Education Commons^™

Rejection, Creation, And Abolitionist Futures: Sustaining Ecosystems Of Care Under Neoliberal Violence 1980-Present, Maya Phelps

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The enforcement of the child welfare system through policies, funding practices, and ideologies is a national investment in the nuclear family as a critical social institution to the United States (US); this investment communicates to the broader population that conforming to this heteropatriarchal, white supremacist conception of family provides protection from state intervention to those who conform. My project interrogates child welfare’s enforcement of normative families, and the resistance from Black family formations and kinship based on their social position and its relation to power. Focusing on the period between 1980 and the present, I examine the ways Black family …

Employing Ai To Enhance In-Class Role Playing Scenarios, Eric Fournier

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Role playing can deepen student’s engagement with course content and help them develop skills while learning course material. Students will use AI to develop their characters and help them craft compelling arguments in the role-play scenarios

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …

Text Adjuncts And Comprehension With University Level Second Language Readers, Huan Liu

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Successful reading comprehension in a second language (L2) involves the interaction of multiple factors during the complex process of reading. For some time, researchers have been exploring factors associated with the process of reading as well as the specific interventions and strategies that may facilitate comprehension (Bernhardt, 2010; Brantmeier, 2005; Koda, 2005; Grabe, 2009). Based on three empirical studies, this dissertation explores the potential use of text adjuncts, which are text-related comprehension questions designed for L2 readers to consider and answer during the reading process, to facilitate L2 reading comprehension. The impact of different assessment tasks used to measure comprehension …

Rompiendo Alambres: Immigrant Youth Navigating School And Life In St. Louis, Julia Campus Macias

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project focuses on educational and life trajectories of Central American youth in St. Louis, Missouri, who have immigrated unaccompanied from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. By tracking and telling their stories, I hope to amplify these young immigrants’ voices, and complicate others’ perceptions of their place and worth in this country. Current immigration policies and enforcement practices have made the entry process more punitive, restrictive and deadly. The immigrant experience, especially for young people, confronts many state institutions, chief among them the educational system. Institutions like schools become entry points for immigrants but can also be spaces for …

In Search Of Place, Aleida Hertel

Graduate School of Art Theses

The work I make as an artist is visceral in its form and poetic in its expression. I work with minimal materials through installation, sculpture, video, sound and public projects. My work responds to personal memories of displacement and diaspora, as well as socio-political events.

Ultimately, my art centers its attention towards the Other and the understanding that resides in the ethical, philosophical and political conditions of Otherness, hoping for empathy and transformation.

Methods Of Teaching Latin: Theory, Practice, Application, Morgan A. Nicoulin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I present a way to effectively blend modern theories of language acquisition and the contemporary practice of teaching Latin. I intend to demonstrate that a curriculum is able to balance both traditional and innovative philosophies by adapting Second Language Acquisition Theory’s idealized way to learn a language to fit the realistic limitations of the classroom. I begin with a discussion of the history of language pedagogy, focusing on Latin’s influence on the study of language learning from antiquity to present. Next, I present the key topics in SLA and the practical implications of this research for today’s …

Intersecting Variables Of Second And Foreign Language Reading: Self-Assessment And Comprehension With Adolescents And Adults Across Languages, Haley Dolosic

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, more individuals are seeking to learn a second language (L2) or foreign language (FL) than ever before. These individuals are language learners who intend to use their growing L2 knowledge to traverse linguistic and national boundaries in order to achieve their personal and professional goals (Callahan & Gándara, 2014). To realize these goals in the digital era, L2 learners must be more prepared than ever to use their knowledge with written media, making L2 reading a central skill to successful use of their L2 knowledge. Yet, when language learners attempt to use their L2 skills in their daily lives, …

Literarische Filmsimulation: Heinrich Eduard Jacobs Medienphilosophische Filmästhetik In "Blut Und Zelluloid", Paula Vosse

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heinrich Eduard Jacob´s novel Blut und Zelluloid was published in 1929 and therefore mostly reviewed as a critical artwork regarding European film-propaganda before the outbreak of the Second World War. This thesis provides the interested scholar with a different approach: It discusses Jacob´s media-philosophical method to simulate the upcoming medium film in literature. With his implicitly and explicitly organized systems of diverse media, he circumvents constraints of the Paragone-discourse and offers a well-balanced literary construction.

Jacob´s method is compared with Pinthus´ Kinobuch and Pirandello´s Shoot!, while Simmel and Benjamin provide the thesis with a fundament to support Jacob´s theoretical approach. …

Locating The Possibilities For Upward Mobility: Educating English Learners In A Segmented Opportunity Structure, Lyndsie Marie Schultz

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Immigrant families often view education as the pathway for upward mobility in the U.S. However, the location of schooling for children impacts the quality of the education they receive and their subsequent opportunities for assimilation and upward mobility. The segmented assimilation model does not explain assimilation fully because it ignores the impact of education for English Learning (EL) children. This dissertation integrates opportunity structure literature into the segmented assimilation framework by focusing on the education available to ELs in the location of settlement to examine possibilities for EL assimilation in a more holistic manner. The first study looks at how …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

American Undergraduates Undone: Social And Intellectual Dysfunction On Campus, Noelle P. Jones

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The pivotal, formative years of typical undergraduates, ages 18-22, represent a time when students mold their distinctive identities, social personalities, and intellects more intensively than during any other period of their lives. Developmental theorists Arthur W. Chickering and Linda Reisser call this process “journeying toward individuation—the discovery and refinement of one’s unique way of being—and also toward communion with other individuals and groups, including the larger national and global society” (35). In today’s college climate, students flummox and astound parents, professors, and researchers due to their individual immaturity and disengagement with learning. Although these complaints identify nothing new in America, …

Art And..., Dayna J. Kriz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Almost anything goes in this time of contemporary artistic production as long as an artist can ‘back’ their ideas and the position they operate from. This expanding territory of production and engagement is an exciting potential for working artists, providing freedom to self-determine ones modus operandi within an expanding support system to engage the world with. While this is an exciting growth it is also potentially dangerous. The un-named and historically ambiguous position that Art1 operates from has created a rootless position to the production of culture. This rootlessness or, universal position has historically established itself as the gatekeeper and …

From Seed To Mighty Tree: Susan Blow And The Development Of The American Kindergarten Movement, Madelyn Silber

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

St. Louis is home to the first continuously running public kindergarten in the United States. In 1873, Susan Blow began teaching a small group of students at the Des Peres School using the methods of German educator Friedrich Froebel, “the father of the kindergarten.” Despite the rejection of Froebel’s ideas in Germany, Blow studied his pedagogy and implemented his curriculum into classrooms in America. Her first class was known as the kindergarten “experiment,” which would later become a standard in schools across the nation. Froebel’s kindergarten curriculum was unique because it was based on learning through play, an understanding of …