Digital Commons Network^™

Walking Each Other Home: Sensemaking Of Illness Identity In An Online Metastatic Cancer Community, Ariane B. Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increasingly, online settings serve as primary social contexts for patient interaction, playing a crucial role in ways participants access medical information and turn to each other for support. Stage IV (metastatic) cancer patients like myself know what it is like to be overwhelmed by the complex array of medical tests, treatments, and information we are expected to assimilate. My late stage disease status necessitates I routinely grapple with not merely the kinds of support I think I need or how those needs will be met, but also what meanings I assign to my experiences. Consequently, as a member of The …

Growing Up The Military Way (1981-1992): An Autoethnography, Jennifer Thacker

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this autoethnographic dissertation is to examine the experiences of one child growing up in a military family. The research depicts the experience of power and gender as communicated through my own narrative as the daughter of a United States Marine. My father served in the United States Marine Corps for 27 years, although my experiences depicted in this study are specific to his years of active duty service during my childhood (1981-1992). I maintained a reflexive journal through the data collection process to ensure optimal personal data collection. Examples of the personal data collected includes family photographs, …

Life After Death: An Autoethnography Of A Teacher’S Journey Through Personal Grief And Loss, Kimberlyn Oliver

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

This study sought to understand how grief and loss affected me on a personal and professional level. Additionally, the process of grief and loss and its effects on teacher performance was examined. The death of a loved one often leaves a person feeling a great deal of emotions. As an educator, it is incredibly difficult to process grief and loss at work due to the demands of working with students all day. Nine participants were recruited for this study and I used semi-structured interviews to discover more about the experiences of these educators while they dealt with the loss of …

A Critical Bricoleur Assumes Positive Intent: Pablito's Problem, Paul Perez-Jimenez

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation serves to further critical theory research through bricolage autoethnography of a Latinx English teacher from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The bricolage functions to unify reflective constructs that expose an emancipatory catharsis and painful reacquaintance with individual and cultural identity. This project offers the concept of a happening as a construct embedded with the ongoing, reflective, and liberating critical consciousness process. Four happenings are offered and establish that the dichotomies of oppression and liberation, how they happened, are happening or may happen are not easily recognizable unless critical introspection is involved. The leading happening titled Pablito’s Problem …

An Examined Life Of A Language Teacher Of Chinese: An Autoethnographic Investigation Into Agency, Ying Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

There is a paucity of research about and done by L2 Chinese educators regarding the theoretical construct of agency. It is also noted that the qualitative inquiry is marginalized in L2 Chinese research field, let alone the narrative study of the agency of experienced by L2 Chinese-teachers. In this dissertation research, I aim at filling in the gap by conducting a longitudinal autoethnography which captures over a decade (1997-2017) of my personal and professional development with an agency perspective. The highly personalized autoethnographic accounts open up my personal and professional life as an experienced, college-level, transnational, early 40’s female native …

Life As A Reluctant Immigrant: An Autoethnographic Inquiry, Dionel Cotanda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I draw on memories inspired and heightened by compassionate interviews in order to produce a unifying narrative of interactions with family and friends prior to and following my exile from Cuba in 1960. I use autoethnography and narrative inquiry to understand how I made the decision to leave Cuba and the life I have lived in exile for almost sixty years. My dissertation focuses on what it means to live as a reluctant immigrant and how historically constituted power relations define the identity of many Cuban exiles. I discuss and contrast the politics of passion and the …

Around Her Table: A Digital Community Archive Featuring Azorean-American Women In New England, Suzanne Lyn Parenti Sink

English Theses & Dissertations

Around Her Table is a born-digital dissertation dedicated to collecting, preserving, and validating the Azorean-American woman’s immigrant experience and cultural identity through the transformative power of participatory archives. The site address is www.aroundhertable.org. The digital exhibit features the oral histories and artifacts related to the domestic sphere of six Azorean-American families, with particular emphasis on artifacts related to the kitchen, hand-worked textiles, and religious practices. Driving the urgency for the creation of new archival records for this community is that fact that despite the nearly one million North Americans who trace their ancestry to the Azores, traditional institutional and civic …

Revolución De Identidad: An Autoethnography On Spanish Heritage Language & Identity, Cristina Velazquez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This autoethnography narrative examines my journey as a first-generation Mexican immigrant woman from birth, through completion of the doctorate degree at California State University, San Bernardino. The purpose in writing this autoethnography is to present a personalized account of my experiences growing up, in communicating between two languages, the structural and personal motivators behind maintaining a heritage language (Spanish), and to reflect, in my experience, how I have negotiated with multiple social identities, including ethnic, academic, and bilingual identities. In this self-study, I bring the reader closer to Mexican-American identity, language, and culture. Specifically, this qualitative analysis of Spanish Heritage …

Listen For The Desert: An Ecopsychological Autoethnography, Dorothy Cashore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What does it mean for human beings to be part of nature – not just as a conceptual justification for doing right by the planet, but actually as an embodied, emotional, and sensuous experience? What happens to the experience of being human when notions as fundamental as voice, absence, suffering, and psyche are re-encountered from a perspective rooted within, rather than apart from, the natural world? While this dissertation responds to these questions, it initially took shape in response to something that felt less like a research question and more like a summons. Following a startling experience of feeling called …

A Study Of Personalized Learning And Its Impact On Middle School Teachers And Students, Kristina Bauleke, Rebecca Momany

Masters of Arts in Education Action Research Papers

The purpose of this action research study is to investigate the cost-benefit of personalized learning and if it was an effective use of time and resources in the middle school classroom. The research was conducted in a sixth-grade mathematics classroom in a small town in Western Minnesota, and an eighth-grade science classroom from a medium size suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. The data was collected using student assessment scores, student surveys, and teacher reflection journals. The data collected was triangulated to determine if the implementation of a personalized learning method known as The GRID Method was beneficial for both the …

Educational Social Justice Agnostic To Zealot: One White Male Elementary Principal's Journey, Jamie C. Hitzges

Educational Policy Studies Dissertations

I failed my students as a first-time principal. By not speaking up for students on the margins, I was complicit in maintaining a status quo that was morally and educationally reprehensible. As a second-time principal, I attempted to rectify challenges from my first principalship and to lead in a culturally responsive and socially just way. This autoethnography explored how culturally responsive and socially just leadership is manifested in practice. Using vignettes, I presented data detailing my process as I learned to practice culturally responsive social justice leadership. Next, I analyzed and categorized the vignettes to find meaning based on adjectival …

Work Of Heart: Myself As Both Teacher And Learner, Chaille M. Kitchen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This autoethnographic paper explores my role as a teacher-learner. Who am I as a teacher? How has my past and present shaped me into the teacher that I am and want to become? To address these questions, I examine the cultural context into which I fit as a college instructor of English in a college community. I also examine my memories of my own mentors and students, which emphasize how my most valued learning experiences stemmed from mentors who have seen me as an individual, and when I see my own students as individuals. To explore the conditions that produce …

The Bond We Share: Sibling Relationships Within Severe Mental Illness Through The Lens Of Autoethnographic Research, Laura Rydberg

Master of Social Work Clinical Research Papers

The well sibling experience of a severe mental illness (SMI) is a wildly understudied component of behavioral health research. This should not be so: siblings can share a genetic makeup, similar upbringings, and value systems, and often remain voluntary, unofficial caregivers of their ill sibling. Through autoethnography, this writer seeks to understand her relationship with her ill brother and the ways that it has been affected by his SMI. This study aims to illuminate the experience of the well sibling in order to better assist practitioners and policy makers alike. Furthermore, this research hopes to inspire others to explore their …

Caring Choices? Supporting And Dreaming With Students In New York City’S Stratifying High School Admissions System, Megan R. Moskop

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In New York City, all eighth graders attending public school must apply for high school. They have 400 schools from which to choose, and they must create a ranked list of twelve choices. They are then matched to one school. The results of this process play a large role in creating one of the most segregated and unequal school systems in the country. In “Caring choices? Supporting and dreaming with students in New York City’s stratifying high school admissions system,” I share an autoethnographic account that spans ten years of work as an activist educator striving both to support students …

Exploring My Unique Literacy Experiences As A Ukrainian American Emerging Scholar Through Autoethnography, Diana Prokopiev

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This capstone project depicts myself as the research subject as I explore why I make meaning the way that I do in my life. The autoethnography itself—full of reflection, epiphany, reflexive writing, and rich descriptions—provides a preview into my life as a Ukrainian American woman as I participate in three different discourse communities: the domestic community, the academic community, and the religious community. By sharing my literacy experiences, I hope this autoethnography has a transformative impact on all audience members, but especially those who were raised by parents who emigrated to the United States.

