Education Commons^™

Identity In The Classroom: How Opening The Classroom Door Opened My Eyes To Keeping Humanity In Education, Maija Overturf

Honors College

Education can be a dehumanizing experience for both students and teachers. Teachers hold a great responsibility to ensure that student identities are validated in school and to this end, must create a safe and welcoming learning environment. This thesis analyzes common dehumanizing practices in schools and ways in which teachers may unconsciously invalidate their students or be invalidated themselves. In a personal reflective manner, this thesis focuses especially on the text Opening the Classroom Door (Chapter 1 of Teaching Towards Democracy) by Ayers et. al (2017) as I evaluate my experiences in the classroom both as a student and teacher, …

An Evolutionary Approach To Crowdsourcing Mathematics Education, Spencer Ward

Honors College

By combining ideas from evolutionary biology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, this thesis attempts to derive a new kind of crowdsourcing that could better leverage people’s collective creativity. Following a theory of knowledge presented by David Deutsch, it is argued that knowledge develops through evolutionary competition that organically emerges from a creative dialogue of trial and error. It is also argued that this model of knowledge satisfies the properties of Douglas Hofstadter’s strange loops, implying that self-reflection is a core feature of knowledge evolution. This mix of theories then is used to analyze several existing strategies of crowdsourcing and knowledge …

The Educational Needs Of Children Ages 0-5 Born With Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome In Maine, Julia Casey

Honors College

The goal of this study is to better understand the educational needs of children born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) in Maine. This study will consider two questions. First, what is currently being done to help children born with NAS in Maine? To answer this question, I looked into previous studies that evaluate the needs of children born with prenatal drug exposure. I also looked into Maine’s Strategic Action Opioid Plan to determine what initiatives the state is taking towards helping these children. Second, what should Maine be doing to help the children born with NAS? To answer this question, …

Room For Opportunity: An Investigation Of Catholic Student Life At The University Of Maine, Jacob Buttarazzi

Honors College

Like most Honors graduates before me, the final work for this thesis became something much different than what I had originally intended. Originally, I wanted to make short videos and blog posts about the nature of religion at UMaine. However, the project evolved into a short documentary focused specifically on Catholic students. I produced, directed, shot, and edited the film. My primary goal was to investigate whether or not Catholic students felt like a minority and how that affected them. I was repeatedly forced to reevaluate my own experience with faith throughout the production process. As a practicing Catholic, I …

Alternative Worlds: 3 Short Stories, Katie Perry

Honors College

The following thesis consists of my personal writing and objective writing. First, you will read about my writing process and how I plan to connect this project to my career as a teacher. The format of the stories are as follows: The first version is the “final” version. The versions following are drafts from oldest to most recent. After the stories, I have included my Writer’s Journal. I used the journal as a way to reflect on my work as I completed it.

Before you begin reading, thank you for indulging my writing. I hope you enjoy reading it as …

An Analysis Of The Influence A Teacher's Level Of Science-Based Questioning Had On The Level Of Science-Based Questioning Of Students In A Montessori School, Desiree Labbe

Honors College

Teachers use questions every day to assess their students’ knowledge, allow for more practice with critical thinking, and to help promote collaborative, meaningful classroom discussions. This observational study aims to analyze the effect that the level of science-based questioning the Head Teacher uses has on the level of science-based questioning the students use in a Montessori classroom while they are learning science topics/concepts and/or using science related materials. In this study, observations were performed on preschool aged students enrolled in a Montessori school in rural Maine. These observations consist of science-based questions the Head Teacher asked the students and the …

Teaching Literature In America: Demonstrating Relevance In The Early Cold War 1945-1963, Jennifer Chalmers

Honors College

This historical research focuses on how literature was taught in American high schools in the early Cold War period (1945-1963) and why it was taught that way. It aims to discover how the Cold War culture of conformity impacted secondary literature education. What were literature teachers’ concerns? What was the historical context of these concerns, and how did they affect methods in the classroom and rhetoric in academic journals? Finally, how did methodology and rhetoric change over time? Research involved gaining familiarity with Early Cold War culture, politics, and events through secondary sources; narrowing to U.S. education in the early …

Humanizing The Humanities: A Historical, Cultural, And Philosophical Examination Of The Disintegration Of Humanities Higher Education, Nicholas Moore

Honors College

This essay is an examination of the multifaceted reasons humanities education in American colleges is losing standing and funding. Historical, cultural, and philosophical perspectives are used to analyze the grounds that have justified the decreasing levels of support for humanities education. Historically, there is no longer any external justification provided, as there was when Sputnik was launched and the Cold War was endured. Culturally, the high culture model of ascension through the accrual of cultural signifiers is no longer the dominant form of raising one’s status, as it was when the humanities could be justified as cultural initiation. Philosophically, market-based …

Situational Interest In Professional Development, Jean Stevens

Honors College

In this case study we look at three cases of situational interest during a teacher professional development workshop. The cases were selected because they illustrate events where multiple teachers exhibited spontaneous interest in a geologic feature or phenomena. This research was conducted at a three-day professional development workshop on the seashore in the northeastern part of the United States. The professional development involved 17 middle school teachers who spent the three days at three different locations learning about the geologic history at those locations. In this study, we express the signs of interest shown by the teachers in each case …