Education Commons^™

Differentiating Modernity (The System Of White Supremacy) And Generating Otherwise Worlds As Publicly Engaged Scholars: What’S Ontological Inquiry Got To Do With It?, Carolyne J. White, Arturo E. Osorio, Tim K. Eatman, Margaret J. Weiss

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

Seeking an answer to Tina Turner’s refrain, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” this article is a rebellious, messy, place-based and deeply collaborative conversation. We draw upon the legacy of theatre and social critique and adopt the literary present tense to evoke a brave intimate space for imagining possibilities beyond the academic conventions of the present epistemological order. We seek to illuminate how ontological inquiry may provoke powerful access to generating new worldmaking for climate justice, particularly when one is being a publicly engaged scholar. Why new worldmaking? Within this unprecedented time of racial reckoning, war, climate catastrophe and …

Critical Conversations In A Second-Grade Classroom Using Diverse Literature, Joanne Susan Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the effects of reading diverse texts during SEL morning meeting time and observe how 2nd grade students engage in conversations. Diverse texts were selected related to themes of identity, race, poverty, gender, sexual identity, and gender identity. Data collected included student conversations and journals. After analyzing the data collected, it was found that the inclusion of diverse texts during SEL morning meetings yielded positive results. Students engaged in more personal conversations when they could connect to the text and speak freely, students spoke more when they had control of the conversations, …

An Examination Of High School Students' Experiences As Anti-Defamation League Peer Trainers: A Case Study, David G. Knecht

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine students experiences as Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Peer Trainers at a predominately White, suburban high school in New Jersey, including in what ways students' experiences reflected transformative learning and empowered them as social justice allies. In addition, the study explored in what ways students' experiences could inform social justice education at their high school. The findings indicate that within this context, many participants experienced at least the beginning of perspective transformation, resulting in a shift from an exclusive to an inclusive perspective and an orientation toward social justice. Further, the findings …

Narrowing The Digital Divide: Instructional Practices Promoting Growth Mindset To Address Students’ Digital Literacy Needs In A Secondary School Learning Environment, Alyssa A. Krisanda

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was: (1) to explore the ways in which high school teachers use instructional practices that promote a growth mindset among their students, (2) how those practices are used to improve digital literacy, and (3) how these practices evolved during the transition from face-to-face instruction to remote instruction. This study aimed to explore not only how teachers are using instructional strategies to promote growth mindset, but how those strategies are helping to address students‘ digital literacy needs with the intent to narrow the digital divide. For this study, the case-selection variant of …

Effects Of Simultaneously Integrating Sel And Culturally Responsive Pedagogy On Students' Perceptions About Themselves And Their Abilities, Daniele J. Jacob

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to understand what happens to students' perceptions about themselves and their abilities when social and emotional learning (SEL) and culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) are simultaneously integrated into an elementary gifted and talented classroom setting. Prior to this research, a structured approach to addressing students' social and emotional learning needs did not exist. Additionally, culturally responsive practices were not being used purposefully or with intent. This left the researcher to wonder how the lack of these practices may be negatively impacting students. How SEL and CRP can positively affect students' perceptions about themselves …

Embracing The Kaleidoscope: Four Teachers' Journeys Towards Sociopolitical Development, Daniel Tulino

Theses and Dissertations

Taliaferro Baszile (2017) tells us, "Education can be revolutionary work." To that end, if education historically has been a means for "inculcating" students into a hegemonic code of beliefs and values (Gramsci, 1971), it is the educator's duty to concern themselves with developing a critical consciousness (Freire, 1970/1996; Freire, 1973/1998) in order to transform the world through acts of social justice. The focus of this research project was to uncover, from the perspectives of four teachers, how they came to understand their own critical consciousness and sociopolitical development at a middle school in southern New Jersey. By uncovering the ways …

"It Goes Both Ways" : How White Teachers View And Respond To Culture In The Diverse Classroom, Danielle Martin

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how white teachers in a diverse school district view, respond to, and bridge cultural differences in the classroom. A pre-question, survey, audio recorded discussions, notes in a teacher research journal, and a post question were all analyzed to determine how four white, female teachers incorporated culture into the classroom as well as their receptiveness to culturally sustaining pedagogy. Findings were that these four teachers had a rudimentary understanding of culturally sustaining pedagogy prior to the study and while they made attempts to include culture in the classroom, these attempts were limited and …

How Third Grade Students Respond To The Multiple Perspectives In Read Alouds Of Critical Texts, Kathryn Elizabeth Zeck

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how students respond to weekly read alouds of critical literacy texts. The specific aim was to see what type of critical stances students adopt as they respond to the multiple perspectives present in the texts. Student written reflections, audio recording of student talk, and anecdotal notes are all analyzed. The implications for implementing weekly read alouds of critical literacy texts as it relates to students' social awareness are discussed.

Cultural Humility: A Qualitative Study On The Development Of Self-Awareness In Social Work Educators, Nicole Moore-Bembry

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the faculty members' perspectives on their racial identity development and how these perspectives impact their cultural self-awareness and cultural humility in the classroom. White social work faculty members voiced their vulnerability and discomfort in addressing race, oppression, and discrimination in the classroom. This study included a total of 10 White social work faculty members from a medium sized northeastern university.

Key findings of the study indicate that White faculty members: were primarily clinicians who later became educators, were primarily raised in White communities and the Monoracial upbringing impacted their personal …

Reciprocity In The Practice Of Publicly Engaged Scholarship – Reflections From A Transnational Literacy Project, Kate E. Kedley, Hector Efren Flores A.

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

We examine the concept of “reciprocity” in publicly engaged literacy scholarship. The idea of reciprocity suggests that projects using a publicly engaged research model should be two-way partnerships with an effort given to balancing benefits to the researcher and to community partners. We (the researcher and the community partner) explore this dynamic by considering our own experiences working on a project with groups of youth in Honduras and in the United States. The groups share their cultures and experiences through writing and technology and challenge ideas about security and public space. Given the national, racial, cultural, economic, linguistic, and power …

Framing In Crime News, Gabriele Ward

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate if televised news programs overrepresent or underrepresent certain races as perpetrators or victims. Three weeks of crime news programming were surveyed. The races of perpetrators and victims were identified and coded. Those findings were then compared to 2014 crime statistics obtained from the Philadelphia Police Department. It was hypothesized that (a) Blacks would be overrepresented as perpetrators, (b) Blacks would be underrepresented as victims, (c) Whites would be overrepresented as victims, (d) Whites would be underrepresented as perpetrators, (e) Hispanics would neither be underrepresented or overrepresented as perpetrators, and (f) Hispanics would …