Digital Commons Network^™

Challenging Whiteness In Higher Education Classrooms: Context, Content, And Classroom Dynamics, Denise Woodall

The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology

Abstract

The following exploratory research is an examination of professor experiences with teaching on the topic of white privilege. Drawing from critical race pedagogical theory and real classroom experiences, the various solutions professors found to be useful are reported. Data were compiled from a sample of published literature on challenging whiteness and in-depth interviews from four professors at Southern colleges who have written on this topic. The results of this research illuminate some of the various classroom dynamics, course design ideas, teaching techniques, theoretical utilities, and future professional directions for challenging white privilege. Although the scope of this study is …

Queer Pedagogical Desire: A Study Guide, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This essay explores the queer pedagogical desires that attended my writing of the Study Guide for the documentary film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard, 2012). The analysis takes up Robyn Wiegman’s central question in Object Lessons, “What is it we expect our relationship to our objects of study to do?”, which is of particular importance to the discipline of queer studies insofar as the field is oriented around the desire to meld social justice with critical pedagogy. The queer professor’s desire in the case of the Study Guide-as-object was to create a text that …

Technology And Pedagogy: The Future Of Less Commonly Taught Languages, Meredith Kersley Coy, Dr. Michael Bush

Journal of Undergraduate Research

One of the goals of the BYU Center for Language Studies is to improve the basic Swahili course in order to support the African studies minor. An initial concern in teaching such less commonly taught languages is the lack of qualified teachers. In many cases technology is the solution to this problem. Creating on-line lesson materials that are pedagogically sound facilitates instruction in two ways. First, teachers do not have to be as strictly qualified because much of the burden is shifted to lesson plans that are already completed and available on-line. Second, students receive authentic language exposure and instruction …

The Literacies Of Literary Texts: Rhetorical Bridges Between English Studies Disciplines And First-Year Writers, Genesea Carter

English Language and Literature ETDs

The Literacies of Literary Texts: Rhetorical Bridges Between English Studies Disciplines and First-Year Writers seeks to blend rhetoric, composition, and literary discourses to illustrate how the subfields may engage in interdisciplinary collaboration and conversation. These conversations are important. For English studies to remain relevant in an increasingly business-minded model of higher education, departments must reassess their approaches and methods. As one way to reimagine English studies, I advocate for English studies return to rhetoric. In an increasingly complex world, Departments of English can become indispensible by using rhetoric to prepare their students for to rhetorically adapt to diverse discourse communities. …

Can The Differentiated Math Classroom Be A Reality?, Carl Jeff Morris

Mathematics Graduate Theses

Imagine a math classroom that looked more like a Google workplace where collaboration, teamwork, and innovation are the centerpieces. Instead of just students sitting in rows passively learning about the nature of mathematics, picture a classroom of students in small circle discussing mathematics. This could range from groups working together on a problem solving strategy for a newly learned concept, students helping students using technology as an aid, another small group receiving intervention from the teacher, or individual students making or viewing instructional math videos. All of this according to research focused on classroom differentiation; specifically in middle school and …

The Best Practices For Teaching Writing To Postsecondary Students With Acquired Brain Injuries, Julianne Candio Sekel

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Because the writing abilities of postsecondary students with acquired brain injuries (ABI) are often determined by the student’s age when the injury was acquired, the severity of the injury, the amount of time that has passed since the injury, and the quality of the student’s writing education before the injury, it is impossible to generalize the best strategies to assist students with ABI in writing. However, through a review of existing literature on teaching writing to students with ABI, the relationship between oral and written discourse, expressive writing, educational intervention, and assistive technologies, this study presents a list of recommendations …

A Hermeneutic Composition Pedagogy: The Student As Self, Citizen, And Writer In Dewey, Arendt, And Ricoeur, Gregory Haley

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation is primarily concerned with describing a hermeneutic theory of composition pedagogy for the purpose of developing socially engaged, self-reflective, and critically conscious citizens of a democracy. This work examines the intersection of higher education and civic responsibility that has been the foundational motive of academics since the first schools were opened by Isocrates and Plato. The question now, as it has been since the days of Plato, is how to educate new citizens to become informed, engaged critics of their environments for the purpose of maintaining a healthy self governance and preserving the democratic ideals of equality, justice, …

