Education Commons^™

“In A Position I See Myself In:” (Re)Positioning Identities And Culturally-Responsive Pedagogies, Noah Asher Golden

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Culturally-responsive pedagogies require moving beyond blanket assumptions about learners to focus deeply on local meaning-makings. This narrative analysis case study examines the ways a 20-year-old African American man challenges the negative educational identity with which he is forced to contend as he navigates a large and complex urban public school system. The ways in which Jamahl, a seeker of a High School Equivalency, refuses interpellation as an uneducated learner destined to be “nothin'” provides insight as to how formal education might be more responsive to learners' negotiation of deficiency discourses. Embracing agency, specifically through awareness of the ways Jamahl employs …

Asking The Tough Questions: Teaching Literature And Nonfiction Through Critical Literacy To Recapture Our Voices, Agency, And Mission, Elsie L. Olan, Wendy Farkas, Kia Jane Richmond

Conference Presentations

Exploding the Myth of Mental Illness

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 …

Gender Identity Work: Oppression And Agency As Described In Lifespan Narratives Of Transgender And Other Gender Non-Conforming Identified People In The U. S., Kathryn O'Brien

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to critically examine the gender identity work of white transgender and other gender non-conforming identified (TgNCi) people through their stories and the meanings they attach to important artifacts across the lifespan. A single question directed the investigation: How do TgNCi individuals describe gender identity work through lifespan narratives? Thirteen volunteers participated in two interviews: the first, a narration of their life stories and in the second, descriptions of the significance of personal artifacts selected by the participants and photographed by the investigator. Participants’ ages ranged from 22 to 66, according to four pre-determined age …

Engendering Agency: The Differentiated Impact Of Educational Initiatives In Zambia And India, Monisha Bajaj, M Pathmarajah

Monisha Bajaj

Efforts to interrupt the reproduction of unequal gender relations in schools involve alternative practices and pedagogies intended to transform students’ notions of gender and gender relations. Beyond the protective environments where such educational initiatives take shape, however, students must rely on their own sense of agency to reenact newly developed gender roles, behaviors, and understandings. This article examines how human agency is differentially experienced and acted upon by boy and girl students responding to educational nongovernmental initiatives in Zambia and India. Two case studies are reviewed, offering evidence from participants in educational programs that seek to deliberately disrupt gender inequality, …

Ulead: The Effects Of A Civics-Based Educational Program On Urban Youth, Rodney W. Smith, Aaron H. Willis, Mario Pascal Charles

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Urban Legal Education and Academic Development: The Effects of a Civics-Based Educational Program on Urban Youth

There is a critical need for urban youth to have working knowledge of the legal and civic nuances of their communities and political state that affects their daily lives. The pressing problems of the daily existence that these students face inhibit them from utilizing this understanding to exhibit appropriate behavior and engage in civil discourse. Urban Legal Education and Academic Development (ULEAD) provided these students with the knowledge of the functions of the legal and civic processes that facilitate behavior modification to allow …

Fictive Kinship In The Aspirations, Agency, And (Im)Possible Selves Of The Black American Art Teacher, Gloria Wilson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this paper, I explore the pairing of the concepts of fictive kinship and agency in order to explore racial identity narratives of the Black American art teacher. Expanding on the anthropological concept of fictive kinship, where bonds of connectedness between people help to shape selfhood, I consider the powerful impact that visual culture has on shaping identity narratives and the professional aspirations of Black American art teachers. I identify fictive kinship connections as salient in creating spaces which affect agency in the conceptualization and achievement of the self as an artist. I further use the concept of fictive kinship …

We Are One: Singing, Sisterhood, And Solidarity In Appleton-Area Women's Choirs, Lauren Vanderlinden

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Despite its relatively small population, the city of Appleton has a large and thriving women’s choir community. Between the Lawrence Academy of Music Girl Choir, which serves hundreds of girls every year, and Cantala, the women’s choir at Lawrence University, opportunities for involvement in nationally-recognized female-voice ensembles range from second grade all the way through to college graduation. Using the theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, Butler, Green, and Bentham, this project explores the women’s choir culture of Appleton in an attempt to discover the core values of these two influential programs. I accomplished this by conducting ethnographic research in the form …

Set Your Mind On Growth: A Path To Opportunity-Based Learning, Nadya Sharif, Cejay Johnson, Lauren Jackson

Undergraduate Studio Assistant Research

Given that the growth mindset is essential to learning, we will guide practice in reframing fixed mindsets and show how doing so increases learners' self-reflection, agency, and confidence.

Faculty Agency In Applying For Promotion To Professor, Amy Blackstone, Susan K. Gardner

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

• Aim/Purpose: In the United States, faculty who wish to pursue promotion to the rank of professor do so without clear guidance or structure. Even the timing of such a process is nebulous. As such, an individual engages in magentic action to pursue the rank.
• Background: This study examined the experiences of faculty members who chose to pursue the application process to be promoted to professor but were rejected or dissuaded.
• Methodology: Utilizing a case study of one institutional setting, we conducted 10 in-depth qualitative interviews.
• Contribution: Very little is known about the process of promotion to full professor in the …

Development Of Authoring And Agency In Early Childhood Through Play, Pi-Chun Grace Ho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The recent national focus on universal early childhood education programs has drawn attention to the challenges of organizing learning contexts and practices in which children can thrive as learners and community members. Preparing children for school and improving the quality of early childhood education face limits, however, when the role of play is dismissed or reduced to merely instrumental activity. Framed in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, Bakhtin’s dialogic approach, and Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, I reframe play as a process of authoring that fuels children’s passion for being agentive actors in the world and their own lives. This approach addresses how …

Faculty Agency In Applying For Promotion To Professor, Susan K. Gardner, Amy Blackstone

Rising Tide Faculty Scholarship

Aim/Purpose: In the United States, faculty who wish to pursue promotion to the rank of professor do so without clear guidance or structure. Even the timing of such a process is nebulous. As such, an individual engages in agentic action to pursue the rank.

Background: This study examined the experiences of faculty members who chose to pursue the application process to be promoted to professor but were rejected or dissuaded.

Methodology: Utilizing a case study of one institutional setting, we conducted 10 in-depth qualitative interviews.

Contribution: Very little is known about the process of promotion to full professor in the …

Self-Regulated Learning In A Rural, South-Central Kentucky Middle School, Tammy Dungan Board

Online Theses and Dissertations

Self-regulated learning is a phenomenon recognized in nations with positive results on international assessments, such as the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment; IES, 2012). This qualitative, non-evaluative study sought to determine the presence of self-regulated learning in a rural middle school in the south-central United States by utilizing a phenomenological approach.

Self-regulated learning is a practice based upon the constructivist learning theories championed by theorists such as Bandura (1995) and Vygotsky (1978). Zimmerman (1990) coined the term self-regulated learning, which reflects a method by which students are responsible for their own learning through four stages: pre-planning, monitoring for progress, …

Intuition And Curriculum: From Precognition To Agency, Sandra Martinaitis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation is a speculative essay using the framework of Joseph Schwab’s (1969) commonplaces of: subject matter, student, teacher and milieu to examine how intuition can and should form part of curriculum. The overarching theme is that intuition and intuitive teaching and learning is an iterative path which leads to self-knowledge, reflection, cognition and acceptance of ‘other’ -- the Freirian (2010) notion of tolérance-- resulting in critical thinking and agency to ameliorate lives -- particularly of the oppressed. It embraces the clichéd notion of education leading to informed citizens who will make the right choices for society as a …