Education Commons^™

Centering English Language Learners In The Praxis Of Dialogic Pedagogy, Ching-Ching Lin

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The mainstream classroom poses critical challenges to ELL students in the era of standardization. As English is used both as a language of instruction and assessment for all content subjects in the mainstream classroom, ELL students have to master a cognitively loaded and culturally specific curriculum while learning basic English. Through the standardization of curriculum and assessment, English exerts a normalizing power for ELL students. Given the role of language in regulating consciousness and controlling access to dialogic process, how does dialogic pedagogy theorize about the relationships between language, power and the needs of ELL students in mainstream, content-area classrooms? …

Tracking The Basic Writer, Timothy Donohue

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Since the 1970s, composition teachers and theorists have been advocating the term “basic writer” to give a space and voice to underprepared students entering college by providing them with basic skills remediation. Despite the various pedagogical approaches to these classes that have been established and put into practice over the years, there is still large disagreement among educators on how to best prepare these students for entrance into the mainstream college environment.

This study begins by examining the history of the basic writing movement, acknowledging key figures and the salient ideas of their works. A broad overview is given to …

The Problem Of Moral Statements In Historical Writing, Alexandra Katherine Perry

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Bernard Williams (1985) begins his skeptical look at the history of ethical theory with a reminder of where it began, with Socrates’ question, "how should one live?" (pg. 1). This question is relevant to historians, who ask a similar question, “how did people live?” in their own work, To wonder “how one should live” or to make statements about the ways in which people have lived is to rely on the work of historians. The question of what historians can know about the past, however, is a very philosophical question, and it is dependent on our views about such things …

Serving Two Masters : A Study Of Quantitative Literacy At Small Colleges And Universities, Jodie Ann Miller

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The past twenty years have seen a growing interest in promoting quantitative literacy (QL) courses at the college level. At small institutions, financial realities impose limitations on faculty size and therefore the variety of courses that may be offered. This study examined course offerings below calculus at four hundred twenty-eight small colleges to gain a thorough understanding of the approaches to developing QL among the general population of undergraduate students. Using a three-phase model of examining progressively narrower subsets of QL programs at small institutions, document-based data from college catalogs and communication with mathematics program chairs were studied to summarize …

American Mathematical Association Of Two Year Colleges Reform Policies In Practice : Implementing Standards In Classroom Instruction For Basic Skills Mathematics At One Four-Year College In New Jersey, Patricia J. Garruto

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

High school graduates continue to enter post-secondary education lacking in basic mathematical skills and thus not academically prepared to enroll in college-level mathematics courses (ACT, 2010). Although it can be argued that those mathematical concepts should have been mastered in grades K-12, educating those students in basic skills mathematics has become the responsibility of universities and colleges. Two publications of the American Mathematical Association of Two Year Colleges (AMATYC), Crossroads (1995) and Beyond Crossroads (2006) set forth standards for mathematics programs and courses offered to students during their first two years of postsecondary education, which includes basic skills programs. Those …

A Deweyan-Based Curriculum For Teaching Ethical Inquiry In The Language Arts, Maria Aurora L. Buenaseda-Saludo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Informed by Dewey’s account of ethical experience and the nature of philosophical inquiry, my theory of ethical inquiry has four components: body-based reasonableness, moral imagination, emotions as judgments, and ethical content. Bodybased reasonableness is thinking that is critical, creative, committed, contextual, and embodied (Sprod, 2001). Exercising embodied reasonableness in aesthetic education means that we pay critical attention and seek to address the ethical and social aspects of art. We pay attention to fiction that will potentially engage students in a constant process of ethical judgment, depicting characters and situations that call for our moral evaluation. In a similar vein, exposure …

"Americans With A Twist" : Identity Negotiation Of Second Generation Adolescents Of Asian Indian Descent, Lavina V. Sequeira

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Achieving a sense of identity includes not only the ability to know and understand oneself as an individual, but recognizing one's particular place in society. Adolescents of Asian Indian descent carry the burden of straddling two different cultures, two different worlds; often switching between the two in order to know and understand oneself, and be known and understood. While their social location suggests a middle class status and privilege, their appearance signifies a racial ethnic identity. The conflict therefore lies in the acceptance of dual cultural identities and sense of self, and how the same is negotiated through their everyday …