Education Commons^™

Portland State University: General Education And Equitable Assessment, Rowanna L. Carpenter, Vicki Reitenauer, Aimee Shattuck

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Portland State University is not only Portland, Oregon’s public research university, but a place of innovation and engagement. Portland State offers over 200 degree programs, and is very engaged in community development as it sits in the heart of downtown. Originally founded in 1946 to serve returning World War II veterans, Portland State has “grown into Oregon’s most diverse urban public research university with 26,000 students.” Of the students served, 25% are students with children, 37% are first-generation, 45% receive Pell grants, and 48% are students of color. Espoused values of the university include the promotion of access, inclusion, and …

Performing Self, Performing Community, Performing Care: A Polyphony, Lindsay M. Goldman, Musonda Mwango, Vicki Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article traces a performative arc across time and distance, starting in the men's carceral setting in which the co-authors first met in a gender studies course called Writing as Activism; through their continued co-learning (and individual authorship of self) in a campus-based course, Women, Writing, and Memoir; to and through the co-construction of this essay. These co-authors are variously situated relative to the institutions in which they were positioned; embody difference related to race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, religion, age, and national origin; and are co-committed both to creating learning communities in which a socially just pedagogy might be …

Out Of Time: Accomplices In Post-Carceral World-Building, Benjamin J. Hall, Rhiannon M. Cates, Vicki L. Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

An article in which a faculty member, a university staff member and former student, and a currently incarcerated student and teaching assistant collaboratively examine their experiences as co-teachers and co-learners in a humanities-based prison classroom, and as co-authors of the article itself. Fostered by the faculty member’s pedagogical approach and design of the course, the authors pose that critical practices of writing and learning are dynamic sites of imagination and collaboration, and in turn, avenues by which informed and intentional futures can be enacted. Locating their practice and experience of partnership within a prison, the authors enter their co-created and …

'A Practice Of Freedom': Self-Grading For Liberatory Learning, Vicki L. Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay offers readers a model for self-grading as a mechanism to catalyze liberatory learning. Drawing inspiration from the feminist and participatory pedagogical approaches of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Adrienne Rich, the author grounds this discussion within her disciplinary field and professional role, identifies key elements of the model and the teaching practice that surrounds it, and addresses the changed learning environment that has resulted from the implementation of this approach.

Metamorphosis Inside And Out: Transformative Learning At Portland State University, Vicki Reitenauer, Katherine Elaine Draper-Beard, Noah Schultz

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, the authors (a faculty member and two former students) describe the trajectory that Portland State University has taken over its history to institutionalize transformative learning opportunities within its comprehensive general education program, University Studies. Following a description of the institutional changes that resulted in the community-based, experientially focused courses at the heart of University Studies, the authors explore one particular community partnership involving both a state agency and the national Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, dedicated to offering transformative experiences in which incarcerated and non-incarcerated students learn together inside correctional facilities. Finally, each author shares a reflective essay …

Assessment As Critical Programmatic Reflection, Vicki Reitenauer, Rowanna L. Carpenter

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article argues that general education assessment is an opportunity for engaging faculty and the general education program as a whole in critical reflection on the practices and pedagogies that affect the entire undergraduate body. Through intentional assessment practices tied to learning outcomes, pedagogical expectations, and faculty and student classroom experience, an assessment program can meet accreditation expectations while serving as a rich location for critical reflection and continuous improvement. To illustrate, this article takes the reader through a year in the life of University Studies' assessment at Portland State University. It provides details about the individual elements of our …

"Diversity," Anti-Racism, And Decolonizing Service Learning In The Capstone Experience, W. Tracy Dillon, Judy Bluehorse Skelton, Vicki Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This retrospective on service learning in the development of University Studies Capstones, the senior-level requirement in the University Studies general education program at Portland State University, explores how the original framers of University Studies anticipated the pitfalls of "pedagogies of whiteness" in deploying service learning as the hallmark pedagogical feature of the program; includes a case study of a Capstone course that centers on Indigenous ways of knowing, learning, and teaching through its pedagogy; and identifies the formative presence of Capstone faculty committed to anti-racist and anti-imperialist pedagogies. From a variety of institutional and disciplinary standpoints and through long association …

On Claiming An Education As Transformative Learning, Celine Fitzmaurice, Vicki L. Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this essay, the authors explore the concept of “claiming an education” and its relationship to transformative learning. Using a dialogue format, the authors situate their perspectives within an articulation of the particular ways that they have been formed as university instructors; forward their views on the vitality of intentionally designed co-learning environments; offer concrete suggestions for the development of co-learning environments within which the claiming of education may occur; and share students’ reflections on the meaning and implications of their transformative experiences for themselves and for their continuing engagement in the world.

From Deliberative Democracy To Communicative Democracy In The Classroom. A Response To “Education For Deliberative Democracy”, Lisa Weasel

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This response to Samuelsson’s typology for assessing deliberative democracy in classroom discussions views his analysis through an equity lens. It offers Young’s model of communicative democracy as a resource and argues that incorporating that model's emphasis on greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling into the typology can help to promote more equitable deliberative communication in the classroom. It offers specific tools, based on the author’s development of deliberative pedagogy in a biology classroom, that teachers can use across disciplines and educational settings to help promote more equitable deliberative communication in classroom discussions.

Response to Article
Martin Samuelsson, Education for Deliberative Democracy: A …

A Grateful Recollecting: A Qualitative Study Of The Long-Term Impact Of Service-Learning On Graduates, Ann Fullerton, Vicki L. Reitenauer, Seanna Kerrigan

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Service-learning practitioners design community engagement activities to affect students in powerful and even transformative ways. This qualitative study explores the long-term impacts (3-16 years after graduation) of participation in a senior-level service-learning course. Through interviews with 20 randomly selected participants, the researchers explored whether and in what ways graduates continued to experience impacts from the course, including those that have become interwoven with other life experiences or have catalyzed altered perspectives and/or actions. Graduates were first asked to identify their most significant learning experiences in college in order to gauge the relative importance, if any, of the service-learning course in …

“Contagious Co-Motion”: Student Voices On Being Change Agents, Vicki L. Reitenauer, Tetiana Korzun, Kimberly Lane, Melinda Joy Roberts

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Designed in response to students’ requests for a capstone where they could form their own individual partnerships in the communities of their choosing, Effective Change Agent offers a structure for community-based learning that allows for high levels of student choice-making and agency. In this article, the authors describe the course; connect it to literature on grassroots change-making, integrative learning, and service-learning; and, through the inclusion of student authors, allow the sharing of insights in the students’ own voices.

To This Day: College Graduates On The Lasting Significance Of Relationality And Experiential Learning, Ann Fullerton, Vicki L. Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the past twenty years, much research has been conducted into the effects of community-based learning and service-learning on students, but studies into the long-term impacts that persist after graduation have been fewer in number. In this article, the authors share perspectives from Portland State University alumni on the lasting significance of their participation in a community-based learning course that has been operating continuously for more than two decades and the key features of significant learning experiences more generally.

In Their Own Voices: Assessing Student Learning Through Analysis Of Reflective Writing, Patti Haack, Seanna Kerrigan, Vicki L. Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In order to assess students' experiences of their service-learning Capstone, researchers used a qualitative design to study 50 students' reflections from seven distinctly different Senior Capstone courses. In these reflections, students demonstrated integrative learning while deepening their understanding of communication, critical thinking, diversity, and social responsibility.