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Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Curriculum and Social Inquiry

The Dean’S Racial Justice Curriculum Challenge, S Civjan, Erin Baker, Samantha Wojda, Promise Mchenga, Nick Tooker, Esha Uddin, Hannah Wharton, Sophia Chang, Lia Ciemny, Jacqueline Thornton, Wayne Burleson, Paula Rees Jan 2022

The Dean’S Racial Justice Curriculum Challenge, S Civjan, Erin Baker, Samantha Wojda, Promise Mchenga, Nick Tooker, Esha Uddin, Hannah Wharton, Sophia Chang, Lia Ciemny, Jacqueline Thornton, Wayne Burleson, Paula Rees

Publications

This Work in Progress paper will present the College of Engineering Dean’s Racial Justice Curriculum Challenge. This challenge tasks all faculty in the college to use their engineering problem-solving skills to develop creative ways to incorporate issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and racial justice in every class we teach. The challenge was inspired by our students, who requested a greater connection between the technical content of classes and real world issues, in particular the role engineers play in either fostering inclusive solutions or contributing to the propagation of inequities. The intent is to engage faculty in the development of new …


Agential Schooling: Posthumanism, Ypar, And Spooky Entanglements, Thomas Albright Jun 2021

Agential Schooling: Posthumanism, Ypar, And Spooky Entanglements, Thomas Albright

Doctoral Dissertations

This yearlong ethnographic project, building upon three years of work within an Ethnic Studies program, examined schooling through a posthumanist lens to better understand the intra-actions between humans, nonhumans, and discourses in a public high school along with an afterschool youth participatory action research program in Western Massachusetts. Intra-action here refers to the way that the bodies are co-constitutive. A posthuman framing of schooling, what I label agential schooling, demonstrates how schooling is protean, and shifts as we seek to understand and challenge it. To shed light on this issue of examining agential schooling, and YPAR as a possible intervention …


Critical Cultural Perspectives On Teaching Arabic As A Foreign Language (Tafl): A Critical Ethnographic Investigation Of A Us College-Level Course, Shaimaa Moustafa Sep 2020

Critical Cultural Perspectives On Teaching Arabic As A Foreign Language (Tafl): A Critical Ethnographic Investigation Of A Us College-Level Course, Shaimaa Moustafa

Doctoral Dissertations

A gap in the critical cultural research paradigm in foreign language teaching (FLT) and teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL) at the college level in the U.S. context subsists. FLT and TAFL have been characterized by the prevalence of the communicative and proficiency-based pedagogies and their concomitant research frameworks. This prevalence is tied to the growing neoliberal and terror rhetoric in recent years (Kramsch, 2005; Bernstein et al., 2015). In the face of the latter, a need for critical cultural frameworks of teaching and research became plausible to deconstruct the different clichés and biases in the context of Arabic …


An Examined Life Of A Language Teacher Of Chinese: An Autoethnographic Investigation Into Agency, Ying Zhang Oct 2019

An Examined Life Of A Language Teacher Of Chinese: An Autoethnographic Investigation Into Agency, Ying Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

There is a paucity of research about and done by L2 Chinese educators regarding the theoretical construct of agency. It is also noted that the qualitative inquiry is marginalized in L2 Chinese research field, let alone the narrative study of the agency of experienced by L2 Chinese-teachers. In this dissertation research, I aim at filling in the gap by conducting a longitudinal autoethnography which captures over a decade (1997-2017) of my personal and professional development with an agency perspective. The highly personalized autoethnographic accounts open up my personal and professional life as an experienced, college-level, transnational, early 40’s female native …


Using Strategic Discourse For Building Understanding In Elementary Mathematics: What Do Teachers And Students Think?, Mary Coakley Oct 2018

Using Strategic Discourse For Building Understanding In Elementary Mathematics: What Do Teachers And Students Think?, Mary Coakley

