Education Commons^™

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Child Science Identity Interview Guide And Protocol, Heidi Cian, Remy Dou

Department of Teaching and Learning

While many data collection tools exist to elicit how individuals think about prototypical STEM persons (e.g., the Draw-a-Scientist assessment), such tools fail to capture the nuance of how individuals think about STEM and STEM personhood and how those perceptions change according to context and “in real life”. We designed the Child Science Identity Interview Guide and Protocol to learn about how youth see everyday experiences as “STEM” (or a particular subfield) and think of themselves and those in their social orbits as STEM persons.

The Influence Of Policy Implementation In The Midwest: How A Sstem Program Broadens Participation And Enhances Engineering Identity For Community College Students, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Maria L. Espino, Brian D. Le, Kelly J. Cunniham

Faculty Publications

This qualitative research study describes how a Midwest community college’s implementation of an Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (SSTEM) program influences engineering identity development for its students with financial need. Using a phenomenological approach, the study finds that the program enables community college students to have greater financial freedom and an ability to focus on engineering identity. In addition, the SSTEM program enhances student connections with STEM faculty, program staff, and peers. The study highlights the need for creating spaces for engineering identity development, developing connections between faculty, staff, and students, and enhancing transfer connections through different experiences. …

Motivation In The Mathematics Classroom, Evan Thornton-Kolbe

Honors Theses

Mathematics has always seemed to be an unpopular subject amongst primary and secondary students in the United States. This project seeks to identify the roots of these attitudes and examine them in ways that allow for personal reflection, community building, and student advocacy. An individual’s access to educational resources and equitable treatment play a large role in shaping their mathematics learning identity. This topic was examined via traditional research methods for the written paper portion and also includes a set of lesson plans for teachers to use. These lesson plans utilize the ideas discussed in the paper portion to provide …

Inclusion & Marginalization: How Perceptions Of Design Thinking Pedagogy Influence Computer, Electrical, And Software Engineering Identity, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Erin E. Doran, Rachel E. Friedensen, Elizabeth Martínez-Podolsky, Paul S. Hengesteg

Faculty Publications

Engineering identity plays a vital role in the persistence of engineering students, yet limited research exists on how particular pedagogical approaches influence engineering identity at the college level. This qualitative case study explored how undergraduate student perceptions of design thinking pedagogy influence computer, electrical, and software engineering identity. The study found that design thinking pedagogy reinforces the recognition of an engineering identity, particularly for those from historically marginalized groups (i.e., women, people of color). Intentional implementation, including organization and framing of design thinking pedagogy, was an essential foundation for fostering student interest in the course and connecting to their role …

Smiles, Sighs, And Nods: The Power Of A Personal Narrative, Camille Sleight-Price

Writing Center Analysis Papers

As a writing tutor and composition instructor, each time I work with a student I am meeting and getting to know a stranger through their writing. Although each student comes to sit next to me with their own background, topics of interest and insecurities, in each case I get to accompany them on the journey of meaning-making through the processes of research and composing. This paper highlights one such instance of meaning-making with a student. It suggests that this meaning-making is not just about developing students’ academic skills like research, critical thinking and composition, but is an opportunity as a …

The Effect Of Animated Self-Concept Videos On Hispanic Fifth-Grade Students Self-Concept, Richard Hill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Studies have documented a major downturn in the self-concept of fifth-grade students as they transition to middle school (Twenge & Crocker, 2000). Two of the major risk factors are being female and Hispanic (Cavazos-Rehg & DeLucia-Waa, 2009). Various interventions have been tried with limited success. The purpose of the present study is to use an animated self-concept video series to test if an animated self-concept video series could support and/or increase the self-concept of fifth-grade students, particularly those in the Hispanic and female risk categories. The study population (N = 192) was a convenience sample drawn from a sample size …

Engineering Identity Development: A Review Of Higher Education Literature, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Charles Lu, Morgan Bartlett

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this systematic literature review was to appraise and synthesize the current scholarship pertaining to engineering identity development within the higher education context and create recommendations for future scholarship within engineering education. A review of the literature concluded that research on engineering identity development has increased over the past ten years, has been conducted primarily with qualitative methods, and has been primarily limited to academic communities focused on mathematics, science, and engineering education. In addition, current scholarship reflected that most of the work in this area has focused on the learning contexts and experiences of women and underrepresented …

Evaluating High School Biology Modeling Instruction In South Florida: A Comparative Case Study, Feng Li

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation, with a collected papers approach, focused on evaluating the implementation of MI curriculum in high school Biology I classes in south Florida. The dissertation included the development and validation of the Biology Identity and Persistence Survey (BIPS), the connection of instructors’ teaching practices with students’ biology identities, evolution identities, and career aspirations, and the connection of instructors’ teaching practice with students’ conceptual understanding in evolution. In the first part of the dissertation study, the BIPS was validated through expert review and student cognitive interviews for its face and content validity. Confirmatory factor analysis addressed the construct validity of …

Pedagogía Crítica Y Decolonial En Tiempos De Trump. Entrevista A Peter Mclaren, Peter Mclaren, Pablo Cortés-Gonzálezener

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Se trata de una entrevista que versa en los siguientes tópicos: Panorama internacional de las políticas sociales y educativas de corte neoliberal y los discursos sociales respecto de las minorías étnicas, identidades y migración; las implicaciones del cambio de discurso en las políticas sociales y educativas hacia los sistemas y modelos educativos; los estudios culturales y la transformación social en América Latina.

This is an interview that deals with the following topics: International panorama of social and educational policies of neoliberal and social discourses regarding ethnic minorities, identities and migration; The implications of the change of discourse in the social …

Rhetoric As Inquiry: Personal Writing And Academic Success In The English Classroom, Erica E. Rogers

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Holistic and critical pedagogy, an approach to learning and teaching, integrates the everyday realities students live, with the systemic and institutional objectives of education itself. Working with theories from composition, rhetoric, feminist studies, and cognitive psychology from a teacher-researcher perspective, this dissertation explores and theorizes holistic, critical pedagogy within the composition classroom while outlining the use of personal writing as a means to develop critical consciousness. Student study participants kept “Inquiry Notebooks,” semester-long personal writing projects that served as receptacles for practical and theoretical engagement with a variety of texts and ideas, then interviewed after the course to discuss their …

Miscommunication Between Aboriginal Students And Their Non- Aboriginal Teachers In A Bilingual School, Anne Lowell, Brian Devlin

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

A crucial question in cross-cultural education is how to bridge the cultural and linguis- tic differences between home and school so that a child’s identity can be supported without limiting his or her chances of academic success (Eades, 1991). Various models of bilingual education have been implemented in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory of Australia but the implementation of such programmes is often far from ideal. In the school where this ethnographic study was conducted, miscom- munication between Aboriginal students and their non-Aboriginal teachers was found to be commonplace. Even by late primary school, children often did not comprehend …