Development Of A New Experiment Demonstrating Categorical Perception, Kelsey Montzka

Student Research Initiative

In this project, we have created an online portal containing a multi-faceted demonstration of categorical perception. We utilized the 2I2AFC (two-interval, two alternative forced choice) stimulus presentation method which should elicit more categorical results from students, helping to better demonstrate the phenomenon (Gerrits & Schouten, 2004), and provided different acoustic cues illustrating CP. In addition to illustrations of CP for F2 formant transition, the new online portal is used to illustrate voice onset timing (VOT; the cue that distinguishes between the sounds [b] and [p]), as well as how contextual factors and participants’ linguistic backgrounds affect CP. The contextual factors …

Technology And 21st Century Literacy In A Time Of Accountability, Jennifer Wall

Emerging Learning Design Conference

Ignite

The Application Of Second Language Acquisition Theory To New Testament Greek Pedagogy, Josiah P. Wegner

Senior Honors Theses

The effect of outdated NT Greek pedagogy has left many seminary students ill-equipped to properly exegete using the NT Greek language. Many seminary students graduate with a firm knowledge of syntactic rules, but they are still unable to read the NT text without having to constantly consult a Greek grammar and dictionary. Even though the current style of teaching has been used for many years, research in second language acquisition has exposed that the traditional translation method has many flaws. One of these researchers, Stephen Krashen, has identified that the key to language competence is not learning vocabulary and grammar …

Inviting Twenty-First Century Students To The Eighteenth-Century Party, Kathryn Strong Hansen

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article describes a classroom activity that increases students’ connection to literary characters, and by extension, texts. The activity, constructed as a party attended by literary characters, tasks students with taking on the point of view of one character in an assigned novel. This can encourage a student to see the viewpoint of a character that differs from him or her in gender, social status, or any other category of difference. In heightening students’ relationship to eighteenth-century characters, I argue, instructors can bring the eighteenth century closer to contemporary students as well as increase students’ sensitivity to viewpoints that differ …

Integrated Or Isolated Experiences? Considering The Role Of Service-Learning In The Spanish Language Curriculum, Gabriel Ignacio Barreneche, Héctor Ramos-Flores

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Teacher-Student Writing Conference Reimaged: Entangled Becoming-Writingconferencing, Donna Kalmbach Phillips, Mindy Legard Larson

Faculty Publications

This analysis is experimental: we attempt to read data with the work of Karen Barad and in doing so ‘see’ teacher-student writing conferences (a common pedagogy of US elementary school writing) as intra-activity. Data were gathered during teacher-student writing conferences in a grade five US classroom over a six week period. One conference between a researcher and a male Latino student, a Student of Labels, is diffracted. Reading and writing and thinking with Barad disrupts our habitual ways of privileging language as representational. Rather, we consider the material-discursive practices of schooling that produce what comes to matter, leading …

The United Colours Of Etiquette: Interculturally In The Higher Education Classroom, Sue Norton, Marty Meinardi

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Pedagogy And Identity In "The Night Lessons" Of Finnegans Wake, Zachary Paul Smola

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores chapter II.ii of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939)—commonly called "The Night Lessons"—and its peculiar use of the conventions of the textbook as a form. In the midst of the Wake's abstraction, Joyce uses the textbook to undertake a rigorous exploration of epistemology and education. By looking at the specific expectations of and ambitions for textbooks in 19th century Irish national schools, this thesis aims to provide a more specific historical context for what textbooks might mean as they appear in Finnegans Wake. As instruments of cultural conditioning, Irish textbooks were fraught with tension arising from their investment …

Engaging Students In The Classroom: How Can I Know What I Think Until I See What I Draw?, Paul Donnelly, John Hogan

Articles

Recognising that the world into which students emerge upon graduation is characterised by constant change, we embrace a critical pedagogy that can be implemented in the classroom through the use of freehand drawing. Freehand drawing is a technique that can stimulate a critical stance, as visual representations allow us to comprehend the world differently, while permitting us see how others understand the world. First year students, in their first lecture, were asked to draw their interpretations of Irish politics and to explain in writing what they had drawn. The students were then placed in groups and asked to note what …

