PRESENTING SUPERB RESEARCH THAT ADVANCES THE FIELD OF EDUCATION

Demystifying Social Justice Education: Moving from Trendy to Transformative Equity and Justice Practices in Schools Series Read Description

Moving from Growth to Asset-Based Mindsets

Paperback
July 2025
9781975506926
More details
$42.95
E-Book

E-books are now distributed via VitalSource

VitalSource offer a more seamless way to access the ebook, and add some great new features including text-to-voice. You own your ebook for life, it is simply hosted on the vendor website, working much like Kindle and Nook. Click here to see more detailed information on this process.

July 2025
9781975506940
More details
$42.95

Promoting a growth mindset in PreK-12 schools is a valuable educational trend, based on the idea that students who believe they can grow and improve will succeed more easily. However, when students struggle academically, there’s often an undergirded assumption that they—and sometimes their families—are not trying hard enough or they just need to fit into a standardized mold. This deficit thinking places blame on students’ perceived limitations and can lead to lower expectations or biases toward students who come from diversified backgrounds, encompassing ability, socioeconomic status, race, language, gender, or culture. As an alternative approach, this book promotes the universal adoption of Asset-Based Practices (ABPs). ABPs encourage educators to see and honor the strengths in each student’s identity. ABPs shift our focus to the assets that students and families bring into the classroom, viewing differences as resources rather than obstacles. This means recognizing and building on students’ cultural, linguistic, and community-based knowledge to make learning richer and more inclusive for everyone.

Implementing an asset-based approach can transform our classrooms. Research shows that students perform better and feel more motivated when they’re recognized and valued for who they are. Bringing students’ lived experiences into the curriculum can help them develop positive identities and a stronger sense of belonging, which boosts their academic and social growth. Instead of focusing on “fixing” students, ABPs ask us to adapt our teaching to connect with students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences, coupled with recognizing the wealth of knowledge that students bring from their families and communities.

Switching to an asset-based approach helps us move away from simply encouraging perseverance or grit in students. Instead, it invites us to take responsibility for creating an environment where every student feels they belong and can succeed. With ABPs, we’re able to create more inclusive and affirming classrooms for all students, where their identities are seen as strengths, not obstacles, and where their cultural, linguistic, and community knowledge is a foundation for learning.

Innovative and creative methodologies and practices that aspiring and practicing educators can use right away are the primary focus of this book. Because the editors and contributors are former or current PreK-12 practitioners, and many are also educational scholars, this book is written for a broad educational audience. Moving from Growth to Asset-Based Mindsets is for both preservice and practicing teachers across PreK-12 grade levels, school types, and geographic regions looking to improve their practice. To accomplish this, the editors and contributors provide entry points for transforming the educational landscape in favor of liberatory, asset-based practices in PreK-12 schools.

Additionally, this book is ideal for teacher and administrator preparation programs, as well as PreK-12 professional development, because it guides readers through theoretical and empirical discussions, supported by hands-on applications that enable real-time application, and concludes with interactive features, like case studies, extension activities, and discussion prompts.

Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Educating For Equity And Social Justice; Introduction to Cultivating Culturally Responsive Classrooms; Foundations of Classroom Management; Foundations of Methods And Curriculum Design, Foundations Of Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Practice; Introduction to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Schools; Principles of Professional Collaboration In Education; Introduction to Supportive Classroom Communities; Introduction To School Improvement, Introduction to Teacher Leadership And School Improvement; Introduction to Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment; Principles of Building Classroom Communities; Principles of Teaching Diverse Learners; Introduction to Multiculturalism in Education; Principles of Youth Voices in Education; Introduction to Professional Development Design

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Section I: Asset-Based Teaching Foundations

Chapter 1
Adaptive Teacher Empathy in Asset-Based Instruction: The Process of Understanding and Valuing Diverse Students
Jeff Vomund and Angela D. Miller

Chapter 2
Building Culturally Sustaining Orientations to Teaching and Assessment
Dustin S. J. Van Orman, Yuliya Ardasheva, Golrokh Maleki, Shannon Calderone, Yun-Ju Hsiao, and Shenghai Dai

Section II: Asset-Based Frameworks with Refugee and Immigrant Students

Chapter 3
Invisible to Visible: Student Narratives Highlight Asset-Based Teaching Approaches that Positively Impacted Them
Yacoub Aljaffrey

Chapter 4
Stories as Bridges in Refugee and (Im)migrant Education: Pedagogical Strategies for Fostering Asset-Based Learning
Julie Kasper, Marissa Winmill, and Neeraj Agnihotri

Section III: Asset-Based Teaching of Linguistically Diverse Learners

Chapter 5
Linguistic Diversity as a Classroom Superpower
Melanie Hardy-Skeberdis, Megan Madigan Peercy, Daisy E. Fredricks, Johanna M. Tigert, Jessica Crawford, and Loren D. Jones

Chapter 6
“My Language is Not Ghetto Talk”--Transformative Translanguaging Espacios in a Monolingual High School
Elvira Pichardo and Bianca T. Parra

Section IV: Asset-Based Frameworks in Mathematics Education

Chapter 7
Reframing Deficit Narratives in Elementary Math: Reflections and Considerations for Practice
Anna Gustaveson and Dionne Cross Francis

Chapter 8
Unpacking Whiteness in Math Education: Reflections for Transforming Practice
Kathleen M. Francis

About the Authors

Index

NOTE: Table of Contents subject to change up until publication date.

Linsay DeMartino

Linsay DeMartino, Ph.D. (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership & Innovation housed within Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her research considers equitable advancements in educational spaces, with an emphasis on the transformative possibilities and opportunities within justice-based educational communities. Prior to her role as a scholar-practitioner, Dr. DeMartino served as a special education teacher, inclusion specialist, special education department chair, and instructional data and intervention coordinator. She was honored to be mentored as a preservice and early career teacher by a veteran Mexican-American Studies (MAS) educator in Tucson Unified School District. The opportunity to co-teach in the Social Justice Education Project (SJEP) was a life-changing experience for her. The educators, students, and families affiliated with the MAS program educated her, whereas the university schooled her. She will be forever grateful for the gifts of knowledge, activism, and fierce love. Dr. DeMartino currently resides in the shadow of Tonto National Forest with her perfectly imperfect pup, Lorca.

Lisa Fetman

Lisa Fetman, Ph.D. (she/her) is an independent scholar with adjunct faculty appointments at Florida Southern College (Educational Leadership) and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (Teaching and Learning). Dr. Fetman formerly taught K-12 Spanish in Chicago, Illinois and Tucson, Arizona, working in diverse communities and sociocultural/sociopolitical contexts. Her research encompasses the enactment of education policy within culturally diverse schools, particularly related to the effects of neoliberalism on policy creation, implementation, and disruption. As a former language teacher, she deeply cares about the education of emergent multilinguals, and hence also focuses her scholarship on the intersection of policies and practices within linguistically diverse student populations. Dr. Fetman teaches coursework in diversity and inclusion, curriculum and instruction, culturally responsive leadership, and instructional leadership. She currently resides in Chicago, Illinois with her husband, daughter, and chihuahua. She continuously commits to transforming education policies and practices in her personal and professional life in the Windy City.

Asset based practices, asset-based practices, transformative practices; equity in education; equity and justice; social justice education; educational equity; cultural pedagogies; transforming schools