Education Commons^™

Racial Justice Inc.: Deconstructing The Enactment Of Racial Justice In Dei/Social Justice-Focused Higher Education And Student Affairs (Hesa) Graduate Programs, Lorena Fuentes López

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Despite efforts of faculty in Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) programs focused on social justice/Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) to provide equitable educational experiences for their students, studies on these programs have shown that students of color continue to face racialized experiences in the classroom (Harris & Linder, 2018; Linder et al., 2015). This dissertation employed a multiple case study to examine two HESA master's programs with a specific social justice/DEI mission and integrated the voices of both faculty and students. Using intensive interviewing, document analysis, and class observations, the goal of this study centered on understanding the extent …

Writing To Learn: A Course Design And Educational Resources, Geoff Keston

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Higher education students write in many courses, but often as only a small part of a class and without guidance about how to use writing to learn. This paper describes the design of a dedicated course, Writing to Learn, in which students practice many genres and study the science of learning. A focused approach to using writing as a way to learn aims to give students extensive and diverse practice, which isn’t done in many published case studies. And making ideas from psychology, neuroscience, and the theory of pedagogy a part of the course content shows students why and how …

Understanding Environmental Justice Instruction In Higher Education: Activist Epistemic Orientations And A Continuum Of Community Engaged Curricular And Pedagogical Practice, Christopher James Rabe

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Starting in the early 1980’s, the environmental justice (EJ) movement was critical in drawing much needed attention to how communities of color, low-income groups, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups have experienced a disproportionate burden of environmental and ecological harms. The EJ movement sparked the birth of the EJ field of study. While originally focused on quantitative and distributional understandings of toxic waste in communities of color, the EJ field of study has since expanded to comprise community-based methodologies and new ways to understand justice, including participatory, recognition, and transformational approaches. The EJ field now represents multiple areas such as …

Thinking Deeply, Creating Richly: Learner Transformation Through Narrative, Kaylea Hascall Champion

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Narrative methods support transformative teaching and learning by accessing human cognitive strengths, including memory, reflection, and self-awareness. This paper explores the enduring and mindful use of narrative in education – as a method for transformative teaching and learning. A narrative is the intentional conversion of a group of events, participants, and details into a constructed reality that illustrates causes, characters, and results. Narrative development is a native human process by which we teach, learn, and remember. Narrative educational methods incorporate two key characteristics: integrative sense making, and shared connection building. Diverse disciplines – including biology, psychology, economics, literature, medicine, history, …

From Instructivism To Connectivism: Theoretical Underpinnings Of Moocs, Matt Crosslin

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

While the first MOOCs were connectivist in their approach to learning, later versions have expanded to include instructivist structures and structures that blend both theories. From an instructional design standpoint the differences are important. This paper will examine how to analyze the goals of any proposed MOOC to determine what the epistemological focus should be. This will lead to a discussion of types of communication needed—based on analysis of power dynamics—to design accurately within the determined epistemology. The paper also explores later stages of design related to proper communication of the intended power structure or theoretical design as these relate …

Asian American Studies Praxis And The Educational Power Of Boston's Public Chinese Burial Grounds, Peter Kiang

Asian American Studies Faculty Publication Series

Asian American Studies Praxis and the Educational Power of Boston’s Public Chinese Burial Grounds This article explores the educational significance of the historic Chinese immigrant burial grounds located within Mount Hope Cemetery – the public cemetery of the City of Boston. Approximately 1500 gravestones, most of which are marked principally with Chinese characters displaying names and village origins (predominantly males from Taishan), are clustered in three notable, contiguous, sections of one corner of the cemetery. With years of death ranging mainly from the 1930s through 1960s and years of birth reaching as early as the 1870s, the Mt. Hope Chinese …

Pedagogy Of Curiosity: Initial Explorations Of Instructional Practice In A Critical Thinking And Curious Classroom, Michael Chalukian

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Through research on critical thinking, instructional practice, and curiosity I have developed the Pedagogy of Curiosity. This approach is implemented in the Curious classroom and a workshop for secondary teachers. The Curious classroom creates a structure and focus to encourage and develop curiosity and critical thinking of students. A questioning and research design redefines the learning expectations and the corresponding teacher and student roles in the classroom. An environment is constructed for students to take steps to become autonomous reflective learners.

This synthesis identifies two sources that inform my endeavor: 1) The accountability and results driven focus of No Child …

Development Of A New Mindset For Elearning Pedagogy: For The Teacher And The Learner, Tara Devi S. Ashok

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Teaching, like learning, involves a personal journey. This researched narrative records the role of technology integration in one instructor’s teaching practice, and examines how literature in the field accounts for ways eLearning technologies have kept the author and her students engaged in the process of learning. Dr. Tara Ashok of the University of Massachusetts Boston chronicles the personal eLearning tool kit she has selected for effective delivery of contents in different teaching formats. She posits the importance of developing a new mindset to adapt to emerging technologies and examines the literature and her own experiences suggesting how and why, eLearning …

Nontraditional Approaches With Nontraditional Students: Experiences Of Learning, Service And Identity Development, Suzanne Marie Buglione

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Nontraditional students are a growing population in higher education, yet our understanding of the unique factors that predict their success have not increased. Economic challenges, changing work demands, and the desire for personal and professional advancement fuel the nontraditional student's return to school (Kelly & Strawn, 2011). Their isolation and lack of social networks lead to poor academic outcomes as defined by retention, graduation and degree attainment. The classroom offers a beacon of hope for the engagement of nontraditional students, an opportunity to strengthen student identity and draw connections across the multiple worlds where these students reside. This phenomenological inquiry …

Designing A University Level Course: A Practical Approach, Joanne M. Riley

Joanne M. Riley

Teaching at the University level requires skills that are often outside the comfort and experience of many faculty, who have never been trained in basic pedagogical practice. A few guidelines based on learning theory and practical experience go a long way to ensure that college faculty have the tools they need to create a richly productive educational environment within which to teach and learn.