Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

"We Can't Reclaim What We Don't Understand": Teachers' Perceptions Of Advocacy And Voice In A Rural Institute Of The National Writing Project, James Anthony Anderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines teachers' perceptions of advocacy and voice in a summer institute of the National Writing Project. The Rural Advocacy Institute, a first-time initiative through the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, offered three weeks of professional development centered on rural education and teaching English language arts in rural public schools. The study is a grounded theory study; grounded theory forces the researcher to stay "close to the data," compare data sets, and use reflective writing to identify conceptual categories in the data. Data collection in the study included semi-structured interviews with six K-12 teachers participating in the Institute and twenty-seven …

An Argument For The Great Divorce In The Public School Ninth Grade English Classroom, Taylor Isom

Senior Honors Theses

C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce (1946) can provide a useful supplement for ninth grade English instruction because of its quality as a literary work, the ideas it represents, its commentary on enduring human questions, and its connections to its historical context. At its core, the book reflects on recurring philosophical and religious ideas in a way that simultaneously links to and transcends its time. It also exhibits hallmarks of literary excellence, such as formal consistency and a comprehensive view of its themes. The Great Divorce’s skillful use of literary elements suits it for instruction, adapting form to purpose. …

Though This Be Madness, Yet There Is Method In’T: Using Graphic Shakespeare Texts To Create Meaningful Engagement In The High School Classroom, Eric Kallenborn

All Student Theses

This thesis covers the attempt to successfully motivate and connect with high school students by giving them the option of reading a graphic form of Hamlet instead of the original text. This research was conducted to not only dispel the myth that comics and graphic novels are juvenile and adolescent but to also explain the benefits of such texts to educators and administrators.

For this research, 10^th graders were assigned Hamlet and were allowed to select the graphic text over the traditional text, allowing for student buy-in from the selection. Students also took part in a project that …

The Over-Education Of The Negro: Academic Novels, Higher Education And The Black Intellectual, Archie Lavelle Porter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the academic novel - a literary genre which fictionalizes the lives of students and professors in institutions of higher education. In particular this project focuses on academic novels written by black writers and which address issues in black higher education. This dissertation has two concurrent objectives: 1) to examine the academic novel as a particular genre of literature, and to highlight some specific novels on black American identity within this genre, and 2) to illustrate the pedagogical value of academic fiction. Through the ancient practice of storytelling, academic novels link the travails of the individual student …

Student Engagement And Action In Classroom And Community: Place-Based Education And Social Action For The High-Achieving Student, Rachel M. Jank

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This paper briefly discusses the work done in a college-preparatory, Senior English class to combat the disengagement present in many educational institutions. This disconnect does not allow for learning retention and, therefore, does not allow for students to apply the moment of learning to life outside of the secondary classroom. The work I do is based off of Jessica Singer Early, Bruce Bigelow, Linda Christensen, and many other master teachers who work with the educational designs of Place Consciousness and Social Action within their respective classrooms. The theories of John Dewey and Paulo Freire suggest that a non-traditional style of …

Emerging Themes In Dystopian Literature: The Development Of An Undergraduate Course, Devin Ryan

Honors Theses

Young adult (YA) dystopian literature is a trend that is taking the nation by storm. Since September 11, 2001, the genre has gained a strong backing from academics, authors, and YA readers; after Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008), however, YA dystopian literature has become the forefront of teen reading, especially with the recently adapted film versions of the widely renowned trilogy. In order to keep up with the times, a proposed course—YA Dystopian Literature: A Survey of Modern Book Series—has been created to be taught at Western Michigan University by Dr. Gwen Tarbox in the spring of 2015.

Before …

Teaching The Writing Methods Course: A Multiple Case Study Of Teachers’ Professional Journeys, Teaching Contexts, Theoretical Frames, And Courses, Kristin A. K. Sovis

Dissertations

This study, situated within the fields of English education and writing teacher education, illustrates not only what is happening in writing methods courses but why in its examination of writing methods courses and instructor influences. The writing methods course is identified by English educators and writing teacher educators as “pivotal” in K-12 English teacher preparation, and the purpose of this study is to better understand multiple versions of this course and how teacher influences affect the design and implementation of the course (Grossman, 1990; Smagorinsky and Whiting, 1995; McCann, 2005).

This study builds upon scholarship that explores individual versions of …

Examining The Historical Representation Of Native Americans Within Children’S Literature, Lauren Hunt

2014 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity Documents

In this research, I evaluated the historical representation of Native Americans in children’s literature. The portrayal of Native Americans in children’s literature is important because Native Americans are commonly included within elementary school social studies curriculum. For this reason, teachers should know how the literature they select historically represents Native Americans. This historical representation includes—but is not limited to—their interactions with European explorers, colonists, and eventually Americans. Teachers must be aware that publishers of children’s books are businesses; their job is to sell books. As a result, these companies do not always ensure that the books they sell are historically …

Rhetorical Genre Theory And The Enactment Of Faith In The Composition Classroom, Heather N. Hill

Faculty Integration Papers

In James Berlin’s Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 he argues that “every rhetorical system is based on epistemological assumptions about the nature of reality, the nature of the knower, and the rules governing the discovery and communication of the known” (4). Beginning with the debates between Plato and the sophists and running through the history of rhetoric to the likes of Wayne Booth on one side and William Covino on the other, rhetorical theorists have always been interested in debating the nature of reality, knowledge, morality, ethics, and T/truth. How one defines the status of these, …

Learning To Retell Stories Through Comparative Teaching: Writing And Drawing, Rachel L. Lindle

Theses and Dissertations--Art and Visual Studies

Students who are emergent readers and writers are often difficult to assess, as they are unable to communicate understanding in writing. From my observations, these students communicate ideas best through concrete forms of expression, rather than the abstract formation of letters and writing that is unfamiliar to them. Drawing provides an alternate form of expression from writing. Based on information found in literature review and personal experiences from working with students who are emergent readers and writers, pictures and drawings are a bridge to communicate ideas with these students. This form of expression and communication may be a useful assessment …

Conversing With Longfellow: Democratizing The American Literature Curriculum, Lauren Gatti

Lauren Gatti

Reconsidering Longfellow is the first collection of scholarly essays in several decades devoted entirely to the work and afterlife of the most popular and widely read writer in American literature. The essays, written by a new generation of Longfellow scholars, cover the entire range of Longfellow’s work, from the early poetry to the wildly successful epics of his middle period (Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha) to his Chaucerian collection of stories published after the Civil War, Tales of a Wayside Inn. Separate contributions discuss Longfellow’s financial dealings, his investment in his children, and his interest in the visual arts, as …