Loukia K . Sarroub | University of Nebraska Lincoln (original) (raw)

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Papers by Loukia K . Sarroub

With a provocative title that inherently questions who might be served and educated best by the b... more With a provocative title that inherently questions who might be served and educated best by the branch campuses of top US universities in Qatar and Gulf states, Vora's new book debunks some old myths and reminds readers from the outset that "liberalism has Arabian roots" (18). Vora wonders about and studies the transplant of liberal education into "so-called illiberal" countries like Qatar and other Gulf States. Her timely book offers onthe-ground perspectives of students and faculty in these transplant institutions as they engage with curriculum and one another in a new knowledge economy. The book contributes to scholarship about how the cultural ideological framework of liberalism informs and shapes discourses on educational policies and the restructuring of nationalistic reforms for development across the Arab world. Vora frames the book through a knowledge economy perspective that is tension filled. For example, throughout the book she examines the effects of educational reform and nationalism as they are enacted in the US branch campuses of the Gulf. As Vora notes, branch campuses such as Education City in Qatar are simultaneously "spaces of contradiction" and "sites of new agencies and belongings" (29). As such, she argues that conceptions 1 digitalcommons.unl.edu

Sarroub and her award-winning research on how Arab Muslim refugee and immigrant youth navigate re... more Sarroub and her award-winning research on how Arab Muslim refugee and immigrant youth navigate religion, gender, and literacy in school. Dr. Sarroub is a professor of literacy studies, education, and linguistics, and she serves as the graduate programs chair in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was the recipient of the LRA Edward B. Fry Book Award for All American Yemeni Girls: Being Muslim in a Public School (2005), which examines Yemeni American girls' attempts to negotiate their identities across home and school contexts-spaces with vastly different cultural values, expectations, and traditions. As part of her professional service, Dr. Sarroub serves on the editorial board of Research in the Teaching of English. She has also served on the committee for the Alan C. Purves Award, which is "presented annually to the author(s) of the Research in the Teaching of English article from the previous year's volume judged as likely to have the greatest impact on educational practice" (https://ncte.org /awards/journal-article-awards/alan-cpurves-award/). This conversation was recorded on March 3, 2020, and has been edited for publication.

$Research paper thumbnail of Review of \u3ci\u3eArab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community\u3c/i\u3e, by Elizabeth Boosahda$

Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community offers a detailed history o... more Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community offers a detailed history of the lives of Arab immigrants in Worcester, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Booshada conducted primary source research, interviewed nearly 200 people, and documented the immigrants\u27 stories of their families\u27 lives from 1880-1915. The author\u27s personal and family connections to the community, in combination with the candid interview excerpts, provide a fascinating and much needed account of a people who survived, thrived in, and helped to create an important part of American society. The book\u27s main focus is to describe, from the perspectives of elderly immigrants of mainly Christian Arab ancestry, their experiences in the United States. Booshada gives a brief history of the Arab world at the time of their migration, and each chapter provides extensive depictions of their neighborhoods, workplaces, traditions, education, culture, the process of Americanization, and the legacies tha...

Operationalizing space is challenging because the factors impacting education are often located a... more Operationalizing space is challenging because the factors impacting education are often located at different scales. Combining Geographic Information Systems and ethnographic analyses allows researchers to conduct studies at both micro-and macro-scales, thus illuminating the connections between local and global phenomena. In our first case, we analyze refugee migration at multiple scales in order to better understand and contextualize refugee mobility. In case two we measure 'literacy landscapes' at the state-and district-level by mapping clusters of high/low standardized reading scores. Hot spot and cold spot analyses show that standardized reading scores are implicitly connected to socioeconomic status and are often masked at larger scales. Accounting for space not only as a metaphorical concept but also as an empirical one with geo-referenced data can only strengthen ethnographic research and be strengthened by it. Scalar analyses reveal patterns that need further examination, thus improving the tactical uses of theory and method.

We have made incredible progress, both conceptually and practically, in the development of litera... more We have made incredible progress, both conceptually and practically, in the development of literacy assessment tools that appropriately reflect the goals and activities of literature-based reading programs. This progress, however, has not come without obstacles, many of which have not yet been (and may never be) fully negotiated. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the" promises" we as a literacy assessment community have made to ourselves, as we implement new forms of assessment for new purposes, ...

