Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Book Review: The History And Politics Of Star Wars: Death Stars And Democracy, Petra Hendrickson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Book Review: The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy

Remixing Dialogue: A Case Study On Perceptions Of Hip Hop Pedagogy In A Professional Learning Course, Kelly J. Thelen

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This qualitative case study examines how teachers’ decision-making and professional autonomy shift while participating in a Hip Hop Pedagogy Professional Learning course supported by structured FIXIT (Lo & Wachter, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d; Wachter & Lo, 2024) game-facilitated dialogue in a rural, culturally and linguistically diverse Midwest community. Grounded in Freire’s (1970) Critical Pedagogy, Ladson-Billings’ (1995) Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris and Alim, 2017), and Adult Learning Theory (Knowles et al., 2005), the study explores the reclamation of agency by teachers in a time of constrained creativity and educator autonomy shaped by strict policy environments, an emphasis on …

Contradiction And Critical Consciousness: Engaging Canadian University Students In Racial Dialogue On Anti-Chinese Racism, Dan Cui

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This study examines how Canadian university students perceived and engaged with anti-Chinese racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on grounded theory and interviews and written reflections from 28 undergraduates at a predominantly White university, the study analyzes students’ contradictory understandings of racism shaped by media, national narratives, and prior educational experiences. Informed by Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, it conceptualizes these tensions as a contradictory racialized habitus, in which awareness and denial, empathy and distancing, coexist. Three themes emerged: contradictory orientations toward anti-Chinese racism, the transnational influence of U.S. political discourse, and the limited transformative impact of a social justice course. …

Belonging & Whole Person Formation In Graduate Education: A Conceptual Framework For Student Flourishing, Cynthia L. Hickman

Posters

Graduate students experience substantial academic, personal, and professional demands that can negatively affect well-being and persistence. For students enrolled in professional programs, belonging may develop within two overlapping communities: the academic institution and the emerging profession. Institutional and professional belonging can provide connection, support, engagement, and opportunities for identity and professional development. This paper synthesizes literature on these two forms of belonging and proposes a conceptual framework describing their potential relationship with whole-person formation and flourishing. Whole-person formation extends graduate education beyond knowledge acquisition and professional competence to include development across interconnected dimensions of the person. Within the proposed framework, …

Review Of Supernatural: A History Of Television’S Unearthly Road Trip By Erin Giannini, Duane Ebesu

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

No abstract (book review)

The Question Is A Node: Online Quizzes As Interactive Non-Fiction, Michael Merriam

ELO (un)supervised 2026

The quiz is the most widely deployed form of interactive text in education. Even when it is not digitally administered, it presents a prompt, receives a response, and contains within it a formula determining the consequences of that response. A wrong answer is taken as a failure of learning (not mere recall) and, by virtue of their quasi-digital objectivity, a batch of low quiz scores might warn of difficulty in reaching benchmarks. Ergo, quizzes embody the automation of the supervisory function of the instructor, and the supervision of curricula. 

Quiz questions have something in common with nodes in digital interactive …

Access Intimacy In The Feminist Classroom: Co-Creating Course Policies, Expectations, And Access Measures As Feminist Disability Praxis, Krystal Cleary

Feminist Pedagogy

In this essay, I outline an activity to foster access intimacy (Mingus, 2011) in the feminist classroom through students’ co-creation of course policies, expectations, and additional access measures. This activity transforms the classroom into a praxis laboratory wherein students analyze the normative structures that shape their hyperlocal classroom context and practice building environments characterized by interdependent solidarity rather than atomized competition. As feminist disability praxis, this activity centers the knowledge of disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent scholars and students; in doing so, it customizes the classroom to a diversity of learners and builds adaptability for responding to unforeseen challenges into …

Liberation Landscapes: Writing Freedom In A Black Geographies Classroom, Cornel Grey, Muna-Udbi A. Ali

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Peer-Peer Mentoring In Undergraduate Medical Education (Ume): Scoping Review Of Us-Based Medical Schools, Sakshi Sehgal, Jordon Brinkley, Andrea Kadima, Sydney Wright, Nicole Winston Ms, Pharmd, Edd

Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association

Background: Mentorship plays a formative role in undergraduate medical education (UME) From shaping professional outcomes to developing longitudinal personal relationships, various forms of mentorship can influence student progress meaningfully, particularly for students from underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds. Though faculty-student mentorship has been readily investigated, limited knowledge exists regarding peer-peer mentorship structures, particularly within UME in the American medical education model. This scoping review sought to investigate existing peer-peer mentorship models, as well as report on the need for further mentorship within this realm in UME.