Using A Corpus-Based Approach To Russian As A Foreign Language Materials Development, Edie Furniss

Russian Language Journal

The increase in availability and sophistication of corpora in recent years has facilitated the application of usage-based approaches to language pedagogy. Although the use of corpus data is certainly not without its difficulties, it offers great pedagogical promise. Corpora, consisting of natural language culled from a multitude of sources and genres, provide valuable information about language in use. While a corpus can provide us with contextualized linguistic data and statistics on the behavior of lexicon (with respect to frequency and collocation), a connection needs to be forged between the data and their practical use. Two main areas ripe for the …

Literacy Crisis, Technology, And The Radical Reversal Of Power, Erin Michelle Cromer

Theses and Dissertations

As new media is changing the way individuals communicate, efforts have already been made within universities to, once again, construct new literacy standards in the digital age, producing the appearance of a literacy crisis. I argue that rather than producing another literacy crisis, the fundamental reversal of the power structure concerning who dominates standard literacy places greater expectations on composition scholars and practitioners--rather than students--ultimately providing the conditions of possibility for using power productively to imagine a new pedagogy of rhetorical dexterity that reverses the role of expectations from standards to invention. Such a pedagogy offers rhetoric and composition a …

Characteristics Of Contemporary U.S. Progressive Middle Schools, Jan Ware Russell

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Progressive education has a long history within the American K-12 education system dating back to the late 1800s. During this period, two very distinct ideologies represented progressive education: 1) administrative progressives supporting standardization as a means of efficiency and 2) pedagogical progressives supporting child-centered learning based upon a well-rounded education. This study looks at 82 contemporary pedagogical progressive schools to identify common characteristics. Child-centered learning, community integration, and democratic decision-making were the three overarching philosophies covered in this study. Data was collected through an online survey of school leaders. The majority of research surrounding progressive education is qualitative and focuses …

Voices From The Coolest Corner Of Hell: A Content Analysis Of Slave Narratives In The Study Of Creolization In The Education Of 19th Century African American Slaves, Gina M. Rizzuto

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The general argument made by Southern historian, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips in 1918, is that the plantation functioned as a type of school for the slave. Similarly, in 1976, Anthony Gerald Albanese examined the plantation system as an institution that conditioned the behaviors of both slaves and slave owners. I maintain that the plantation system was not only an educative agency that conditioned behaviors, but also a conduit for the creolization process. The focus of this study is creolization in the education of African American slaves in the nineteenth century. This is a mixed methods content analysis of African American slave …

Culture, Constructivism, And Media: Designing A Module On Carlos Slim, Roberto Rey Agudo

Global Business Languages

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helú has been a fixture on Forbes’s list of billionaires since 1991, and for the past three years, he has topped the magazine’s list of the world’s richest men. Although he is exceptionally well-known in his native Mexico, the majority of American college students have never heard of Carlos Slim. This article presents a curricular module built around this charismatic and controversial figure. The module requires students to navigate Internet-supported news media in the target language (Spanish), and engages them in independent, small-group, and larger, teacher-led activities designed to foster critical and comparative skills in …

Show Me The Semiosis: Grounding Post Structural Theory In Physiological Experience, Michael T. Arrigo

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Most of my art students experience a very down to earth epistemological relationship to the world. There is what there is. Middle America is a land of dualisms: matter and spirit, mind and body, good and evil. In this uncluttered black and white world, post-structural theory seemingly has little to offer but a range of unnecessary and unattractive grays. This presentation describes how I overcome my students’ resistance to intellectualizing perception and art making. I use a physiological perspective that grounds students’ investigation of art and meaning in an investigation of themselves, their bodies, their perceptual responses, emotional reactions and …

Ideological Tensions, Pedagogical Gaps : Multilingual Engineering Scholars' Response To Language Variation In Academic Writing., Ghanashyam Sharma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how nonnative English speaking (NNES) faculty and students in engineering respond to language variation and how that response influences their teaching and learning of academic writing. Using grounded theory approach to analyzing data gathered from multiple rounds of interview, writing samples, informal discussions, and class observation among ten participants, the study draws on and responds to two related bodies of scholarship in composition studies and writing in the disciplines (WID). Contrary to claims in much of current scholarship on engineering writing, the findings of this study show that in spite of subscribing to views about language and …

