like, ‘I can’t get past this level,’ ‘I’m stuck,’ or just simply ‘I’m running, I’m jumping.’”

Her conclusions will not make a teacher want to install a PlayStation in his or her classroom anytime soon. Even though children felt there were lessons to be learned from gaming, they would not equate it to class, because in school, the teacher is the final authority. In a video game, the player has ultimate control.

“Video games are a form of play that is negotiated by the player, not by some external authority figure. As soon as we impose an authority figure, we’ve taken all the fun out of it,” Blumberg said. “My work is not rocket science; it’s not going to cure cancer. It’s just a first step.”

Blumberg also edited the book When East Meets West: Media Research and Practice in the United States and China (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), which focuses on the media’s impact on people’s behavior. China has long been of interest to Blumberg, so in addition to further studies that look at learning in the context of advanced online games such as Second Life and how students solve academic problems like math equations, she will be working with a collaborator in China. She notes that in China, there is every bit as much concern about how games influence behavior as in the United States.

“The concern in China is that playing video games leads to psychopathology. You’ve got kids who are being sent to treatment because they have video game addictions,” she said. “The idea is to replicate some of the work that I’ve been doing and see what sort of strategies are used among the Chinese population.”

The response among gamers to Blumberg’s recent findings has been particularly amusing, she said.

“The gamers have thought that the way that our research was pitched at this conference was ‘Duh, we’ve known all along that there was learning going on in the context of games, but let’s not get carried away, folks.’” she said. “Gamers see this as a form of recreation; everybody else is trying to make more out of it than there is.

“Before we say that using video games to promote learning is going to be the new panacea, let’s see what it is; let’s first describe it. I don’t think that we’re doing enough of the description, and finally some people agree with me.”