Education Commons^™

Culturally And Socially Responsive Teacher Professional Learning At The American Museum Of Natural History, Jessica Correa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project consists of a series of professional learning sessions to support teachers in their implementation of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CR-SE) using the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) as a resource and case study. Through the lens of Historically Responsive Literacy, the series also seeks to reestablish social science as a critical element of natural history for teachers. This series can help teachers see the museum as not only a place to explore life and physical science, but also a place to explore identity, social/emotional development, cultural studies and American History. The project includes resources and directions for …

English Learners In Nyc, Raquel Neris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

English Learners in NYC is a Digital Humanities project that intersects Migration Studies and Foreign Language Learning Studies by presenting a podcast series about the learning experience of international students in English as a Second Language (ESL) programs at English schools in New York City. The project aims to provide visibility to the educational migration in this specific context and to promote a discussion on how international students and educators can reimagine their teaching and learning experience. It also aims to reveal ESL schools' challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they incorporated digital technologies during and after this event. …

Maternal Wellness: Self, Matrescence, Obstetric Violence, And Self-Care, Vanessa V. Vales-Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I engage in a self-study through an examination of my experience of matrescence (i.e., the transition to motherhood). I discuss my praxis in the development of a self-study on maternal wellness as it applies to my well-being as both a researcher and the researched. In Chapter 1, I preface this study by highlighting critical scholars and the bricoleurs who have been foundational in my undertaking of this work on a narrative study on maternal wellness. Using bricolage as part of a research methodological framework that involved key scholarly methodologies of authentic inquiry, emergence and contingence, and narratology, …

American Sign-Language (Asl) For Audiologists, Colette Vossler-Welch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this project is to provide a means for Audiologists, Speech-Language-pathologists and related personnel to improve their ability to communicate and connect with culturally Deaf individuals through the use of video-animated sign-language interpretations. Arguments for or against the bilingual approach of using ASL and the spoken language with regards to Deaf education will be discussed through both a personal memoir and a review of current literature. This study will also shed light upon the history of the American Deaf population, American Sign-Language (ASL) and will conclude with a training module in ASL. The training module will be available …

Software Of The Oppressed: Reprogramming The Invisible Discipline, Erin R. Glass

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation offers a critical analysis of software practices within the university and the ways they contribute to a broader status quo of software use, development, and imagination. Through analyzing the history of software practices used in the production and circulation of student and scholarly writing, I argue that this overarching software status quo has oppressive qualities in that it supports the production of passive users, or users who are unable to collectively understand and transform software code for their own interests. I also argue that the university inadvertently normalizes and strengthens the software status quo through what I call …

Dancing, Mindfulness, And Our Emotions: Embracing The Mind, Body, And Sole, Alisha M. Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project examines dance, as an intervention and mindfulness practice that assists with managing our emotions. There is a need for dance therapy in social institutions such as, healthcare facilities, schools, and community centers. Dance therapy has the potential to reduce negative emotions, create mindfulness, improve self-expression, and promote a healthy well-being. I am proposing that dance therapy is applied as a regular practice in social institutions to develop mindfulness and promote emotional stability.

In this study, I argue that dance therapy can contribute to our well-being long term. In addition to this written thesis, a visual component of …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

Open Source Micro Diplomas: New Credentials For New Learning, Jack F. Powers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The standard model for college in America—a four-year bachelor’s degree that teaches critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication skills—is unaffordable and unattainable for most Americans. Only about a third of citizens aged 25 and over have achieved a baccalaureate degree or better. Two-thirds are left behind in precarious jobs that pay substantially less and that are losing ground. Everyone from politicians to parents repeats the mantra of “college for all”, but the reality is more like “college for the socio-economically gifted.”

At the same time, the modern world of work is evolving into a more complex, technical, and computerized …

Thiscollegestory.Com: How Interactive Writing Media Influenced The Way First-Year Students Made Sense Of Their College Transition, Philip Kreniske

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing on insights from Bakhtin (1986) that demonstrated the significance of writing as an interaction, and building on recent developments in narrative analysis that offer insights into narrator’s sense making processes (Daiute, 2014; Lucic, 2013); this research explores how freshmen in an educational opportunity program used interactive writing media to make sense of their transition to college. The exploration involved three main questions and each question concerns students’ development over time:

• First, did college students’ writing in two different media (blogs and word-processed text) differ and did these differences change over time?
• Second, how did the narrators and audience interact …

Queering By Example: Sex Education In The Age Of Vlogging, Zoe M. Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 1990s saw the rise of third wave feminism, queer theory and the digital age. This paper looks at how the three come together in YouTube video bloggers’ promotion of queer sex-positive ideology. Sex positivism is the belief that all safe, consensual sex is healthy, while queer theory emphasizes the diversity and instability of sex and gender identities. YouTube vloggers engaged in life-streaming profit from the entertainment value of revealing personal sexual information while framing their sexual revelations as healthy, shame-free sex positivism. In doing so, they also put their unique and sometimes changing sexualities on public display, in effect …

Gentle Introduction Resource, James Anderson Laird Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Gentle Introduciton Resource (GIR) is an open-access web application that offers digital humanities researchers a malleable platform with which they can crowdsource technical material. Such material often poses challenges to the traditional humanities researcher when trying to implement digital layers to his or her research. The Gentle Introduction Resource (GIR) is an open-access web application designed to allow a single classroom or single institution to crowdsource technical information/instruction filtering out the influence of rhetorical analysis. It is written in the Ruby language on the Rails web framework. Though a GIR instance can be invoked to crowdsource primarily web-based information …