Education Commons^™

Jay Treaty And Indigenous Student Mobility Across The Canada-U.S. Border: A Focus On The Cascadia Region, Michael O'Shea

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

This Border Brief describes the latest developments in the use of the Jay Treaty for international tuition waivers at U.S. and Canadian higher education institutions. It is based on research conducted through surveys, interviews, and the author’s previous publications to illustrate opportunities for universities and policy makers to support Indigenous student mobility across the Canada-U.S. border by recognizing the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous Nations.

Verb Strings And Other Weavings: An Exploration Of Grammatical Structures, Visual Arts, And Language Teaching, Mae Bash

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In language education, visual arts are sometimes used as a tool to inspire communication and convey cultural concepts. However, limited research has looked into the application of visual arts in the classroom for the exploration of linguistic patterns. Both languages and weavings are complex systems governed by distinct sets of rules, yet they still permit infinite unique productions. This project explores this relationship by presenting five bandweavings, each of which is designed based on the rules and structures of different languages. These weavings show that it is possible to connect art and language through practical, structural methods, not only abstract …

Honoring The Gift: An Epistolary Exploration Of An Alternative Approach To Learning Grounded In Reciprocity And Gratitude, Tegan Keyes

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In this project, I explore what it means to honor knowledge as a gift. This document includes a selection of letters I wrote to my teachers to express my gratitude to them, along with a written narrative in which I describe my vision of an alternative approach to undergraduate education that centers gratitude, reciprocity, and self-determination. This narrative weaves together lessons from emergence theory, Indigenous systems of education, and gift economies to tell a story of a life-sustaining education system that is grounded in the understanding that knowledge is a gift.

Klipsun Magazine, 2022, Volume 52 Issue 03 - Spring, Tyler Brown

Klipsun Magazine

Dear Reader,

When I was given the news that I would be the future editor-in-chief for Klipsun, I knew immediately the theme I wanted for the spring edition.

Passion; (Noun)

1. a strong and barely controllable emotion.

2. an intense desire or enthusiasm for something.

Passion lies within all of us, waiting like a starving beast ready to pounce. Unexpected, unbidden and sometimes unwanted. It stirs, waiting to open its jaws and howl. It guides us. Passion rules us all, and we obey.

If we could live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be …

Klipsun Magazine, 2022, Volume 52 Issue 2 - Winter, Victoria Corkum

Klipsun Magazine

Dearest reader,

When I was blessed with the opportunity to be Editor-in-Chief of Klipsun Magazine the little voice in my head whispered with glee, “Now’s your chance to inspire what others need to hear!” Living in a broken world means we are all broken people…but is that such a bad thing? We’re all a little fractured, that’s how the light gets in.

Joy: (noun) An attitude of gladness not based on circumstance; deep-rooted, inspired happiness.

This concept of joy will always receive varying responses. Some smirk at it, not fully understanding the power to be found within. Others hold onto …

The Sociohistorically Situated And Structurally Central Nature Of Race: Toward An Analytic Of Research Regarding Race And Racism, Rolf Straubhaar

Journal of Educational Controversy

In a response to Wacquant’s (1997) call for “an analytic of racial domination” (p. 230) to theorize about race and racism, this conceptual article puts forward one such analytic. This analytic is based principally on the continued centrality of race in society, the recognition that racism is always shaped by particular sociohistorical factors, and the importance of documenting racism’s contextual intersectionality with class, gender and other elements of social structure through academic inquiry focused on both discourse and measurable action as data for racial analysis.

Klipsun Magazine, 2021, Volume 52 Issue 1 - Fall, Sadie Fick

Klipsun Magazine

For the reader

These past years have been characterized by uncertainty. If it’s taught me anything, it’s this: We can never really know what’s coming next.

I was hired as a designer for this edition of Klipsun. I didn’t choose the theme or work with reporters to shape their stories. Now I’m Editor-in-Chief.