Doctoral Dissertations

The mathematics reform movement has not had a significant or lasting impact on the practice of teachers and learning of students throughout the country (Boylan, 2010, Kazemi & Stipek, 2001). Students are not developing the types of skills critical thinking skills needed to solve problems in mathematics. Research suggests a need for structural changes that include providing opportunities for students to develop more autonomy and authority in the mathematics classroom (Cuban, 2013). To meet these challenges, teachers and students must make significant changes to implement instruction that fulfills this demand. This expectation has left teachers struggling to determine essential changes …


Critical Language Awareness In An Ell Urban Language Classroom: Transforming A Latina Teacher’S Language Ideology, Yvonne V. Fariño Nov 2017

Critical Language Awareness In An Ell Urban Language Classroom: Transforming A Latina Teacher’S Language Ideology, Yvonne V. Fariño

Doctoral Dissertations

How can language be re-conceptualized as a tool and resource in contested pedagogies? Vygotsky theory of the mind (1978, 1986, 1998) and Engeström Activity Theory (1987, 1992) document how learning and development are situated within sociocultural contexts (Scribner & Cole, 1981; Tharp & Gillmore, 1988). Vygotsky theory of the mind (1978) central tenet is “understanding everyday activities and of cognitive processes” (Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004: 467), or the process of appropriation itself, as it happens in everyday practices without isolating it from social context or human agency. Even though the goal of activity theory claims to be multi- voiced …


Speaking Back To Structure: Critical Multimodal Media Literacy & The Politics Of School Reform, Kate Way Aug 2014

Speaking Back To Structure: Critical Multimodal Media Literacy & The Politics Of School Reform, Kate Way

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the development of critical multimodal and media literacy skills in high school aged students against the backdrop of current state and national education policy. Following the progress of students in a semester-long writing course that focuses on critical multimodal and media literacy, the study examines how critical literacy skills develop within different modes and mediums – particularly those enabled by new media and digital technologies – and considers the implications of critical multimodal and media literacy skills for student engagement, agency, and achievement. The study further analyzes the impact at the institutional level of educational reforms incentivized …


Recognizing Culture In Experiential Education: An Analysis And Framework For Practitioners, Valerie J. Kurka Jan 2012

Recognizing Culture In Experiential Education: An Analysis And Framework For Practitioners, Valerie J. Kurka

Master's Capstone Projects

Experiential education is an intentional educational process that relies on experiential learning theory. This paper categorizes common features of experiential education and analyzes them with a cultural framework. Common features of experiential education include individual development, student-centered teaching, individual challenge and learning, challenge-by-choice, “emotional safety”, and reflection/processing activities. The features of experiential education that I have analyzed have basic cultural assumptions of high individuality, low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, high achievement, emphasis on internal control, and possible interaction with ascriptive dispositions and masculine characteristics. These assumptions may have implications for practitioners practicing cross-culturally. In an increasingly global world and …


Theatre Of The Oppressed A Manual For Educators, Gopal Midha Jan 2010

Theatre Of The Oppressed A Manual For Educators, Gopal Midha

Master's Capstone Projects

Promoting social equity and justice, I think, are not just important but essential qualities in a good educator. My experience as a graduate student at University of Massachusetts helped me understand and practice different ways in which this could be done. For instance, I learnt how I could promote social justice through changes in curriculum, co-operative learning, inter-group dialogues or multicultural education. However, my search was for a method that did not require literacy as a pre-requisite and that went beyond mere conversations about social justice. One of the key elements of the power structures which lead to oppression, I …


Malawi Teachers' Knowledge Of And Attitudes Towards Standardized Tests, Leah Kaira Jan 2002

Malawi Teachers' Knowledge Of And Attitudes Towards Standardized Tests, Leah Kaira

Master's Capstone Projects

Standardized tests play a great role in education. In Malawi, results of these tests are used to make: critical decisions about individuals, hence the need for students to be well prepared. Students' performance can be influenced by their teachers' attitude toward and knowledge of standardized tests. This survey was designed to establish Malawian teachers· knowledge of standardized tests and their attitude towards these tests. While the teachers displayed positive attitudes, it was found that they would benefit from more knowledge about standardized tests.


