Digital Commons Network^™

‘Image’ / ‘I’ / ‘Nation’: A Cultural Mash-Up, Matthew Sutherlin, Amy Counts

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The term Un(precedent)ED conjures ‘images’ that have never been seen before in education. Too often in the classroom we focus on the classification of objects and practices. The metaphysical question “what is?” is important only in that it must be continually revisited. Through continual re-visitation, the question becomes “what can it be?” Unfortunately, the process of becoming through imagination is a practice that is often relegated to childish whimsy. Un(precedent)ED practice requires the (re)imaging of the current apparatus of education. Precedent is a standard or model that comes before a particular event or moment; components, such as sound, written text, …

Russian Heritage Language Speakers In The U.S.: A Profile, Olga Kagan

Russian Language Journal

Brecht and Ingold (2002) advocate systematic efforts to develop heritage language (HL) pedagogy to remedy U.S. language deficits: “…because of [heritage language learners’(HLLs’)] existing language and cultural knowledge, they may require substantially less instructional time than other learners to develop these skills. This is especially true for speakers of the less commonly taught languages” (p. 1).

Teaching English Language Learner Students In Us Mainstream Schools: Intersections Of Language, Pedagogy, And Power, Katya A. Karathanos

Faculty Publications

This study explored to what extent two groups of mainstream teachers in the midwestern region of the USA with differing degrees of English Language Learner (ELL) specific universitypreparation reportedly engaged in practises that incorporated the native languages (L1) of ELL students in instruction. The study further examined specific strategies reported by mainstream teachers in promoting L1 use in instruction as well as challenges identified in implementing this practise. The study utilized a mixed-method design that included analyses of survey data from a quantitative study (n=227) and qualitative analyses of teacher discourse from course documents and open-ended survey questions. Findings indicated …

The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years Of Teaching & Scholarship, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

Professor Beazley joins a panel of the elite of legal writing professors at Mercer University, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Legal Writing Institute in this transcript of the proceedings.

Dynamic Dialogue: A Multi-Perspective Approach Towards Cultural Competence, Daria C. Crawley, Rex L. Crawley

Organization Management Journal

Interculturalism and race relations are becoming more complex as America becomes more diverse. Recent attention focused on universities’ admissions programs aimed at diversifying the student body only convey a segment of campus efforts addressing diversity. Curriculum development initiatives speak to diversity concerns through course topics centered on issues such as race and gender by stimulating conversations among students and the instructor. This article presents two models for integrating dynamic dialogues/conversations about race across academic curricula. These perspectives shed insight into the challenges of communicating in an intercultural environment. One model highlights attempts at integrating dynamic dialogue programmatically and the other …

The Influence Of Departmental Affiliation And Pedagogical Training On Faculty Adoption Of Innovative Pedagogical Methods In Georgia Technical Colleges, Linda G. Grisham

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This quantitative study used factorial design and survey research to examine the influence of departmental affiliation and pedagogical training on full-time faculty members’ (n = 2193) working in the Technical College System of Georgia. The tool for data collections was a web-survey instrument, modified with permission from the Faculty Survey on Teaching, Learning and Assessment” (Matney, 2001).

Two independent variables (departmental affiliation and level of pedagogical training in active learning practices) and three dependent variables (participation in the scholarship of teaching and learning, introduction of new teaching techniques, and active learning practices) were measured by responses on a 5-point Likert-scale. …

A Pedagogy Of Process: Using Arts Based Research With Community Development Co-Researchers To Explore Campus Community Dialogue, Brian Hand

Theses

This thesis will outline how I employed an arts informed participatory research process with four women members of the Southend family resource centre in Wexford town. The primary context for this research was the introduction of a module in community based learning on the BA (hons) in Art at the Wexford Campus of I.T. Carlow combined with a desire to participate more actively in the community sector outside the campus. The choice of an arts based methodology was to capture knowledge in a multifaceted way, to give depth to the many meanings of individual experiences and finally to suggest a …

One Season In An Other’S: Examining Teacher Preparation In Cultural Relevance Literacy Through Intentional And Focused Teaching Case Use, Coleen E. Sams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teacher educators need to develop better teaching methods in order to, ultimately, serve future students in classrooms that are increasing in diversity. It is vital that education majors do more than hear and read about social justice issues facing their prospective students; for them to both understand it and retain it, they need deeper interaction with the issues and alternative strategies for resolving them. This model for using teaching cases may enable teacher educators to demonstrate the relevance of their coursework to their midlevel education students, ultimately enhancing learning gains.

