Melissa Sherfinski
Biographic Data
| ID | 4078556 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melissa Sherfinski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melissa |
| FAMILY NAME | Sherfinski |
| SIGNATURE | SHERFINSKI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | West Virginia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5223-9270 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
When public preschool teachers’ classroom time is left behind
This qualitative research study explores how US preschool teachers experience time as they grapple with linear “time for learning” policy initiatives. “Time for learning” positions children's learning as a function of the time children are engaged with learning tasks relative to the time needed for producing effective and efficient learners. This phenomenon is part of the global expansion of early childhood connected to biopolitics in which child…
How News of Parents’ Activism in Schools Frames Educational Possibilities
Purpose: The researchers examine how parents’ rights groups gain power and how authoritarianism may spread and be received in educational settings. We analyzed US news reporting on parents’ rights activism leading up to the 2024 election and immediately after it, how local place and leaning of news sources inform production of news on parents’ rights activism, how news sources framed messages about parents’ rights activism in light of the outcome…
Data Embargoes as a Tool for Emplacement and Displacement of Children in Early Childhood Classrooms
Data embargoes constrain teachers' understanding of children by withholding and/or coding particular information on children's attainment and/or identities. Data embargoes may mask children's identities in ways that influence their rights to belong in early childhood programs and may construct White positivist childhoods by maintaining the belief that individual children's bodies can, whether in the present of future, be subject to objective meas…
“Confidence” problems and literacy coaching
This paper explores the context of a Kindergarten team in a suburban P-3 school in Wisconsin developing literacy coaching support. Facing recent neoliberal accountability reforms that have greatly expanded teacher competition, dismantled teachers' unions, and added the role of the coach to the school, "confidence" is an issue that the coach and teachers struggle with as they seek to improve minority student achievement. Using a case study design …
Challenges to goals of “Recovery”
This narrative inquiry shows the barriers and possibilities that the current US education context poses for two mothers of pre-kindergarten sons with autism. Specifically, this work is contextualized within the growing universal pre-kindergarten reform which provides a mixed delivery (public and private) implementation. Presented with the context of choice among school sites and the expectation of mothers to provide energy for the reform through …
Reconceptualising advocacy
This narrative inquiry concerns preschool education in the USA. It describes and analyses the barriers and possibilities for inclusion/exclusion that educators and parents of young children in a West Virginian community believe that it poses. The researchers present a case study designed to examine the context of inclusive education as revealed in 15 educators’ and parents’ narratives and observations of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) practice.…
Disturbing the data
This qualitative study draws on the theory of feminist physicist Karen Barad to examine how gender matters in Evangelical homeschooling families of various sizes, with an emphasis on large families. The two-phase data collection includes interviews with 18 participants and observations of several participants over one year. We use a Baradian analytic process called diffractive analysis to read the messy borders between the discursive and material…
Contextualizing the Tools of a Classical and Christian Homeschooling Mother‐Teacher
This article reports on the resurgence of classical and Christian education in the United States. This education has been especially popular with evangelical homeschooling mother‐teachers. It seeks to cultivate the biblical virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty through contemplating scripture. The curriculum relies on the ancient Trivium tools of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom in order to do this. The inquiry seeks to examine the contexts …
The View from the Lighted Schoolhouse
In this essay we examine how educators work within a component of a class size reduction reform designed to strengthen the connections between families’ home and school lives. We describe the accomplishments and struggles experienced by educators enacting this “lighted schoolhouse” based on our research in nine schools over three years. Specifically, we consider how educational resources are applied and experienced in schools and how opportunitie…
Challenges to goals of “Recovery”
This narrative inquiry shows the barriers and possibilities that the current US education context poses for two mothers of pre-kindergarten sons with autism. Specifically, this work is contextualized within the growing universal pre-kindergarten reform which provides a mixed delivery (public and private) implementation. Presented with the context of choice among school sites and the expectation of mothers to provide energy for the reform through …
Reconceptualising advocacy
This narrative inquiry concerns preschool education in the USA. It describes and analyses the barriers and possibilities for inclusion/exclusion that educators and parents of young children in a West Virginian community believe that it poses. The researchers present a case study designed to examine the context of inclusive education as revealed in 15 educators’ and parents’ narratives and observations of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) practice.…