Becoming Biculturally Competent An Autoethnographic Journey Of A Guera Woman, Bernadette M. Hall-Cuarón

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Becoming Biculturally Competent

an Autoethnographic Journey of a Güera Woman

Bernadette Hall-Cuarón

ABSTRACT

This dissertation represents a personalized account of my lived experiences and analytically describes the autoethnographic and qualitative processes of bicultural development and bicultural competency. My autoethnographic study advocates that cultural self-reflection allows for an accurate determination of one’s cultural-self and more importantly provides an instrumental passageway to cultural awareness, bicultural awareness, and proposedly bicultural competency.

Through the implementation of this qualitative research method, I explored my role as the subject, researcher, and narrator of this autoethnographic examination. This bicultural autoethnography necessitated attending to the details of genuine …

Positionality Matters: School Choice Decisions Based On Ethnographic Accounts Of African American Parents, Dr. Stacy L. Thomas

Dissertations

This research delves into experiences with reasoning and selected criteria for choosing the right school for their children. Beginning with a series of vignettes that assist with recognition of parental empowerment, this research archives acknowledgement of their own positionality when it comes to making life changing decisions. As selected parents of African American children grapple with the strategic balance and possibilities of educational outlets, family and finances, they offer ethnographic accounts of their successes and failures with school choice. Individual accounts of parental school choice decisions posing as data ascertained from interviews provided research that explored the critical frequencies and …

Becoming A Culturally Relevant Feminist Teacher: An Autoethnography Of An Exchange Student, Astri Napitupulu

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis recounts the journey of an exchange student at a public university in Central Illinois on becoming a feminist teacher. By reflecting on her experiences as a Master’s student in the United States and high school teacher in Indonesia, the author unpacks her journey on becoming a feminist teacher. The author argues for the need of a feminist lens to understand the White supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist system that is also infused in United States educational system. Finally, this research contends for a culturally relevant feminism as viable in her home institution in North Sumatra, Indonesia.

From Midterms To Naptime: An Autoethnography Of The Affects Of Intersectionality Of An African American Single Parent College Student, Jovon Willis

Dissertations

Abstract

According to United States Census (2016), Women in female-headed households with no spouse experienced higher rates of poverty (35.6 percent) than women in married-couple families (6.6 percent) and men in male-headed households. Having an education would significantly increase their chances of obtaining suitable employment which would also grant them income and benefits that could improve the overall quality of life for their families.

Today women are the majority on college campuses. According to The United States Census Bureau (2011), women make up 56% of college enrollment. Though the percentage of women attending college is increasing, the challenges that they …

Embodied Autoethnography, Courtney M. Fuller

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

In the past few decades, scholars have begun to combine research and personal experience, exploring the self through autoethnography. This thesis is a reflexive, arts-based autoethnographic study that investigates body, female body image, and identity. Though autoethnography has several subgenres (e.g., critical, performative), this thesis aligns most closely with embodied autoethnography. With this embodied autoethnography, I invite readers—you—inside several pivotal experiences in my life. Combining personal narrative and others’ research, I endeavor to understand changes in body image and identity in some of the most transformative experiences in my life. Specifically, I seek to address: (a) How do life-altering events …

We (She, Me, Her) Are Not In Communication: An Autoethnography Of A Black College Administrator, Tanya Anderson

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

I’m a first generation, previously low income, Christian, African American administrator at a California community college who struggled and felt alone throughout my journey. This autoethnography helped me make peace within my broken pieces. Within this dissertation, I highlight the impacts and hindrances within my education, family and career experiences. The purpose of this study is to offer the reader an insider view of how I ultimately became an administrator and with this information provide scholarship on how to more successfully integrate African American female leaders into higher education. The bonus chapter provides young women lessons learned along the way …

Theorising The Embodiment Of Materiality And Experience In Man-Made Objects From A Design Perspective, Hana Hapiz

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

This PhD dissertation begins with a gap prompted by design researcher, Boradkar (2010) that objects are under theorized in design research. Objects have become our entourage and companion since we are born. Man and object transaction has formed a salient and unobtrusive relationship and we have become oblivious of, which is the importance of the attachment that we have with objects. This dissertation aims to provide a new horizon in articulating our relationship with designed objects. The precedent literatures suggest that the components of materiality and experience are evident in man-object transaction, thus they act as theoretical background to support …