Sometimes we (knowingly but ungracefully) stumble into new things, as I did. Other times, we take a confident step forward only for the ground shift under us. Through the uncertainty, all we can do is look at where we are and ask ourselves what we’re going to …

Eco-Justice Poetry: An Emotive Transgression, Nicola H. Follis

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Dualistic value-hierarchies that are deeply embedded within Western culture assign certain identities, traits and ways of knowing as superior to others. According to eco-justice frameworks, these hierarchies allow some humans to be valued over others and all humans to be valued over the Earth. I specifically talk about the mind/body and human/nature split as two dualities present in Western discourse. Emotions are deemed inferior to the mind’s rational and objective ways of knowing while humans are considered separate and superior to nature. I argue that eco-justice poetry acts as a small transgression against a value- hierarchized culture that devalues emotional …

New Frontiers In Gaming: Playing With Hope, C. Thumper Ormerod

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The author, a queer educator, documents how a transformative experience sharing their love of collaborative storytelling games with peers lead to them designing a new game. The author explores the potential of games like Dungeons and Dragons to make space for voices that popular media doesn’t offer a platform to. They explore opportunities to use role playing to practice new social skills, build community, and the potential for emotionally therapeutic play. Finally, outlined is an original game entitled Frontiers which aims to help players develop environmental hope.

Klipsun Magazine, 2021, Volume 51 Issue 3 - Spring, Jaya Flanary

Klipsun Magazine

Hi neighbor,

I lost empathy when I was young and have since spent my time searching for it. Empathy is a capacity that is messy and unnatural; it is a pain in the ass for us selfish folks. My search for it began in high school. Later, in a college literature class, I rediscovered my infatuation for empathy when I read Leslie Jamison’s “The Empathy Exams.”

“This was the double blade of how I felt about any thing that hurt: I wanted someone else to feel it with me, and also I wanted it entirely for myself.”

Considering you and …

(Not) Speaking Spanish: Explicit Pronunciation Instruction In The Online High School Classroom, Brahm Vanwoerden

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Students in the language classroom often face a variety of challenges inherent to the process of learning a second language as an adult. These range from lack of sufficient motivation to structurally uninspired curriculum and are often amplified in the case of a drastic shift in environment. Such a shift took place rapidly over the course of 2020, transforming thousands of classrooms into virtual versions of themselves in a matter of weeks. Students began to receive vastly different quantities and types of language input and interacted with the language in substantially affected ways. Factors that previously played a large role …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Empathy-Based Education In The Modern Zoo, Annika Brinkley

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Approximately 10,000 zoos exist in the world, attracting an estimated 600 million visitors annually. At the most basic level, these zoos are tourist destinations dedicated to assembling animals in confinement from around the world. The arguably most modern and conservation-minded zoos today form the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. In January of 2019, twenty AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums created the Advancing Conservation through Empathy Network (ACE). AZA facilities that are part of the ACE Network engage visitors through a process known as Empathy-Based Education (EBE). EBE encourages compassion and emotional connection to animals by having the visitor take the place …

Challenging Deficit Discourses: Human Services And Trauma-Informed Practice, Brielle Lamphere

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study by Kaiser-Permanente has significantly influenced trauma practice in many contexts. As a medicalized model, ACEs was intended to collect population information about traumatic experiences. However, many of its current applications are harmful in practice and in need of critique. More specifically, school systems must reconsider how ACEs is used in curriculum since providing screenings or “trauma-informed” models off of this study often portrays trauma as a deficit. By carefully examining my own education on ACEs and trauma theories at Western Washington University, alongside the experiences of other students and several professors, this deficit discourse …

Student Leadership In Western Washington University’S Honors Program, Emma Wiechert

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

After serving as the Student Honors Board President for the WWU Honors Program and in various other volunteer roles, I completed my senior capstone on student leadership in not only our honors program but programs across the country. The goal of this project was to highlight what WWU is doing well in terms of student leadership and what could be improved.