Of equal importance to their professional development, prospective teachers need …

Beyond Student-Centered And Teacher-Centered Pedagogy: Teaching And Learning As Guided Participation, Michael F. Mascolo

Pedagogy and the Human Sciences

In recent decades, student centered pedagogy has provided serious challenges to traditional “lecture-and-test” modes of education in colleges and universities. Advocates of student-centered pedagogy generally proceed from the constructivist position that maintains that learners construct their understandings through their actions and experiences on the world. Student-centered thinking has spawned a burgeoning interest in the use of a variety of different active learning methods in and out of the classroom. These include collaborative learning, experiential learning, problem-based learning, and a variety of other pedagogical methods. However, the theory and practice of student-centered pedagogy is not without its problems. “Student-centered” learning is …

The Status Of Special Programming For Minority Youth And Children With Special Needs : A Report On The Perceptions Of Children's Museum Education Directors, Deborah A. Chapin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Dissertation Title: The Status of Special Programming for Minority Youth and Children with Special Needs: A Report on the Perceptions of Children's Museum Education Directors

The Discussion Doesn't End Here: The Online Discussion Board As A Reflective Writing Forum, James Hunter, Mary Jeannot

TESOL Faculty Scholarship

How do you envisage the use of online discussion boards in your own classes if you haven’t used them before? If you have, to what extent have they supported students’ construction of private and public identities, and power relations among them and with the teacher?

The Willa Cather Archive In The Classroom, Andrew Jewell

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

This essay discusses many of the opportunities for teachers I believe are present in the Willa Cather Archive (http://cather.unl.edu), particularly in the way the Archive makes new materials available or older materials available in a new way. Additionally, this essay suggests some of the implications of the Archive’s digital presentation of resources. However, the place of digital scholarship in academic life is still evolving, and students and teachers are just getting accustomed to using the form. Given this circumstance, many of my thoughts are inconclusive, observations based upon preliminary understandings into how this resource affects our classrooms. I avoid confident …

An Investigation Of The Technological, Pedagogical And Content Knowledge Framework In Successful Chinese Language Classrooms, Su-Ling Hsueh

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study investigates whether technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPCK) is balanced and integrated in Chinese language classrooms. Three expert Chinese teachers in technology-enhanced classrooms, as well as their students, were observed and studied. Four and a half months of data were collected in the form of classroom observations, interviews, reflective journals, and document analysis. Four basic findings were derived from the study. First, the TPCK framework reflected an observable instructional process for communication between teachers and students. However, teachers did not knowingly integrate technology, pedagogy and content in technology-enhanced classrooms. Second, content was the focal point during …

Adolescent Literature And Second Life: Teaching Young Adult Texts In The Digital World, Laura Nicosia

Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Breaking Into The Tutor's Toolbox : An Investigation Into Strategies Used In Writing Center Tutorials., Kate Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present the results of research conducted in the University Writing Center at the University of Louisville during the fall of 2006 and serves as an example of an empirical study blending qualitative and quantitative methods. It highlights and critiques the strategies tutors use to address students' concerns about their writing during writing tutorials by addressing two research questions: (1) What strategies do tutors employ during tutorials to address higher-order concerns? And, what strategies do tutors employ during tutorials to address later-order concerns? (2) How are these strategies perceived by participants in tutorials? The data revealed that …

Citation Analysis Of Upper-Level Student Writing At Trinity University: Final Report, Benjamin R. Harris

Library Faculty Research

During the 2006-07 academic terms, a citation analysis of third- and fourth-year student writing was conducted at Trinity University's Elizabeth Huth Coates Library. This study was designed to achieve the following objectives:

