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Full-Text Articles in Education

Ethics In Literature: A Case Study Of Hades And Persephone, Mckenzie A. Howard Jan 2024

Ethics In Literature: A Case Study Of Hades And Persephone, Mckenzie A. Howard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The increased ethical scrutiny on art in the modern era places an emphasis on how those art forms are being taught in the classroom. This thesis seeks to answer the question: how do we teach ethics, if we should at all, when we teach literature to a modern audience? This thesis explores this question by looking at how modern adaptations of an ancient text, the “Hymn to Demeter,” change the ethical issues in the original text, to show the relevance of these issues in the source text and the modern adaptations. Through an argument that the ethical concerns are often …


Middle Savannah River: An A/R/Tographic Ecopedagogical Ethnography Experimenting With Rhizomatic Perspectives, Lisa Augustine-Chizmar Jan 2023

Middle Savannah River: An A/R/Tographic Ecopedagogical Ethnography Experimenting With Rhizomatic Perspectives, Lisa Augustine-Chizmar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an experiment in perspective. Using the four commonplaces (Schwab, 1978), I practiced letting the Savannah River teach me what there is to know about the water, the land, the people, and the other entities that depend on ki through artistic, ethnographic, and ecopedagogical lenses. The ethnographic findings describe the social actors that depend on ki and give a voice to the River. The a/r/tographic findings display the River on a canvas map through two hundred years using paint, clay, photography, video, abstract acrylics, and fabric. Together, these methods contribute to a unique ecopedagogical journey. This word cloud …


Teaching Trauma In Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Kat Shuman Jan 2021

Teaching Trauma In Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Kat Shuman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, this thesis outlines how to ethically and effectively teach literature that deals with trauma. My personal teaching philosophy as well as the current pedagogy surrounding trauma literature preface a detailed syllabus, lesson plans, assessments, and activities that would be useful in teaching a course centered around literature that deals with trauma. This thesis highlights the merits of teaching trauma fiction in the literature classroom.


Mothering Through Our Pain: Single Black Mothers’ Narratives, Yolanda E. Surrency Jan 2021

Mothering Through Our Pain: Single Black Mothers’ Narratives, Yolanda E. Surrency

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black women’s voices and historical contributions have been dismissed, and even excluded, making it difficult for their cultural knowledge to be transmitted to future generations. Black women battle with an unsettled consciousness from subscribing to the normalization of what dominant culture defines as good mothering. This study uses Black feminism to examine single Black mothers who navigate the negative images of the welfare queen and the matriarch. This narrative study uses Black feminism to examine the stories of single, Black mothers and their daughters. The purpose is to investigate Black mothers’ lived experiences to understand their struggles and resistance. Purposeful …


A Fiction Of Fragmented Falsehoods: Curriculum Of Unwanted Roads Traveled, Katherine Wyatt Jan 2019

A Fiction Of Fragmented Falsehoods: Curriculum Of Unwanted Roads Traveled, Katherine Wyatt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is an inquiry centered on lived ‘otherness’ in different social experiences. Fiction and illustrations are both creative outlets that provide opportunities of curriculum growth by offering the viewer realistic portrayals dealing with truth and factors that make us fundamentally human. “Fiction elicits an interpretation of the world by being itself a worldlike object for interpretation” (Dillard, 1988, p. 155). This study uses fiction and illustrations as vehicles of communication to provide an awareness regarding social issues in everyday lived experiences, exposing the reader to the social, cultural and historical realities persistently impeding the shared constructs of human experiences. Structuring …


Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal Jan 2019

Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the use of memoir, my work centers on how poetry is situated within public education curriculum. I explore the curricular context of poetry through the lenses of my lived experiences in early childhood, as a K-12 student, and as an early career classroom teacher. My dissertation draws upon a wide array of literature, honing in on the poetic perspectives of philosophers (Aristotle, 1996; Heidegger, 1947 & 1971/2013; Plato, 1955/2007), poets (Hall, 2003; Eliot, 1920 & 2009), and curriculum theorists (Leggo, 1997 & 2018; Pinar, 1994; Sameshima, 2007). The foundation of my work is drawn from my own circular experiences, …


The Multicultural Center's Role In Black Male Success At A Predominantly White Institution, Stephan Tramaine Moore Jan 2019

The Multicultural Center's Role In Black Male Success At A Predominantly White Institution, Stephan Tramaine Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many scholarly works have focused on the problems that Black males face in higher education at predominantly White institutions (PWI). However, few have explored specific factors that lead to the success of Black males. This study focuses on the Multicultural Center’s role in Black male success a PWI. There are a myriad of issues that Black men face when pursuing higher education ranging from a lack of financial resources to “invisibility” in the collegial environment. These challenges are further exacerbated for Black men who are enrolled at a PWI. The Multicultural Center (MC) is among the essential modalities that can …


Digital Echoes Of The Igeneration: An Examination Of Digital Media Used In 21st Century Education, Monica Greenway Radcliff Apr 2013