Evaluating Attainment Of Global Education Goals, Silva Kurtisa Jan 2001

Evaluating Attainment Of Global Education Goals, Silva Kurtisa

Master's Capstone Projects

Movement that might be labeled "global education" has been existent in the United States for about 30 years. Global education content has been substantially expanding during evolution of the term. It may be drawn from all social sciences subjects but should not be limited to them. Recognizing that global education cannot be defined in terms of discipline, educators may infuse a global perspective in all subjects. A number of learning activities, resources, and teaching methodologies that contribute to a truly global curriculum have also been emerging and are described here. However, various descriptions and vague definitions of global education have …


Landscaping The Learning Environment To Create A Home For The Complex Mind, Jan Visser Jan 2001

Landscaping The Learning Environment To Create A Home For The Complex Mind, Jan Visser

Participatory Research & Practice

I am going to use the opportunity presented by the 2001 David Kinsey lecture to bring together some ideas expressed in m recent work and to reflect on my decades-long experience in creating the conditions for the development of learning in an international context. That experience, and my reflections on it, has led me to recognize that learning is an immensely more complex phenomenon than most of our current practice to promote and facilitate it would have us believe. Consequently, I have come to the conclusion that the complex human mind is poorly at home in much of the environment …


Kinsey Dialogue Series #2: Participatory Research And Action: Flower, Weed, Or Genetically Modified Monster?, Eileen Kane Jan 2000

Kinsey Dialogue Series #2: Participatory Research And Action: Flower, Weed, Or Genetically Modified Monster?, Eileen Kane

Participatory Research & Practice

Over the last fifteen years I have been using participatory research in many areas, and especially to look at problems and opportunities for girls' education in developing countries. In this paper, I want to share some ideas about what I think needs to happen if participatory approaches are to grow and flourish in the future. The questions I am asking are, "what is participatory research? is it a sunflower, getting stronger as it pushes toward enlightenment? Is it kudzu, omnipresent and sometimes out of place? Is it a rootless creation, a carbuncle grafted on to the conventional trunk of research? …


Tractatus Pedagogico Peripateticus (The Walk Of Future Learning), Daniel James Macneil Jan 1999

Tractatus Pedagogico Peripateticus (The Walk Of Future Learning), Daniel James Macneil

Master's Capstone Projects

Our understanding of human learning has been greatly improved by recent research findings from the fields of cognitive science, neurobiology, organizational studies, anthropology, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology. Despite all that is known, however, the majority of formal schools in the world operate much as they did 50 years ago. The pedagogy and the structure of the educational experience still reflect industrial age assumptions that are increasingly anachronistic in the modern knowledge production economy and in the post-modern cultural arena. Given the paucity of examples, it is difficult to visualize the characteristics of a future learning society - a society that …


''A Tree Bears Many Fruit'' Undergraduate Service Learning­ A Redefinition, Shekhar K. Regmi Jan 1998

''A Tree Bears Many Fruit'' Undergraduate Service Learning­ A Redefinition, Shekhar K. Regmi

Master's Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.


"From Snails To Alpha Males", A. Michael Marzolla Jan 1996

"From Snails To Alpha Males", A. Michael Marzolla

Master's Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.


Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach, Patricia Maguire Jan 1987

Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach, Patricia Maguire

Participatory Research & Practice

Doing Participatory Research does not begin with a pretentious clarion call to action but with a personal narrative enclosing the sharp edge of her critique of male chauvinism in participatory research. As graduate students, we often see the inconsistencies in the theories and practices of the current generation of respected scholars and activists, but we rarely find the courage to own these criticisms fully. In Pat's case, she was astonished that the great "men" of participatory research could simply ignore women's voices while claiming universalist and humane values and liberationalist practices. She simply saw with a clear feminist eye that …