• To improve the content focus and quality of library instruction at the Coates Library.
• To allow Trinity librarians to better support the goals and objectives of the university's honor code.
• To offer useful information about student research and writing to interested Trinity faculty members.
• To offer suggestions for teaching research and writing strategies to upper level students

During the course of the research, additional implications of value to …

Toward A Transformative Teaching Practice: Criticity, Pedagogy And Praxis, Arturo Rodriguez

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

One method to teach a multicultural class: a teacher walks in to a room calls the class to order, steps to the lectern and begins to deliver knowledge. Socially acquired information is disseminated; that gained over years of study and experience. Another view: I walk into a class where my students are sitting quietly at their desks pen and paper at the ready and quietly ask: shall we form a circle? The students agree and after having done so I follow up with a generative (Freire, 1970): what are your current understandings of Diversity? In following the work of Paulo …

Dialectic, Perspective, And Drama, Ethan Mckay Sproat

Theses and Dissertations

This project is by and large a project of elucidation: it may add something to studies of Kenneth Burke, but I doubt it adds much to Kenneth Burke's studies. This thesis begins and ends with analyses of Burke's famous motto Ad Bellum Purificandum (or Toward the Purification of War). The Introduction focuses on "war" while the Conclusion focuses on "purification." In short, purified war is a dialectical activity which actively and perpetually pits divergent perspectives against each other. Such an activity keeps the conflictual nature of divergent perspectives in verbal and symbolic arenas rather than physical ones. Burke owes this …

Net/Work: Composing The Posthuman Self, Julia L. Mason

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The overall question this dissertation asks is: what does it mean to teach posthumans? To answer this question, this dissertation turns toward scholarship on the body in order to understand the virtual and material presence that students develop, it looks to online video gaming communities as alternative classrooms providing effective models of learning, and it investigates the circulation of service learning pedagogies within academic institutions as a marker of the persistence of humanistic values within the framework of a posthuman work environment.

The American university in general, and the humanities specifically, is struggling to make sense of its place in …

Bridging The Gender Gap In Quantum Physics, Gordon Stecklein

Pomona Senior Theses

Why is it important to study the gender gap in physics? Despite entering the workforce in increasing numbers over the last fifty years, women remain severely underrepresented in science and technology-related careers, particularly in positions of authority. Simultaneously, numerous studies verify that women have the ability to perform as well as – or better than – males in physics, and, when presented in certain lights, as many women as men show an interest in physics. Changes must be made in order to strive for equality and, given the changing demographic of the workforce, increase our country’s diminishing scientific prowess.

101 Ideas For Combining Service & Learning, Florida International University

Service Learning, General

Opportunities within the following areas are discussed: anthropology, accounting, art, biology, business, liberal studies, computers, education, English, environment, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology,

The Pedagogy Of Shakespeare & Company, Catherine Bryne

Theses and Dissertations

The Pedagogy of Shakespeare & Company examines in several ways the principles and practices of actor training at Shakespeare & Company of Lenox, Massachusetts. Chapter 1 is a narrative of my personal experience at the Month-long Intensive in Lenox, elaborating its multiple components. Chapter 2 recounts the genesis of the company and looks at the influences that shaped its identity. Chapter 3 is a more specific attempt to define the pedagogy developed by Tina Packer, Kristin Linklater and the other founders of Shakespeare & Company and to provide some contextual analysis. The remainder of this document explores my own pedagogical …

Identity Politics: Postcolonial Theory And Writing Instruction, Toni P. Francis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I intend to apply postcolonial theory to primary pedagogical and administrative concerns of the writing program administrator. Writing Program Administrators, or WPAs, take their responsibilities seriously, remaining cognizant of both the negative and positive repercussions of the pedagogical decisions that take shape in the scores of composition classrooms they administer. This dissertation intends to infuse the WPA position with the ethos of scholarly praxis by historicizing and contextualizing the field of composition, and by placing the teaching of writing within the historical memory of slavery and colonialism. Sound WPA research is theoretically informed, systematic, principled inquiry that …

Inside The Law School Classroom: Toward A New Legal Realist Pedagogy, Elizabeth Mertz

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years, the legal academy has been experiencing a strong renewed interest in empirical legal research. Referred to by various analysts as a "new legal realism" or as "empirical legal studies," this restored focus on the social sciences in many ways echoes an earlier era of legal realism in American law, with some important differences.' . . .