Depression Symptoms Of College Students During Covid-10 And The Universities’ Response, Anamika Paulay

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In early spring 2020, universities worldwide shut down their campuses in response to a global pandemic. The present study examines the potential effect of the shutdown and other pandemic-related stresses on student well-being at Western Washington University. It assesses students’ depression symptoms using the IDAS-II General Depression Scale. The study also considers two campus resources (the Counseling Center, and Prevention and Wellness Services) that students can turn to for help with mental health issues, and gauges students’ awareness and utilization of these resources. The study subjects were Western undergraduates (N = 252), who answered a survey that included the IDAS-II …

Collecting: A Process Of Learning, Growth, And Forming Identity, Nate Trachte

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Why do people stuff their homes full of things that have no real utility and attach such great personal attachment to them? It is the relationships involved in any action that provide a lasting sense of satisfaction. Transformation in life as with education is about being able to sit with uncertainty, asking questions, and seeking to understand with the spirit of earnest curiosity. We should seek to hold each other gently in the uncertainty of learning and growth. What if instead of focusing on rushing to meet standards and goals, we slow down and embrace the process of learning missteps …

What To Make Of A Diminished Thing: Re-Envisioning Spirit And Relation In Environmental Education, Zoe Wadkins

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Traditional westernized systems of education reflect complex historical, social, and political forces that prioritize uniformity at expense of people’s multi-dimensionality. This paper details a returning to relation via education’s potential to entwine multiple perspectives in mutual understanding of lived experience. Education in this way becomes an interwoven tapestry and a means to speak across difference in mending, rather than in mutual deterioration. Enjoining personal storytelling with indigenous epistemology, the author pursues hope in reconfiguring the display of our educational tapestry.

Nourishing Solidarity: Critical Food Pedagogy And Storytelling For Community, N. Tanner Johnson

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This piece was delivered in four parts in tandem with a four-course meal, with the intention of providing the audience with time to engage in the sharing of their own perspectives around food and eating. Foodways, the particular cultural and social contexts within which food sits offer a unique entry point into deeper, more connective opportunities for environmental education. The food justice and food sovereignty movements provide a foil for traditional forms of environmental education which reinforce settler-colonial narratives about the more-than-human world. Food is something that everyone has some sort of interaction with every single day. At the same …

The Queer Agenda: A Fluid Education, Charlee Corra

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Throughout this paper, I weave together various aspects of my identity in order to investigate how fluidity and questioning form an undercurrent of my being and therefore of the way I teach. Through metaphors and narratives of my experiences within environmental education and experiential learning I seek clarity and expansiveness rather than definitive answers, leaning into the certainty that change is inevitable and there are rarely any static answers. Using queerness, Judaism, and my scientific background as the layers of my unique identity lens and positionality, I explore the ways in which the power of questioning, critical thinking, democratic education …

Pedagogy Of Tarot: Simultaneity Of Past, Present, And Future, Ashley S. Hill

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

A three card tarot spread can represent the past, present, and future. As a reflective practice, tarot does not divine the future; rather it invites the practitioner to consider context and imagine multiple futures. Simultaneously experiencing the past, present, and future of education is valuable and is possible through a pedagogy of tarot. A pedagogy of tarot connects fxminist and democratic approaches to education through non-hierarchical relationships that honor lived experiences - calling teachers and learners to remain conscious and awake to one another. By acknowledging the possibility of multiple truths within current sociopoliticial and hxstorical contexts, we can make …

Klipsun Magazine, 2020, Volume 51 Issue 01 - Fall, Colton Rasanen

Klipsun Magazine

Dearest readers, This is the section that my predecessors have carved out to write something profound about Klipsun’s theme and the stories you will find with- in. Yet, as I write this, I realize there isn’t anything inherently profound to say about pride. Pride is something most people understand from a young age. Life is filled with proud moments. Pride in education and sports, pride in family and pets, even pride in our ability to meet milestones like talking and walking. As I list all these moments, I wonder why it was so hard for me to feel pride growing …