Inventing Laughter: Comedic Writing Practices And The Limits Of Pedagogical Power, Daniel Liddle

All Theses

This thesis conducts an examination of the writing methods used by stand-up comedians using the lens of the rhetorical canon of invention. The study applies the theories of Thomas Rickert, Diane Davis, Ann Berthoff, and Janice Lauer in order to define the relationship between humor and epistemology, and to consider how this comedic-epistemic perspective can inform pedagogical practices in the composition classroom. This study relies mainly on the rhetorical analysis of 'How To' books on writing comedy, the methodologies of schools of comedy, as well as biographies by/about comedians in order to discuss the relationship between comedians and their 'material.' …

Visual Form And A Typology Of Purpose: A Peircean-Based Approach To Visual Information Design Pedagogy, Christina Laraine Perkins Rosenquist

Theses and Dissertations

Visual information design is a vital part of modern communication. Currently discussion is occurring in most disciplines to determine more effective ways to incorporate visual information design into all their communication, including website and document design. These discussions typically focus on elements of traditional graphic design that tell the student what is "good" graphic design; however, traditional graphic design depends on trial and error, luck, and best practices, with only rare attempts to construct general principles. Selection of visual elements is usually based on designer preference rather than any consistent conceptual framework or empirical support for design decisions. Another approach …

Political Emotions: Toward A Fresh Perspective On Collective Emotion In Composition Work, Ingrid Jonna Gilfus

Writing Program – Dissertations

This dissertation examines theories of emotion in politically contentious discourse in order to better understand the implications for teachers and students in composition classrooms where critical pedagogical practices lead to contentious political work. I suggest that partly as a result of the social and political turn in composition studies, the expectation for disrupting the normative political values and beliefs of students has become part of the curriculum in many writing classrooms. Yet teachers and students charged with such learning goals may be largely unaware of and unprepared for the role emotion might play in this teaching and learning situation. I …

Food For Thought: Sustainability, Community-Engaged Teaching And Research, And Critical Food Literacy, Dianna Winslow

Writing Program – Dissertations

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Marion Nestle's Food Politics. Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. The films Food, Inc. and The Future of Food. Debates over the industrialized food and farming system currently circulating in nonfiction books, documentaries, and public forums have immediacy for college students--and for anyone who eats. Food for Thought: Sustainability, Community-Engaged Teaching and Critical Food Literacy argues that fostering the development of critical food literacy is necessary for college students to have a voice in current and future public conversations on food politics and environmental sustainability, and the social …

Pedagogy Of Promise: The Eschatological Task Of Christian Education, Jason Lief

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Pedagogical And Cultural Phenomena Of On-Demand Writing Instruction, Deborah L. Bell

Dissertations

In 1985, 66 school districts filed a suit against the Kentucky Department of Education accusing the system of inequitable spending practices. In 1990, the Supreme Court declared the entire educational program unconstitutional, resulting in the Kentucky Education Reform Act or KERA. This new reform movement brought a plethora of changes to school districts across the state including its mode of assessment. KERA introduced new avenues of measuring student progress using writing as the main vehicle to assess content and communication skills. Unfortunately, the majority of Kentucky's high schools showed little improvement in this tested area with only 34% of high …

Principles Of Learner Autonomy In Action: Effects And Perceptions In A College-Level Foreign Language Class, Heiko Everwien Ter Haseborg

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study was designed to investigate how college learners of a foreign language perceived learner autonomy, its effects on student motivation, and its benefits to different parts of language learning. It utilized a mixed-methods design. Participants were 90 undergraduate students in German courses of different levels. During the course of instruction, principles of learner autonomy were implemented in the instruction. Qualitative as well as quantitative data were collected in the form of a self-assessment survey, learning journals, reflective statements, and an autonomous learning survey. The analysis was focused on (1) how students perceived the ability to make autonomous learning choices, …