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Teaching While Lesbian And Other Identities: Sexual Diversity, Race, And Institutionalized Practices Through An Autoethnographic Lens, Sondra S. Briggs

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership Dissertations

The implicit acceptance among educators and in institutions of learning that discussions around LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) issues are off limits perpetuates the marginalization of these identities and those who inhabit them. In K-12 schools and college classrooms the prevailing silence sends disturbing messages about the treatment of adults and children when their sexual orientation fails to fit neatly into prescribed binary classifications. As one who has been silent as well as silenced, I understand this dichotomy from a unique perspective. Moreover, my lived membership within diverse cultural and racial groups that have been routinely marginalized through institutionalized practices …

“You Better Redneckognize”: White Working-Class People And Reality Television, Tasha Rose Rennels

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project documents the complex and interwoven relationship between mediated representations and lived experiences of white working-class people—a task inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in a white working-class family and neighborhood and how she came to understand herself through watching films and television shows. Theoretically guided by Foucault’s recognition that people are constituted in and through discourse, the author specifically analyzes how reality television articulates certain ideas about white working-class people and how those who identify as members of this population, including the author, negotiate such articulations. A focus on white working-class people is important considering their increasing …

Expect The Unexpected: An Autoethnography Of Typhoon"Yolanda"( Haiyan ), Ashley Conrad

Theses and Dissertations

On November 8, 2014 one of the most powerful typhoons in recorded history made landfall in the Philippines leaving the country in a declared state of national calamity (NPR 2013; BBC 2013). This research seeks to place in sociological context my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in the Philippines during the landfall of typhoon "Yolanda". I utilized autoethnographic methods with a focus in personal narrative to analyze my experience.

Implementing Transformational, Professional Learning Communities In An Urban Elementary School: An Autoethnographic Case Study, Yolanda Mendez

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This autoethnographic study examined the transformational growth and development over a four-year period of professional learning communities (PLCs) at an urban elementary school in New Jersey. I sought to uncover the relationship between the principal's leadership behaviors, vision, and systemic planning and the development of transformational professional learning communities (PLCs) at the school. Ongoing surveys and questionnaires were distributed to teachers at the school, and my personal journal entries that maintained anecdotal notes of PLCs and interaction among staff during the four-year period along with PLC documents were analyzed. The findings from the study revealed that overall there is a …

Learning To Flip The Framework: A Multigenre, Autoethnographic Account Of One Student's Experience With Gradual Release Of Responsibility, Julie Theresa Saltisiak

Honors Capstone Projects - All

For this Capstone project, the success of using gradual release of responsibility as an everyday instructional framework is examined, using one Syracuse University English Education major’s experience as evidence. This project acts as an explanation for the learning that has occurred surrounding gradual release of responsibility in this student’s college experience. Using an autoethnographic approach allows for this student’s personal experiences to be regarded as strong data in order to better understand the larger experience of all Education majors working with the gradual release of responsibility framework in the School of Education at Syracuse University. This project also uses multiple …

Somatic Psychotherapy: Illuminating An Embodied Experience Of Self-Transformation Through Autoethnography, Ellie E. Jones

Master of Social Work Clinical Research Papers

Somatic Psychotherapy is a contemporary embodied, experiential therapeutic modality that is difficult to understand by reading theory alone and without the benefit of direct personal experience. In this autoethnography, I aimed to illuminate the therapeutic change process in somatic psychotherapy from my perspective as a client. In reflecting on my experience as a client, I also strove to more deeply understand my own healing process to become a more effective and ethical somatic psychotherapist. The data consisted of my direct participation in four professional workshops related to somatic psychotherapy, as well as my personal experience as a continuous client of …

What Can I, As A Leader, Really Do? Learning To Lead Through Autoethnography, Jacob Daniel Skousen

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This research study, while highly personalized, contributes in various ways to the literature on public schooling. First, this study includes a critique of the public schools and posits that while public schools are the problem, potentially public schools may also be the solution. This allows multiple and novel interpretations of the critique of public schools. Second, while reflection and reflective practice has been emphasized in the teaching profession for decades, this research study offers a reflection within the context of a practicing principal, therefore, expanding the possibility of reflection application to school leaders. Third, this study and my analysis of …

Resident Advisors React: Autoethnographic Reflections On High-Intensity Situations, Brenna A. Merrill

Sustainability and Social Justice

Resident Advisors (RAs) are paraprofessional peer leaders who are trained to respond to high-intensity incidents. Upon witnessing a crisis situation, I found it difficult to reflect and maintain my own personal wellness. The intent of this research has been to learn of and to give voice to the multiple ways in which RAs respond to such scenarios.