Klipsun Magazine, 2020, Volume 50 Issue 03 - Spring, Zoe Deal

Klipsun Magazine

For the Reader, The lake is silent on a cool spring morning. As a thick mist rises from the water’s glassy surface, there is a harsh rumble, and a white speedboat rushes through. All that remains, when the buzz fades to an empty echo, is a white-capped trail, rippling, rippling, gone. While the wake of one boat disappears as quickly as it comes into existence, add one, two or 50 more to the mix and, well... just imagine the insurmountable waves. It is not difficult to picture this familiar wake. But to recognize this metaphor on a greater human scale …

Klipsun Magazine, 2020, Volume 50, Issue 02 - Winter, Ray Garcia

Klipsun Magazine

Dear Reader, When we think of the archetype superhero, we often conjure up an image of some perfect, impenetrable being. As humans, the realities we face are seldom that simple. As I reflected on my experiences in journalism thus far, I kept coming back to what I felt made stories both important and compelling – the people at the heart of it all. No matter the topic, there is something inherently captivating about the human experience in that it always drives a component of the article. Otherwise, what would compel us to care? And so, I chose the theme “Superhuman”, …

Occam's Razor Vol. 10 - Full (2020), Ally Remy

Occam's Razor

No abstract provided.

How Historical Context Matters For Fourth And Fifth Generation Japanese Americans, L. Erika Saito

Journal of Educational Controversy

Japanese Americans have a longstanding history in the U.S.-- comprising of more than five consecutive generations. Yet generational research on this ethnic group is understudied (Meredith, Wenger, Liu, Harada, & Kahn, 2000; Pang, 2007). By connecting the historical experiences of previous generations of Japanese Americans to the present, findings on how history has impacted this population can be applied in other ethnic multi-generational groups in the United States.

An Ethnic Identity & Generational Status Model was developed by the author that was influenced by Jean Phinney (1990), Handlin (1951), Mannheim (1927), and Matsuo (1992) to support the varied roles that …

The Planet, 2020, Winter, Alex Meacham, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Taste Of Place And Provenance, Alison Stevens

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Bioregionalism is a framework that could serve to bridge the gap between humans and the land that they inhabit. A bioregional food system exemplifies the reduction of large scale agriculture and economy to one that falls within climatologically and geographically determined regions, superseding anthropogenic and political borders. Not only would a bioregional food system encourage mindfulness of the ecosystem that surrounds a community, but create a secure, community-based economy scaled to match the bioregion. The valuation of products and crops of local farmers and artisans would reflect the reliance on bioregionally specific wares, as well as ground members in their …

Farm Camp Fun, Rebecca Moore

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This piece is a personal narrative about the journey of a young woman in the constant process of becoming an educator. The wonder of children is what drives this individual, discussed here through the lenses of thought of adultism and with a focus on play. The fallacies of higher education and the systemic injustices the US is built on are touched upon, with specific reference to the industrialized standardized school system. The author promotes the notion that this nation needs educators who see the inherent wisdom in children, because kids are the ones who are the hope for bringing this …

Womxn: An Evolution Of Identity, Ash D. Kunz

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Environmental Education is situated firmly in the hegemony of White, settler-colonial, capitalistic, able-bodied and –minded, heteronormative, patriarchal society. Individuals whose identity does not conform to this dominant metanarrative are excluded from and marginalized by “othering”. Trauma and violence are commonplace in society against Indigenous peoples, Black and Latinx folx and People of Color, womxn, people with disabilities, people in the LGBTQIA+ community, and all minoritized identities. That history of trauma, coupled with social and physical isolation can lead to mental and emotional struggles that negatively impact personal wellbeing. A lack of wellbeing, in turn can lead to or further depression. …

It’S Not All About Climbing Rocks: Reorienting Outdoor Educators Toward Social Justice, Sarah J. Clement

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The field of outdoor adventure education was born in the Western world in the twentieth century because of several specific factors. These factors include, but are not limited to: changing Euro-American attitudes toward wilderness, Kurt Hahn’s character education schools and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. Today, outdoor adventure education is widely popular among the white middle class. According to current instructors in the field, outdoor education is for the purpose of individual development, learning in a wilderness setting and teaching students how to be environmental stewards for wild places. These purposes result from underlying, sometimes false, assumptions about the nature …