This Article combines these two themes: empirical research on law and careful examination of legal education. It reports on an empirical study of legal education, which I have been conducting under the auspices of the American Bar Foundation (a research institute …

Engendering Agency: Literacies, Social Action, And Wangari Maathai S Green Belt Movement, Cassandra Marie Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the life and work of Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai, one of the foremost African woman rhetors of our time. Wangari Maathai--founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement (GBM), Member of Parliament, and activist for democracy, sustainable development, and human rights--has cultivated a multidimensional literacy that has allowed her to truly understand and address the problems that post-colonial Kenyans face. Her strong solution-oriented approach has allowed her to develop and refine operation of the GBM, which began simply planting trees, to produce a worldwide organization that works for sustainable development, human rights, and environmental conservation/restoration (among many others) …

Changing The Subject: First-Person Narration In And Out Of The Classroom, Susan Friedman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The effectiveness of first-person narration for self-transformation and social change is indicated by exploring connections between three emergent discourses: illness narratives and memoirs by rape survivors in which the subject speaks from a privileged yet socially marginalized position about life-altering experiences; clinical discourse that elaborates treatment methods for empowering trauma survivors and helping them reconnect with the social world; and scholarly discourse that reflects on the relationship between trauma, self-representation, witnessing, and recovery. Post-Foucauldian theories of life-writing illuminate how the author-subjects of survivor narratives discursively reconstruct their shattered subjectivity in a therapeutic relationship with themselves and their readers. Cognitive and …

Anti-Ethnography?, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Many of the ongoing difficulties teachers face revolve around the 'translation' of disciplinary knowledge—especially critical theory—into pedagogical praxis. It often seems that our teaching lags behind our theoretical knowledge by about two decades, and sometimes we wonder if it will ever catch up. This sense of disjunction has been compounded by the difficulty of teaching postmodern understandings of subjectivity, truth, and epistemology in an increasingly commodified teaching context, where consumers expect to purchase a clear, identifiable, and literally usable product, and where 'knowledge' often means easily digestible and repeatable content rather than analytic skills, critical understandings, or complex world views. …

Democratic Writing Pedagogy And The Southern Nevada Writing Project, Thomas B Smith

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how practicing teachers acted to incorporate a more democratic writing pedagogy in their classrooms after participation in the Southern Nevada Writing Project's Summer Institute. Democracy in this study refers to a critical view of democracy. This research is a multiple case study of five teachers' practice during the first half of the school year following their participation in the Institute. The participants teach in schools of varying grade levels, SES, and achievement. Data sources included classroom observations with follow-up interviews, a final group interview, and artifacts from the Institute. These data were …

Inquiry Into The Writing Pedagogy For Middle School Language Arts, William Love Moore

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This is a narrative inquiry into writing pedagogies of middle school language arts teachers and an administrator. Six teacher participants were interviewed and observed, their lesson plans were analyzed, and their instructional practices and writing philosophies were examined. Overarching research questions were (1) What role does writing pedagogy play in a language arts program? (2) What strategies were used to teach writing? and (3) What types of assessments were utilized? The theoretical framework of my research was based on Dewey's (1897) philosophy of education with roots in hermeneutic phenomenology by van Manen (1990). Methods of inquiry were based on narrative …

Confronting Race In The Composition Classroom, Kay A. Mooy

Rhetoric and Composition PhD papers

My premise is that the resources and opportunities in a society are unequally distributed among individuals according to group membership (race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.). Social institutions systematically reproduce inequalities that favor the dominant group and oppress others. I discuss using feminist pedagogy and contact/conflict zones be used in different ways to free classrooms from the invisible hegemonic theory of whiteness, which underpins all we do in our classrooms. bell hooks says we need to have "transformative" pedagogy. This paper will include methods to transform that pedagogy. No education is politically neutral. I propose decentering Western civilization to recognize …