English teaching, Jul 19, 2022

Part of the Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons This Article is brought to you... more Part of the Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska- Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications: Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska- Lincoln.

doi: 10.1080/10573569.2013.859052

The only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freed... more The only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judg-ment exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth-while.-John Dewey A fter closely examining the recent history of reading comprehension assessment in the United States, we have concluded that although both the forms of assessment and the key players in the assessment process have changed in significant ways, the functions of assessment have re-mained relatively constant. In terms of function, we have always used, and continue to use, assessment tools to eval-uate programs, to hold particular groups accountable for some specified set of outcomes (though it may seem that that is all we do these days), to inform instruction, either for individuals or whole classes, and finally, to determine who gains access to particular programs or privileges (the gate-

In this article we examine “meaning ” and “action ” within the “good ” work of teaching and learn... more In this article we examine “meaning ” and “action ” within the “good ” work of teaching and learn-ing. One premise of our argument is that teachers and students deserve to experience this good. The second premise is that meaning is part and parcel of Being; the debate about meaning must include attention to meaning as a question/project of Being. We offer our experiences as an educa-tional anthropologist, educational philosopher, and teacher educator who strive to retrieve and pur-sue meaning and Being as common resources and aspirations.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Teaching, Learning a... more This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska- Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications: Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska- Lincoln. Sarroub, Loukia K. and Quadros, Sabrina, "Critical Pedagogy in Classroom Discourse " (2015). Faculty Publications: Department of

American Journal of Islam and Society, 2005

Research in The Teaching of English, 2015

We are pleased to name Victoria Purcell-Gates as the winner of this year's Alan C. Purves Awa... more We are pleased to name Victoria Purcell-Gates as the winner of this year's Alan C. Purves Award for her article "Literacy Worlds of Children of Migrant Farmworker Communities Participating in a Migrant Head Start Program." The Alan C. Purves Award is given to the author of an article judged likely to have the greatest impact on educational practice. Our committee began its deliberations with a wideranging discussion of the possibilities opened by this charge, spending time with each of the words in it. What kinds of impacts might research have? Measurable? Enduring? Transcendent? Transformational? What counts as educational? School settings alone? Toward what ends? And what do we mean by practice? Whose practice? Teaching practice? Literate practice? Learning practice? Practices of living? Holding these broad dimensions in mind, our diverse committee (diverse in expertise, in personal and academic backgrounds, in location, and in professional contexts) read with apprec...

$Research paper thumbnail of Review of \u3ci\u3eArab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community\u3c/i\u3e, by Elizabeth Boosahda$

English teaching, Jul 19, 2022

doi: 10.1080/10573569.2013.859052

American Journal of Islam and Society, 2005

Research in The Teaching of English, 2015

Our paper offers two cases in which we examine the powerful literacy moves made by both a seconda... more Our paper offers two cases in which we examine the powerful literacy moves made by both a secondary high school English student and a secondary English preservice teacher. Through the case of the high school student, Reema, a young Iraqi refugee woman now living in Sweden, we show that student narrative writing actually limits teacher understanding of the student while simultaneously giving the semblance of empowering the student. It does so for two reasons: 1) the writing in which Reema is being asked to engage inadvertently privileges a private reflective stance by making it public and in doing so forefronts an affective rather than analytical stance toward a problem; and 2) the semblance of authenticity in the narrative writing masks important contextual and historical experiences which not only backgrounds critical thinking, but also backgrounds the multi-dimensional identity that Reema brings into her school context. Finally, our analysis of classroom academic talk and writing shows that linguistic features of academic and analytical language use are distinct from narrative ones (Schleppegrell, 2004) and are important to address in light of state and national achievement expectations.

While Reema’s case illustrates the ways in which the narrative writing requirements promote a problematic effacement of the writer’s self, the case we present of the secondary English preservice teacher illustrates another expression of the writing curriculum in the Unites States: writing for testing. A preservice teacher in an urban teacher residency, Sam learned to teach in a school that required her to tether her entire writing instruction to the ACT, the standardized test intended to measure college readiness. Throughout the year, Sam struggled to find ways to help her students find authenticity in their writing within a context that was largely geared toward students “filling in the bubbles,” an orientation that bled into her students’ approach to writing wherein they routinely asked Sam, “What do you want me to put next?” Taken together, our analysis of these two case studies illustrates a bipolar writing curriculum in American schools--writing as reflection and writing as formula. Neither orientation emphasizes the kinds of critical and analytic thinking that ought to be foregrounded in writing instruction in schools.