Utilizing autoethnography, I incorporate my experience with the perspectives of my coworkers and multidisciplinary literature. Seven current RAs, who had self-identified experiencing such an incident, volunteered to be interviewed. These narratives are embodied in the text in order to establish a dialogue between …

The Triage Principal: An Autoethnographic Tale Of Leadership In A Catholic Turnaround School, Corena Marasco

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Catholic schools are in need of innovative change. The problem lies in how to construct the elements of change to create viability for a school in the face of rapid declining enrollment. Responding to this type of environment as an educational leader requires qualities and characteristics similar to those of first responders in a medical emergency, a term I coined as the triage principal. This autoethnographic research study was designed to answer three research questions:

1. As a new principal at Michael, the Archangel School (MAS), a Catholic school in danger of closing, what challenges did I experience?

2. As …

Slim Truth: A Textual And Autoethnographic Analysis Of Celebrity Eating Disorder Coverage In People Magazine, Angela Michel

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This thesis employs textual analysis and autoethnography to examine portrayals of celebrity eating disorders in People magazine. In it I seek to accomplish two goals: first, to reveal the story told by the entertainment news outlet about anorexia and bulimia, and second, to relate that story to the lived experience of illness and recovery. I discover that the magazine's narrative is reductive and simplistic, laced with half-truths and widely held myths about eating disorders. It depicts these disorders not as complex psychological conditions, but rather as behavioral and physical "battles" triggered by celebrity activities. The illness experience is portrayed as …

Don’T Let Me Down: An Autoethnography Of An Urban Teacher, Jacqueline R. Arriaga

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Students in urban schools who are negatively impacted need stability and continuity the most. However, at least half of new teachers leave their profession within five years. In order for this situation to change, support is needed for new teachers and encouragement is needed for experienced teachers.

The purpose of the study is to offer a first-hand description of factors that affect the profession of teaching and especially teachers who may be wondering how to stay in teaching for more than five years. Veteran teachers gain the opportunity to reflect, validate, and (probably) celebrate their own journey through this profession. …

The Meaning Of Stories Without Meaning: A Post-Holocaust Experiment, Tori Chambers Lockler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dissonance exists in efforts to communicate about suffering and despair. Showcasing common societal flawed reactions to despair begs for discourse to create a more communicatively healthy response. Attempting to communicate the suffering of others and feeling like I was failing at that goal led to my own suffering. Using writing as a method of personal healing created an intersection of personal narratives of suffering and victim’s narratives (which can arguable only allow for the co-opting of the story and narcissism). Grappling with the limits of writing to heal provided a lens to see the victim’s narratives in such a way …

Feeling At Home With Grief: An Ethnography Of Continuing Bonds And Re-Membering The Deceased, Blake Paxton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bereavement scholars Silverman, Nickman, and Klass (1996) have argued that rituals to continue a relationship with the deceased do not have to be considered pathological in nature. Since their work, scholars have offered specific strategies for the bereaved to actively construct a bond after death, including telling stories about those who have died, having imagined conversations with the deceased, celebrating their birthdays and anniversaries, and reviewing artifacts that represent or once belonged to them (among other strategies). Hedtke and Winslade (2004) call these “re-membering” processes by which the deceased can regain active membership in their loved ones lives. This dissertation …

From With–In The Black Diamond: The Intersections Of Masculinity, Ethnicity, And Identity–An Epistolary Autoethnographic Exploration Into The Lived Experiences Of A Black Male Graduate Student, Vincent Tarrell Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

From With-In The Black Diamond: (Black Diamond) autoethnographically explores the lived experiences of a Black male who navigates his way through a predominately white higher education institutions while existing within marginalized spaces related to his gender, ethnicity, and identity. Black Diamond uses epistolary writing techniques to explore question research question: 1. How has a Black Gay male graduate student studying Higher Education negotiated his way to and through predominately white higher education institutions? In order to support the answering of this question I will argue that the most influential reasons higher education literature rarely addresses controversial topics related to GLBTQ …

Thinking Differently About Reflective Practice In Australian Social Work Education: A Rhapsody, Lynelle Watts

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

There are many different ways of thinking about reflective practice in social work education in Australia. This research utilises a musical metaphor to illustrate this diversity. Written as a piece of music with album notes, the study utilises a reflexive methodology with a qualitative mixed method approach. Three studies were conducted to explore how reflective practice is understood in social work education and practice in Australia. The first study examined my own learning and teaching of reflective practice through an autoethnographic process. The findings indicated a range of models of reflective practice potentially available to the educator. Also explored in …

Avatar, Cyborg, Icevorg: Simulacra’S Scion, Guido E. Alvarez

Theses and Dissertations

I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.”

The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop also known as Metalepsis ICEVORG find an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and …

The Role Of Literary Texts In Tourism Destination Management, Place Creation And Marketing: A Case Study On Concarneau In Finistère, Brittany, And The Simenon Novel, The Yellow Dog, Charles Mansfield

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

This doctoral thesis approaches literary tourism initially from an historical perspective in order to define the phenomenon through a review of the existing academic literature in the field. The forms of literary tourism are analysed to provide a typology and from this the value of literary tourism is explained both from the visitor's point of view and the destination manager's. Current theories underpinning the existing literature on literary tourism, including Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital are reviewed. To extend the current state of research and to answer the research questions a case study of successful urban literary tourism is identified, …