Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Transforming Equity: A Systemic Analysis Of The Equity Model Of Social Justice Education Through The Lens Of Conflict Transformation Theory, Precious J. Golden

University Honors Theses

Current pedagogical theory and practices grounded in social justice aim to rectify systemic barriers to equity, yet despite decades of teaching through a social justice lens, social inequality and cultural division are on the rise.  "Justice," as a noun, has several meanings (Cambridge Dictionary). It can mean "judge", "law," or "fairness," and justice, no matter its meaning or its need, is achieved through methods of conflict resolution and conflict transformation. This inquiry seeks to present conflict transformation as a radical means of achieving transformative social justice, bringing voice to the voiceless and oppressed, and rectifying the contradictions in the current …

Voices Of Agency: Unpacking Student Insights On Nysed Content Standards, Local Curricular Practices, Pedagogy In New York State Schools, And Their Educational Implications, Alprentice Ashanti Talibudeen Mccutchen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research sets out to explore the concept of agency in the context of education, including my distinction between passive agency and active agency, and how these distinctions have been taken up by scholars, educators, and policy makers. The core approach is based in an expansive inclusion of various perspectives on agency as a basis for developing a comprehensive framework of active agency as well as its opportunities for educational practices and outcomes. I am arguing that there is a gap—an agency gap—between the passive and active employment of agency. I am also arguing that there is an agency in …

Centering “Ubuntu” To Build Research Confidence And Joyful Collaboration, Suyent Rodriguez Candeaux, Brandi Wells-Stone

Feminist Pedagogy

As feminist scholar-practitioners who are committed to an abolitionist teaching praxis, we are embracing the concept of Ubuntu, “I am because you are,” to build Black students’ research confidence through joyful collaboration. This critical commentary draws on our autoethnographic accounts to discuss how centering decolonial, critical, and Black feminist frameworks shifted how we support students in co-constructing knowledge through a cohort based undergraduate research program. Our collaborative approach to pedagogy has built students’ research confidence through culturally centered practices that value diverse ways of knowing and student contribution. Love (2019) argues, “abolitionist teaching is not sustainable without joy” (p. 120). …

“We Sing Too:” Pedagogical Approaches For Listening To Children In Indigenous Picturebooks, Rachel Stubbs, Anja Dressler Araujo, Kari Dressler, Jadyn Fischer-Mcnabb, Aubrey Hanson, Erin Spring

Occasional Paper Series

This article explores how storytelling, particularly through picture books, facilitates learning across boundaries of age, culture, gender, and education. In this article, we emphasize the value of picture books in integrating Indigenous oral traditions into the classroom, highlighting how these texts foster a reciprocal relationship between listener and storyteller. By focusing on the act of listening, our article argues that Indigenous picture books require active participation and decentering of the individual, positioning listeners as part of a larger collective. This article also underscores the importance of viewing children as active, responsible, and agential members of their communities, aligning with Indigenous …

Extracting From The Extracurriculum: Using Extracurricular Composition Practices To Bring Purpose, Voice, And Engagement Back To The English Classroom, Grace N. Ellis

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores how principles and practices from extracurricular literacy spaces and the extracurriculum as a whole can inform and revitalize the secondary English classroom. In response to growing student disengagement, apathy, and disconnection, particularly within highly standardized and product-focused classrooms, this argument investigates how programs such as the Nebraska Writers Collective’s All Writes Reserved program and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Young Writer Camp model authentic engagement, identity exploration and development, and rhetorical agency through creative, student-centered writing practices. Drawing from composition theory, educational research, and experiential data from Nebraska-based writing initiatives, the thesis argues that incorporating choice, safe-risk taking, …

The Current 'Ban-Demic': School Book Bans In The U.S., Barbara Perez, Jane Caputi

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay examines the alarming rise of U.S book. Our stance is grounded in our experiences as educators and academics in Florida, the state with the highest number of book bans and legislation that has significantly impacted education. Book bans infringe on freedom of expression, right to access information, = students’ right to education, and real harm to targeted communities (i.e., LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities), as the bans contribute to the ongoing marginalization and stigmatization of these communities. Diverse representation is key in literature and education. Banning popular culture texts from the classroom stifles critical thinking, social dialogue, and, ultimately, …

“Honey, Life Is Just A Classroom:” Using Taylor Swift As A Pedagogical Tool For College Composition, Liz Thomae

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

As educators, we confront the challenge of cultivating a deeper understanding of writing in an age obsessed with utilitarianism, instant gratification, and pragmatism. Students come into our classrooms inundated with these messages of utility and often find subjects within the humanities, especially first year writing, boring and unhelpful. Especially with the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) use in our classrooms and society at large, we as pedagogues have our work cut out for us. I propose a pedagogical approach that bridges students' interests with essential writing skills by integrating Taylor Swift's music into the composition classroom. Swift's evolution as …