Methods: This scoping review employed Arksey and O’Malley’s framework. We conducted a systematic and comprehensive …

Toward A Metric For Disciplinary Learning In The Age Of Ai: The Unblooms™ Metacognitive Awareness Scale And Discernment Rate In Ai-Mediated Learning, Tina R. Austin

International Journal of Emerging and Disruptive Innovation in Education : VISIONARIUM

Telling students to “reflect on their own thinking” has become insufficient in AI-mediated learning environments. When students are rewarded for polished outputs, cognitive offloading to AI tools becomes rational, and traditional snapshot assessments (single-moment evaluations of task completion) produce false signals about whether durable learning has occurred. This problem is sharpened by the broader shift in AI learning tools toward Socratic tutors, study modes, Khan Academy's Khanmigo, and agentic systems that can shape the learner’s process over time. Lodge and Loble (2026) distinguish beneficial cognitive offloading, which frees working memory for intrinsic learning, from detrimental outsourcing, which bypasses the cognitive …

The Muddy Waters Of The Syllabus: A Tale Of Feminist Pedagogical Failure And Redemption., Kristin Comeforo

Feminist Pedagogy

This critical commentary interrogates the syllabus, and questions whether these ubiquitous documents can ever be consistent with feminist pedagogy. Through discussion of literature around syllabus (re)design, I suggest that current feminist pedagogy syllabus practices are ill-suited for overturning what I call the “neoliberal university syllabus complex” that makes teaching and learning for transformation impossible. More suited for this task is the radical practice of “the un-syllabus,” a collaborative document written by the class community.

Part-Time Faculty In Art And Design Higher Education: Support & Challenges, Katherine Ye Jin Lee

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates the challenge part-time faculty in art and design higher education face and the institutional support they receive through a case study conducted at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Through an extensive, anonymous and voluntary part-time faculty survey across different departments at RISD, it examines: 1) current perceptions of available institutional & departmental teaching support, 2) teaching approach & practice, and 3) student-faculty engagement. The research aimed to gather data on challenges that are unique to part-time faculty in art and design fields, especially in relation to faculty-student engagement to understand areas where they can be better …

Reclamando Corazón Y Voz: Latinas Speak Their Truth Through Plática As Resistance In California Community College Learning Disabilities Assessments, Maricela Becerra

Dissertations

Although California Community Colleges (CCCs) offer learning disability (LD) assessments to determine eligibility for academic accommodations, for Latina students navigating converging forces of race, gender, language, citizenship, and ableism, these assessments often surface unspoken histories of harm. This study advanced Chicana feminista DisCrit (CFDC), extending disability critical race theory through Chicana spirituality and cultural intuition to examine possibilities when an educadora situates assessments in a plática grounded in consideración—respectful, relational, and unhurried care.

Rooted in Chicana feminist pláticas methodology and authored from the positionality of a disabled Latina scholar–practitioner, this qualitative decolonial dissertation explored how Latina students reflected on …

Who Gets To Be Taken Seriously? Three Atypical Scholars Navigate Doctoral Education At The Intersections Of Race, Neurodivergence, And Veteran Identity, Sr. Richard De La Garza

Dissertations

As a first-generation, neurodivergent, Mexican American/Chicano veteran, I entered the University of San Diego's doctoral program having had experiences that most institutional intake processes would label as risk factors. The Findings chapter of this dissertation begins by describing those experiences—not as a confession, but as the foundation for a systematic inquiry into how doctoral legitimacy is produced, withheld, and defended. The description of my life experiences is followed by a discussion of the doctoral journeys of two other study participants who also were atypical doctoral candidates.

The central argument being advanced is this: What higher education calls "fit," "rigor," and …

Looking For Inclusivity In Higher Ed? Start In The Classroom!, Michelle Carpenter

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Sources In The Age Of Ai And Misinformation: Practical Routines For Social Studies Classrooms, Viloshinee Murugan Ph.D

The Great Lakes Social Studies Journal

As students encounter information through search engines, social media, and AI-generated content, evaluating sources has become more complex and essential in social studies classrooms. Research shows that students struggle to judge credibility, trace claims to evidence, and recognize how context, authorship, and purpose shape information. This article argues that these challenges are not the result of student apathy or inability, but of limited opportunities to practice evaluative reasoning as a routine disciplinary habit. Drawing on scholarship in disciplinary literacy and civic reasoning, as well as nearly three decades of practitioner experience, the article presents practical instructional routines, sample mini-lessons, and …

Sense Of Belonging And Self-Efficacy Of Women In Stemm At The University Of South Alabama, Emilie Dedeaux

