Education Commons^™

Amplifying Tutor Voices: A Qualitative Analysis For Improving Writing Center Tutoring Practices And Pedagogy, Leah Washko

English Department Masters Theses

Within the walls of university writing centers, tutors and tutees collaborate. They discuss writing, but even more than that, they communicate about ideas and theories bigger than themselves, all while discovering their identities. Exploration of how tutors define their authority and agency, while also highlighting the importance of tutors’ voices, is necessary for the continuation of writing center studies. Writing center tutors’ roles may be understood by some, but the mental hurdles, the questioning natures, and the care-giver roles they are emersed into need to be further investigated. Through a study conducted at Kutztown University’s Writing Center, tutors were surveyed …

Raising The Roar: A Case Study Of Early Adolescent Student Voice On Service-Learning And Catholic Identity, April Beuder

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined early adolescent students’ perceptions of their service-learning program experiences at one Catholic elementary school in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (ADLA). The purpose of the study was: (a) to understand how the powerful tradition of the Church related to doing works of social justice and outreach was experienced by students in one ADLA Catholic elementary school in the form of experiential service learning, and (b) to explore whether associations exist between the students’ perceptions of their Catholic identities and their service-learning experiences. This study gathered research from student voice and work samples and utilized Carver’s …

White Womanhood: Finding Oppositional Epistemologies And Community At The Intersection Of Whiteness And Womanhood, Hannah Joy Fischer

Doctoral Dissertations

White women continue to contribute to the reproduction and maintenance of White supremacy even when they attempt to pursue antiracism. To better understand their antiracist agency, this study analyzed White women’s experiences and comprehension of White womanhood. Using phenomenology and critical autoethnography, this qualitative study invited six self-proclaimed antiracist White women to participate in individual interviews, attend two focus groups, and reflect on five guided prompts on White womanhood and antiracist action. The study revealed antiracist White women’s feelings of responsibility and lack of perceived agency for antiracist action. Participants demonstrated attempts to disengage from whiteness while also expressing desires …

The Experience Of Self-Coherence: Self-Coherence As The Hub Of All Needs, April Ursula Fox

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Self-coherence as the hub of all needs is a novel proposition made by Carol Dweck (2017), and not yet further explored. While supporting self-coherence with a comprehensive review of its presence within behavioral sciences, Dweck does not dive deeper into it, and offers an invitation for further research of its workings. In this study I respond to that invitation. I design a continuation to her theory. I also expand her theory to include what I have found to be missing, but essential, additional components that cannot be ignored within the context of self-coherence as a master sensor of needs. Finally, …

Learning And Laboring : Student-Workers’ Networked Experiences Of Literacy, Agency, And Mobility In The Neoliberal University., Layne Porta Gordon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rhetoric and composition has a well-established tradition of considering the connections between literacy education and the discourses and structures of political-economic institutions. This dissertation builds from this work and foregrounds the experiences of student-workers in the UPS Metropolitan College program through a qualitative study that is informed by institutional ethnography (Smith, 1987, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006). Institutional ethnography examines institutional texts and text-mediated discourses as coordinators of individual action. Therefore, I draw on primary data gathered from individual interviews with nine student-workers and one Metropolitan College administrator as well as supplemental data gathered from a survey administered to composition instructors, …

Women Into Advanced Manufacturing: Can Community College Open This Door?, Carissa Bradley Schutzman

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Women still rarely choose to seek employment in advanced manufacturing. Lack of familiarity with manufacturing jobs and education programs, lack of role models, and too few experiential opportunities contribute to women not choosing manufacturing jobs as well as other jobs traditionally held by men (Reha, Lufkin, & Harrison, 2009; St. Rose & Hill, 2013; Starobin & Laanan, 2008). Nontraditional jobs for women often provide higher wages and more opportunity for advancement than traditional jobs for women. This study is a qualitative thematic narrative analysis of factors that influenced women who chose an advanced manufacturing program at a community college to …

Agency, The Uncanny, And Strangeways: An Autoethnographic Journey Through An International Wunderland., Roberto T. Ollivier

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The African diaspora and postcolonial studies author George Lamming writes in his book “The Pleasures of Exile” that the Caliban character from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” “cannot be revealed in any relation to himself-for he has no self which is not a reaction to circumstances imposed upon his life” (Lamming, 1992, p. 107). One could argue that the only hope this half-human half-monstrous creature, or for that matter, any of us have to find peace, lies in the attempt to find resolution through the metaphorical slaying of our respective pasts. Like Caliban, many of us are never …

Damned If You Do--Damned If You Don't: A Queer Woman Of Color's Journey Of Trauma, Agency, And Leadership, Windy Paz-Amor

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

ABSTRACT

Navigating systems of leadership in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in higher education as a Queer Woman of Color can be a challenging and complex process--one that integrates identity, experience, expertise, knowledge, patience, and most importantly the ability to risk; while remaining authentic and professional. It is a balance, which in my own experience and expertise requires constant reflection, evaluation, and adaptation. A negotiation of owning that one has power and agency, while realizing that the many intersecting identities that one holds influences how dominant culture perceives that power and agency. To reach authentic reflection and evaluation in leadership it …

Engaging And Enacting Writing In First-Year Composition: Re-Imagining Student Self-Efficacy In Writing, Mary L. Tripp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to educational theory, learning to write necessitates self-belief that one is capable of performing required tasks. This belief is called self-efficacy, a component of human agency. Students who enter First-Year Composition (FYC), are often unaware of the writing challenges that lie ahead, and many educational psychologists posit that self-efficacy beliefs are the most important factor in meeting these writing challenges. While socio-cognitive theory shapes views of self-efficacy in education literature, to date, measures of self-efficacy in writing have focused only on the individual cognitive beliefs as they influence writing performance outcomes. However, current research in writing studies as well …

Gifted Voices: A Study Of High School Students' Proficiency In Persuasive Writing And Their Perceptions Of Personal Agency, Susan Carol Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Development of the talents and abilities of gifted children is not ordinarily provided by regular public school programs. Their need for accelerated, complex, and challenging curriculum and processes is often overlooked by educators focused on helping underperforming students to reach grade-level standards. Gifted high school students who are proficient in persuasive writing are able to clearly state a claim, support that claim with evidence and backing, recognize and rebut counterclaims, and draw a conclusion leading to action. If gifted students are proficient at writing persuasively, perhaps they are also able to advocate for learning experiences that are challenging, complex, and …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …