Schooling the Freed People:

The rich and complex history of the teachers of freedmen in the South

Conventional wisdom holds that freedmen’s education was largely the work of privileged, single white northern women motivated by evangelical beliefs and abolitionism. Schooling the Freed People shatters this notion entirely.

For the most comprehensive study of the origins of black education in freedom ever undertaken, Ronald Butchart combed the archives of all of the freedmen’s aid organizations as well as the archives of every southern state to compile a vast database of over 11,600 individuals who taught in southern black schools between 1861 and 1876. Based on this path-breaking research, he reaches some surprising conclusions: one-third of the teachers were African Americans; black teachers taught longer than white teachers; half of the teachers were southerners; and even the northern teachers were more diverse than previously imagined. His evidence demonstrates that evangelicalism contributed much less than previously believed to white teachers’ commitment to black students, that abolitionism was a relatively small factor in motivating the teachers, and that, on the whole, the teachers’ ideas and aspirations about their work often ran counter to the aspirations of the freed people for schooling.

The crowning achievement of a veteran scholar, this is the definitive book on freedmen’s teachers in the South as well as an outstanding contribution to social history and our understanding of African American education.

In Diversity and Equity in Science Education: Research, Policy, and Practice (Teachers College Press, 2010) Okhee Lee and Cory Buxton provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-field analysis of current trends in the research and practice of science education.  This book offers valuable insights into why gaps in science education achievement among racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic groups persist, and points toward practical means of narrowing or eliminating these gaps.  The authors examine instructional practices, science curriculum materials, assessment, teacher education, school organization, state and district policies, and home-school partnerships.  For each topic, they provide detailed descriptions of relevant research projects and the effective teaching and learning practices that have emerged from that work.  Special focus is placed on the unique learning needs of English language learners.

Maximizing Our Resources and Potential by Integrating Economics

Dr. Cheryl Fields, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, and Alex Cuenca, Social Studies Education doctoral candidate, received a 2010 Teacher Quality grant titled “Maximizing Our Resources and Potential by Integrating Economics” (MORePIES).  The grant funded a project focused on providing professional development to middle school teachers to integrate economic standards and concepts into social studies instruction. This project is a partnership between Griffin-Spalding County Schools, UGA-Athens, UGA-Griffin, and the Georgia Council of Economic Education.  The project began with a three-day summer 2010 institute held at the UGA-Griffin campus’ Student Learning Center facility.  Teachers received a refresher course on ECON and TRADE 101 and participated in demonstration lessons representing a wide-variety of pedagogical approaches such as simulations, Place-as-Text, discussion-based strategies, and cooperative learning.  During the 2010-2011 school year, Dr. Fields and Alex Cuenca will provide professional development for the teachers by facilitating their self-study and action research projects.