Honors Theses

Despite decades of calls and initiatives to diversify science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines, females are still more likely to leave STEMM career paths compared to their male peers, which is often depicted as a 'leaky pipeline'. Females in STEMM often report greater social alienation, greater selfdoubt, lower sense of belonging and academic satisfaction due to a mismatch in values in STEMM disciplines. STEMM values have traditionally been normed by cisheteronormative, white, male ideologies . While extensive research has focused on the barriers females experience in STEMM that reduce sense of belonging , less research has focused on …

Future Ready Young Adults: Building Creative And Adaptive Thinkers, Robell Yeung

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Abstract of Project

Future Ready Young Adults: Building Creative and Adaptive Thinkers addresses a developmental gap in educational practices that prioritize technical proficiency over the psychological frameworks necessary for navigating systemic ambiguity. This project introduces an interdisciplinary, modular curriculum specifically designed for the challenges of emerging adulthood. By synthesizing Creative Problem Solving (CPS), James Clear’s habit architecture, and Martin Seligman’s PERMA model, the curriculum provides a structured pathway for cultivating creative self-efficacy and financial capability. Moving beyond traditional views of innate creativity, this model employs asset-based frameworks to treat cognitive agility and ambiguity tolerance as developable competencies. The project culminates …

Show And Tell: Integrating The Arts Into Transdisciplinary Public Health And Community Organizing Education, Bree L. Hemingway, Margaret Hawkins

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This field note examines the integration of arts-based pedagogy into a transdisciplinary graduate course that brings together students from public health, medicine, the social sciences, humanities, education, technology, and the arts. Central to the course is the Show and Tell assignment, in which students select and present a work of art connected to a social movement. Over three years and 42 student submissions, this assignment has served as an accessible entry point for exploring how artistic expression shapes activism, fosters community, and deepens understanding of justice-oriented work. Through an inductive content analysis of student-selected artworks and presentations, five major thematic …

Numeracy-Based Civic Education Model: Needs Analysis Through An Explanatory Sequential Design, Sulkipani Sulkipani, Kokom Komalasari, Sapriya Sapriya, Susan Fitriasari, Vina Amilia Suganda Makenun

Numeracy

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals emphasize numeracy as essential for quality education, and require its integration across the curriculum, including into civic education (CE). However, the integration of numeracy in CE in Indonesian universities has not yet been clearly mapped out. This study aims to analyze the need for numeracy integration in CE as a basis for developing a numeracy-based CE learning model. Using a mixed method with an explanatory sequential design, the study involved a convenience sample of 225 students and 10 lecturers from various universities through surveys, interviews, observations, and documentation studies. Quantitative findings show that numeracy …

Building A Bridge To African American Student Success: A Quantitative Study At A Community College In Central Kentucky, Kauai R. Thurman

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Ernst and Sara Lane Volgenau College of Education at Morehead State University by Kauai R. Thurman on April 2, 2026.

Cuny Oer Initiative Catalog (Ay 2024-2025), Jahanara Alamgir, Yujin Lee-Hwang, Rachael Nevins, Elliot Galvis, Rebecca Morofsky, Andrew Mckinney, Jojo Karlin

Open Educational Resources

This circulating catalog inventories the reusable teaching objects produced by CUNY campuses in AY 2024-2025! You’ll find textbooks, assignments, syllabi, videos, and more, organized by discipline and with brief descriptions of the resource. This publication (which links to all the resources) is supplemented by a by our online, filterable CUNY OER Initiative Catalog.

The CUNY OLS Research and Publishing Strategy team gathered, described and indexed the work of the campuses. OLS Fellow Hwang-Lee Yujin designed the publication.

Beyond Sequencing: Curriculum As Organizational Practice In Housing & Residence Life, Matthew M. Inman

Master of Education, Student Affairs Independent Study Projects

This study considers the factors influencing curriculum development in student affairs,  with a particular focus on housing and residence life contexts. Grounded in a constructivist and  interpretive framework, this qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with student  affairs professionals engaged in curricular work. Data was analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s  (2006) six-phase thematic analysis process to identify patterns in participant meaning-making.  Analysis shows that curriculum development is shaped by a set of interrelated organizational  dynamics, including tensions between flexibility and structure, the role of language in facilitating  understanding across staff roles, the influence of leadership and human resource capacity, and  the …

¿Qué Significa Hacer Geografía En La Actualidad? Pensar El Método Y La Investigación Geográfica, Cristian Abad Restrepo, Marco René Rodríguez Ortiz