Digital Echoes Of The Igeneration: An Examination Of Digital Media Used In 21st Century Education, Monica Greenway Radcliff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the use of digital media as three teams of middle grades students create an original film about a topic of their choosing. The impetus of the study is fueled by a personal curiosity to see how students learn when given the freedom and flexibility to research and explore outside of a standards-based environment using digital media. Equally important, I wanted to examine the participatory process; as well as how this process affected the students' views, values, and to what extent, if at all. This study was made possible due to the 2011 JOCO Film Festival. Each of …


From A Northern Home To A Southern School: Cultural Imperialists Or Just Stubborn Yankees, Janel Janiczek Smith Apr 2013

From A Northern Home To A Southern School: Cultural Imperialists Or Just Stubborn Yankees, Janel Janiczek Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the cultural influences on the lives of northern teachers in southern schools. During the 1860s, white, northern, middle-class women traveled to southern homes to begin and maintain schools for the recently freed slaves. Each woman carried with her an independent set of cultural systems that predetermined her perspective for educating the African American students. Furthermore, the northern relief agencies, Freedmen's Bureau agents, southern white citizens, and southern freedmen all had their own opinions for the education of the students. Although much time has elapsed between the 1860s and 2013, the same topics …


A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Testimonies Of Black Women's Experience Of Desegregation In The South, Marketa Bullard Jan 2013

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Testimonies Of Black Women's Experience Of Desegregation In The South, Marketa Bullard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is an inquiry into school desegregation, Black Women, and spirituality with the focus on three young Black Women who desegregated a small rural high school in the South. Theoretically drawing upon the works of Alice Walker (1983, 1997, 2006), Audre Lorde (2007), Emilie Townes (1995, 1996, 1997), Toni Morrison (1988, 1993, 1998), James Anderson (1988), and William Watkins (1993, 2003, 2001, 2005, 2006), I gather testimonies of key events that help understand desegregation in Queensburg, Alabama, a fictional town that represents many rural Southern towns during the era of school desegregation. Methodologically drawing upon oral history (Brown, 1988; Haley, …


Casting Minority Gifted Students: The Pedagogical Impact Of Cinema On The Culture Of Schooling, Deborah F. Burnette Jan 2013

Casting Minority Gifted Students: The Pedagogical Impact Of Cinema On The Culture Of Schooling, Deborah F. Burnette

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

African American students are significantly underrepresented in gifted education programs. This dissertation creates a space where gifted education, African American students, media literacy, and teacher perceptions intersect in the field of curriculum studies. Media literacy will be utilized to critique popular films by gifted endorsement teacher-students and myself. Due to the low number of states that require pre-service teachers to study gifted characteristics of children it is left up to gifted teacher endorsement programs to train teachers. By using media literacy to examine films in gifted teacher endorsement programs, I assert that the under-representation of African American students in the …


Leaving In The Past: The Role History Plays In Video Games, Joseph Fordham Oct 2012

Leaving In The Past: The Role History Plays In Video Games, Joseph Fordham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How can something considered by many within academia as childish or a waste of time be potentially useful in presenting or even studying history? Not only has the video game industry grown into one of the largest forms of media in the world, but these games are also finding use as a training aid for the military and major companies, as an advertising medium, and, most importantly, as a tool for teaching. As developmental capabilities improve with new generations of graphics hardware, video games are turning towards the recreation of real-world and historical events. This drive towards realism and accuracy …


Through Smoke And Mirrors: Constructing Identity Between The Myths Of Black Inferiority And A Post-Racial America, Gwyneira Yvette Dixon Ledford Oct 2012

Through Smoke And Mirrors: Constructing Identity Between The Myths Of Black Inferiority And A Post-Racial America, Gwyneira Yvette Dixon Ledford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an inquiry into my life. It is an exploration of my lived experience as an African American female negotiating through traditions in Southern culture and societal pressures to create a positive identity. Using autobiographical narrative (Connelly, He, & Phillion, 2008, Pinar, 2008) as a methodology and Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2000), double consciousness (DuBois, 1903), and the Nigrescence Theory of black identity development (Cross, 1991) as the theoretical framework, I examine my experiences from childhood to adulthood. Through these narrations, I note paradigm shifts in my thinking that identify the psychological struggles between feeling racially inferior and …


Military Children And Holistic Education: A Narrative Reflection On Classroom Practice, Edith Allison Jan 2009

Military Children And Holistic Education: A Narrative Reflection On Classroom Practice, Edith Allison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uses autobiographical narrative inquiry as a source of knowledge-generating reflection to examine how the educational needs of military children might be met through the use of holistic educational practices rather than a (well-intentioned) traditional, standardized curriculum. Data were gathered through observation; personal experience as a military child, military member, mother of military children and teacher of military children; journal entries and vicarious experiences shared by students, parents, educators and other invested in this population of learners. Experiences were compiled into fictional composites to protect the identity of all parties as well as national security. These composites were then …