Notre Dame senior awarded 2020 Frabutt Prize for Outstanding Education Research in the Community
Notre Dame senior Paige Curley has won the 2020 Frabutt Prize for Outstanding Education Research in the Community for her work bringing an expanded literary canon to students in early grades.
Curley, an English major with minors in Education, Schooling, and Society (ESS) and Latino Studies, won the prize for her senior thesis. She sought to discover ways to broaden the literary canon by including more diverse voices and finding ways to teach multicultural Latino/a literature in early education.
The Frabutt Prize annually recognizes the most outstanding education research project by a graduating senior working with a Fellow or Affiliate from the Institute for Educational Initiatives. Nominated projects are evaluated for their significance, originality, independence, and ability to address a specific community concern.
“I felt incredibly overwhelmed and honored when I learned I won the Frabutt Prize,” Curley said. “Not only did it feel like my hard work this year had paid off, but it was an absolute confirmation that this is the work I was called to do. This experience has confirmed my love for education and my excitement for educational research that is oriented towards social justice.”
The award places special emphasis on recognizing research that is based on the need of a school or organization in the community. Curley worked with Clare Roach, the coordinator of the language immersion program at Holy Cross Catholic School to catalog 330 books in the pre-K dual immersion classroom, measuring each book for representation and authenticity.
“Working with a community partner elevated this project's significance, as it provided a real-world, local context in which my research could have a tangible impact,” Curley said.
"Paige conducted and wrote an outstanding thesis,” said Dr. Maria McKenna, the senior associate director of ESS and Curley’s advisor. “Her work embodies the ESS program's vision of being a force for good in the world and touching our local community. Paige also did a fantastic job of marrying her disciplinary interests and her desire to have an immediate impact on children and education."
Curley said the idea emerged from the lack of diversity, and specifically Latino/a representation, in the U.S. canon of children's literature. She connected with Roach, whose needs for the immersion program matched Curley’s research interests.
“I am equally, if not more, excited to know that Holy Cross as my community partner will be granted $500 as part of the prize,” Curley said. “It means so much to me that they'll receive funding to implement the plans to diversify their book collections.”
Curley’s work was supported by faculty members across several University departments.
“Dr. (Maria) McKenna has been a major inspiration and source of guidance since I took her Education on the Margins course and all the way through to my thesis process,” Curley said. “Her expertise on issues of education inequalities and compassionate style of teaching cultivated my own desire to enter the field of education. Professor Sarah Quesada in the English department served as my English thesis advisor and has also been an invaluable source of inspiration in regards to Latino/a focused scholarship with real world impact. As for my personal and academic passion for multicultural education, I attribute much of my knowledge and interest in the topic to Professor Michael Macaluso, whose Issues of Diversity in Young Adult Literature course was a catalyst for my sustained study of and fascination with excellent multicultural literature in education.”
“We have really loved giving out the award,” said Dr. Nicole McNeil, the director of the ESS minor and chair of the award committee. “We were very happy to have this way of honoring the good work of our students being done in the community. We are thrilled with the added bonus of being able to acknowledge the people in the community who team up with our students.”
Future student and teacher researchers will also be beneficiaries of this project because Curley designed an instruction manual outlining how to successfully catalogue other classroom libraries.
“Holy Cross also now has a live document with the data from my project to which future researchers can contribute as they catalogue more classroom collections,” Curley said. “I don't view this project as complete. Rather, I hope it is the first step in an even more robust, sustained partnership between ESS and Holy Cross' dual immersion program.”
Learn more about the Education, Schooling, and Society minor at ess.nd.edu.