The View from the Lighted Schoolhouse
In this essay we examine how educators work within a component of a class size reduction reform designed to strengthen the connections between families’ home and school lives. We describe the accomplishments and struggles experienced by educators enacting this “lighted schoolhouse” based on our research in nine schools over three years. Specifically, we consider how educational resources are applied and experienced in schools and how opportunitie…
Contextualizing the Tools of a Classical and Christian Homeschooling Mother‐Teacher
This article reports on the resurgence of classical and Christian education in the United States. This education has been especially popular with evangelical homeschooling mother‐teachers. It seeks to cultivate the biblical virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty through contemplating scripture. The curriculum relies on the ancient Trivium tools of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom in order to do this. The inquiry seeks to examine the contexts …
The View from the Lighted Schoolhouse
In this essay we examine how educators work within a component of a class size reduction reform designed to strengthen the connections between families’ home and school lives. We describe the accomplishments and struggles experienced by educators enacting this “lighted schoolhouse” based on our research in nine schools over three years. Specifically, we consider how educational resources are applied and experienced in schools and how opportunitie…
Disturbing the data
This qualitative study draws on the theory of feminist physicist Karen Barad to examine how gender matters in Evangelical homeschooling families of various sizes, with an emphasis on large families. The two-phase data collection includes interviews with 18 participants and observations of several participants over one year. We use a Baradian analytic process called diffractive analysis to read the messy borders between the discursive and material…
Contextualizing the Tools of a Classical and Christian Homeschooling Mother‐Teacher
This article reports on the resurgence of classical and Christian education in the United States. This education has been especially popular with evangelical homeschooling mother‐teachers. It seeks to cultivate the biblical virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty through contemplating scripture. The curriculum relies on the ancient Trivium tools of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom in order to do this. The inquiry seeks to examine the contexts …
Reconceptualising advocacy
This narrative inquiry concerns preschool education in the USA. It describes and analyses the barriers and possibilities for inclusion/exclusion that educators and parents of young children in a West Virginian community believe that it poses. The researchers present a case study designed to examine the context of inclusive education as revealed in 15 educators’ and parents’ narratives and observations of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) practice.…
Challenges to goals of “Recovery”
This narrative inquiry shows the barriers and possibilities that the current US education context poses for two mothers of pre-kindergarten sons with autism. Specifically, this work is contextualized within the growing universal pre-kindergarten reform which provides a mixed delivery (public and private) implementation. Presented with the context of choice among school sites and the expectation of mothers to provide energy for the reform through …
“Confidence” problems and literacy coaching
This paper explores the context of a Kindergarten team in a suburban P-3 school in Wisconsin developing literacy coaching support. Facing recent neoliberal accountability reforms that have greatly expanded teacher competition, dismantled teachers' unions, and added the role of the coach to the school, "confidence" is an issue that the coach and teachers struggle with as they seek to improve minority student achievement. Using a case study design …
Data Embargoes as a Tool for Emplacement and Displacement of Children in Early Childhood Classrooms
Data embargoes constrain teachers' understanding of children by withholding and/or coding particular information on children's attainment and/or identities. Data embargoes may mask children's identities in ways that influence their rights to belong in early childhood programs and may construct White positivist childhoods by maintaining the belief that individual children's bodies can, whether in the present of future, be subject to objective meas…
When public preschool teachers’ classroom time is left behind
This qualitative research study explores how US preschool teachers experience time as they grapple with linear “time for learning” policy initiatives. “Time for learning” positions children's learning as a function of the time children are engaged with learning tasks relative to the time needed for producing effective and efficient learners. This phenomenon is part of the global expansion of early childhood connected to biopolitics in which child…
How News of Parents’ Activism in Schools Frames Educational Possibilities
Purpose: The researchers examine how parents’ rights groups gain power and how authoritarianism may spread and be received in educational settings. We analyzed US news reporting on parents’ rights activism leading up to the 2024 election and immediately after it, how local place and leaning of news sources inform production of news on parents’ rights activism, how news sources framed messages about parents’ rights activism in light of the outcome…
Sociology (8 works) · Parental Involvement in Education (6 works) · Pedagogy (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social science (4 works) · Context (archaeology (3 works) · Developmental psychology (3 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (3 works)