Educación

Este libro invita a repensar profundamente la geografía como ciencia crítica, comprometida con la transformación social y ambiental. Desde sus orígenes, la Geografía ha estado al servicio del poder, pero hoy se reivindica como herramienta para la justicia espacial y el bienestar colectivo. Los autores exploran cómo el conocimiento del espacio permite intervenir en él y cómo el método geográfico —con su uso riguroso de la cartografía, la observación morfológica y el análisis multiescalar— se convierte en una vía para comprender y transformar la realidad. El mapa no es solo representación: es poder, imaginación y acción. La obra destaca la …

Simulation Culture And Organizational Readiness In Social Work Education: Examining Faculty Perspectives., Kate Whitney

Doctor of Social Work Capstone Projects

Despite the growing emphasis on simulation-based learning (SBL), faculty perceptions of organizational readiness for this approach in social work education remain understudied. This exploratory mixed-methods study examined faculty readiness across two CSWE-accredited programs using the Simulation Culture Organizational Readiness Scale (SCORS) and qualitative open-ended questions (𝑁=21). Findings revealed modest and uneven readiness across both programs, with full-time faculty reporting significantly lower readiness scores than adjunct and part-time faculty. Qualitative data identified critical needs for foundational dialogue on SBL principles, strategic institutional investment, and targeted faculty development. Participants also expressed concerns regarding the pace of adoption and potential conflicts with the …

Leveraging The Intersection Of Ai And Play To Foster Human Connectedness And Character Formation, Lori B. Doyle, Ashley Brandon

Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership

The benefits of fostering character formation are vast, encompassing psychological, social and emotional growth, yet there is no universally prescribed manner by which to proceed. Central to these efforts is human connectedness, which enhances psychological functioning and provides a pivotal foundation for well-being. Emerging factors such as integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the pedagogy of play are novel topics for the conversation within the character formation discourse. These elements, while tangentially related, hold significant potential to amplify character formation and sense of belonging. This paper examines the intersection of AI, pedagogy of play, and character formation through a theoretical …

Global Pathways: Suwon, South Korea - Semester Abroad Program Proposal, Amanda D. Ledger

Capstone Collection

This capstone proposes the Global Pathways: Suwon program, a semester-long study abroad initiative developed in partnership between Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) and Kyonggi University (KGU) in Suwon, South Korea. The program responds to current limitations in study abroad, particularly the prevalence of short-term tourism-oriented experiences and curricula that prioritizes Western perspectives. A needs assessment consisting of student interviews, surveys, and professional consultation demonstrated strong interest in programs that combine language learning, cultural immersion, and career development. Findings also highlighted the importance of financial accessibility, reciprocal host partnerships, and ongoing advising support. Drawing on Freire’s critical pedagogy and Vygotsky’s sociocultural …

Hidden Gems Of Clay County: “Snap + Say Something” Inquiry Protocol, David Wolff

OER Materials

The goal of this assignment was to design an immersive, place‑based learning experience that helps preservice teachers engage with primary sources connected to the history and culture of Clay County, Minnesota. In collaboration with the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, preservice teachers visited the Hjemkomst Center and used autophotography to document artifacts, exhibits, and moments that helped them understand what makes Moorhead and the wider Clay County community a unique and meaningful place. Alongside their photographs, they wrote reflections explaining why each image captures an aspect of Clay County as a “special place.” This approach is intended …

Inclusive Teaching Strategies That Increase Student Engagement, Manar Yamany, Jeffrey Carver

2026 Scholarly Teaching Conference: Concurrent Session Papers

This teaching practice introduces participation pathways intentional structures that design how students engage during class. A participation pathway is a planned sequence that moves students from individual thinking to small-group interaction, to shared application. Rather than relying on voluntary participation, this approach embeds engagement directly into the structure of the lesson.

This practice emerged through observing a range of college classrooms and participating in courses where structured engagement increased attention, listening, and meaningful participation. In these settings, instructors organized class sessions so that all students engaged through writing, discussion, and application activities. These pathways ensured that students who were present …

Meaningful Work: A Phenomenological Study Of Embedded Writing Peer Mentors, Susan S. Detwiler

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This phenomenological case study examines the experiences of writing peer mentors who are embedded in a first-year inquiry-based writing seminar. It aims to understand how peer mentors who are engaged in the complex practice of supporting first-year writers in a writing classroom make sense of themselves and writing. At a large R-1 diverse university, I interviewed 6 writing peer mentors 3 times over 1 calendar year. I traced their development from mentees, (first-year writing students), through their three semesters of peer mentoring. They also shared written reflections from their training praxis course (a course for peer mentors focusing on their …