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The Strong Black Woman Schema: How It Informs The Gendered Racial Identity Development Of Black College Women/Non-Binary Students And Their Navigation Of Pwis, Whitney Ngozi Akalugwu Jan 2023

The Strong Black Woman Schema: How It Informs The Gendered Racial Identity Development Of Black College Women/Non-Binary Students And Their Navigation Of Pwis, Whitney Ngozi Akalugwu

MSU Graduate Theses

The strong Black woman schema (SBW) is known to be a salient aspect of Black womanhood. This culturally specific schema can be understood as a protective factor against the social inequities that Black women are subjected to. However, not much is known on how the SBW schema informs Black college women’s gendered racial identity development and how it informs their navigation of PWIs. The purpose of this study is to explore the strong Black woman schema and how it informs the gendered racial identity development of Black college women/non-binary students and their navigation of PWIs. This study will also address …


Understanding And Advancing College Students' Mathematical Reasoning Using Collaborative Argumentation, Rachel Kay Heili Jan 2023

Understanding And Advancing College Students' Mathematical Reasoning Using Collaborative Argumentation, Rachel Kay Heili

MSU Graduate Theses

This study explored students’ mathematical reasoning skills and offered supports to advance them through a collaborative argumentation framework in a college intermediate algebra class. The goals of this study were to make observations about student reasoning, identify specific actions to address those observations, and document student growth in reasoning as a result of those actions. An iterative analysis, mixed method study was conducted in which the researcher engaged students in responding to questions that required conceptual understandings using a collaborative argumentation framework as a tool to identify and code components of their responses—claim, evidence, and reasoning. After coding and analyzing …


An Education In Democracy: Understanding And Subverting Censorship In The English Classroom, Hannah R. Woolsey Jan 2023

An Education In Democracy: Understanding And Subverting Censorship In The English Classroom, Hannah R. Woolsey

MSU Graduate Theses

The politicization of education has presented a challenge to offering students diverse English Language Arts instruction. Across the county, lawmakers have proposed legislation that limits discussion about race and sex or allows parents to restrict their child’s exposure to materials that violate their moral or religious beliefs. In this tug-of-war, teachers will be forced to decide between avoiding controversial topics or risking dismissal. Increasing censorship, now codified by law in many states, is rooted in our polarized political landscape, divided along cultural and geographic lines. The challenge facing educators, then, is how to create space for inclusive, social justice-oriented instruction …


Writing Through The Senses In The Basic Writing Classroom, Danielle M. Schull Aug 2020

Writing Through The Senses In The Basic Writing Classroom, Danielle M. Schull

MSU Graduate Theses

This study attempts to determine the impact and effectiveness of sensory writing strategies in the initial drafting stages of narrative writing when used in the Basic Writing classroom. Inspired originally by my work with English As a Second Language (ESL) students at a middle eastern international school and the works of feminist theorists, such as Hélène Cixous and Gloria Anzaldua, students use sensory experiences as the foundation for the generation of narrative content. This early draft is then quantitatively and qualitatively compared to previous work completed by the student. I found that certain populations of students, based on gender, classroom …


Imaginative Empathies: Exploring The Role Of Creative Writing In Developing Social Skills Of College Students With Autism, Rebekkah N. Richner Jan 2020

Imaginative Empathies: Exploring The Role Of Creative Writing In Developing Social Skills Of College Students With Autism, Rebekkah N. Richner

MSU Graduate Theses

Only one-third of students with autism who are enrolled in American universities go on to graduate (Cox & Williams, 2018; Newman et al., 2011; Wei et al., 2014). These students may be currently underserved by the writing curriculum of postsecondary institutions when it comes to facilitating social and personal development in college and beyond. This thesis begins with the hypothesis that creative writing classes already utilize pedagogical tools that could aid students with autism in strengthening their social skills, particularly through the more structured social environment of the creative writing workshop. This study examined a 200-level short story creative writing …


Developing Perceptions: Piloting A Corequisite Writing Course, Kailyn Shartel Hall May 2019

Developing Perceptions: Piloting A Corequisite Writing Course, Kailyn Shartel Hall

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis focuses on information gathered during Fall 2017 and Fall 2018, examining the students and the perceptions of the students in different developmental writing courses with regard to their own writing and their place in the academic community. Chapter One, “Redefining Developmental Writing Demographics,” focuses on demographics obtained from a mass survey given to students in prerequisite and corequisite sections of ENG 100 in Fall 2017 and Fall 2018. Primarily, this analysis focuses on readjusting assumptions about the demographics of students who enroll in developmental writing and how the students in prerequisite courses differed, and did not, from those …


Contemplative Practices And Post-Secondary Well-Being: Potential Methods For Reducing Test Anxiety, Shannon S. Hayden Aug 2017

Contemplative Practices And Post-Secondary Well-Being: Potential Methods For Reducing Test Anxiety, Shannon S. Hayden

MSU Graduate Theses

Students encounter numerous sources of stress in college from school work to examinations. A proposed method for reducing test related anxiety is contemplative practice (namely, mindfulness meditation and expressive writing). These interventions were used immediately prior to an exam to determine effectiveness on students’ mood and test grade. Although the study produced few statistically significant results, a promising trend in utilizing these interventions for increasing exam grades, increasing positive mood, and decreasing negative mood was uncovered. Each intervention appears to have dissimilar effects on different types of students (i.e., varying degrees of dispositional mindfulness and cognitive test anxiety; for example, …