A Pipeline To Prison Or A Pathway To Promise? The Inequities Fueling The School To Prison Pipeline, Ranishia Lachelle Bailey

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This systematic review proposal would investigate the school-to-prison pipeline and examine the role of pedagogical interventions in mitigating youth involvement in the justice system. By analyzing existing literature, this proposal would study and explore how school system biases, educational frameworks, and systemic factors contribute to the perpetuation of this pipeline, with a specific focus on how educational policies and disciplinary practices impact at-risk youth. The review aims to identify effective interventions that can disrupt this cycle, including restorative justice practices, trauma-informed education, positive behavioral interventions, and culturally responsive teaching. A comprehensive search strategy should be employed across various academic databases, …

Creating Worlds: Anarchist Education Within And Against The State, Paul B. Berlet

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis shows how contemporary U.S. schooling reproduces domination and erodes freedom by examining education as a mechanism of social reproduction, disciplinary control, surveillance, and neoliberalization. I draw on Foucault, social reproduction theory, Freire, Vygotsky, and anarchist philosophy while using a critical action research lens to name the structural forces that condition obedience, normalize hierarchy, and individualize responsibility. In response, this thesis asks how anarchist pedagogy functions as an antithesis to these forces. This framework leads me to articulate how anarchist education could emerge through prefigurative community building. Educators are capable of helping to create new worlds both within and …

Race Into The Future: Counselor Educators' Experiences Training With An Antiracist Pedagogy, Darita Rose Grays

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores the role of counselor educators in incorporating an antiracist pedagogy to prepare counselors-in-training to work as culturally competent counselors with all clients, with emphasis on marginalized groups. The research examines the lived experiences of counselor educators, focusing on how their personal and professional journeys influence their approach to integrating antiracist teaching strategies in counselor education programs. It highlights the critical need to address and acknowledge racism within counselor training while emphasizing the importance of developing an antiracist identity among both educators and trainees. The study further explores the potential of antiracist pedagogy in fostering a more inclusive, …

Wondrous Uncertainty: Transforming Student Educational Experiences Using Restorative Practices, Zachary C. Schafer

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

One of the primary purposes of education is to help students make sense of their lived experiences. In the process of becoming, students navigate multiple relationships (school, peers, adults, and with self). These relationships often cause conditions of uncertainty which can be managed and transformed using restorative practices in tandem with the academic disciplines taught in school. Over the last decade this has been my inquiry puzzle, “As educators, how can we embrace uncertainty with students as a way of helping to empower them through their dignity, with the academic disciplines as a lens through which relational learning occurs in …

Escaping The Pedagogical Cabin In The Woods, Tony Kemerly, Davis Ritenour

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The American educational system, because of its seemingly innocuous yet ubiquitous nature, has become, to borrow a term from Roland Barthes, naturalized. By being naturalized, it has become a system that has somehow slipped beneath the radar of the American populace and operates on an autopilot of sorts that allows it to employ practices that don’t necessarily have the best interests of its constituents at heart. Murray Rothbard (1979) argued that compulsory schooling is not guided by altruism, but rather a desire to coerce the population into a mold that is desired by those possessing power in society. This need …

Teaching Ettingerian Matrixial Theory, R. Michael Fisher

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Utilizing an adapted scoping review of the literature on Bracha L. Ettinger and Education (2008-2024), the author reveals the specific ways that Ettingerian Matrixial Theory (EMT) and its pedagogies are taught and can be taught in the future. EMT is argued to be a new branch of Critical Theory. The current literature shows there is mostly engagement with EMT in academic settings. As well, the literature reviewed shows EMT is used readily in arts and with artists as teachers and teachings for adults. However, the author unveils diverse other possibilities of teaching EMT. A few major themes from the literature …

Tackling History In The Cultural Studies Seminar, Becca Cragin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

While cultural theory developed in past eras was often marred by the biases of its privileged authors, we are still often required to teach the canon, so that graduate students can recognize past intellectual trends to which current critiques of the canon respond. In this article, a “History of Feminist Theory” course is employed as an example of larger principles of foundations course design that can be used in any cultural studies seminar to productively address the tension between old and new schools of thought. It provides suggestions for structuring syllabi and discussions in ways that productively engage with earlier …

A Touch Of Grey: Personal Reflections On Teaching The Grateful Dead To Seniors, Robert Trudeau

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay reflects on several occasions in which I was a facilitator introducing the music of the Grateful Dead to groups of senior citizens. Several themes emerge: First, there is the need to separate the facilitator’s feelings as a convinced Deadhead from the inclinations of older individuals who know little about the Grateful Dead. Second, an indirect approach that emphasizes lyrics and accessible songs seems to have the best impact, if the goal is to encourage individuals to want to learn more about, and listen to, the Grateful Dead’s music. Third, one should let students construct the framework of the …

Teaching The Grateful Dead, Happenings, & Spontaneous Pedagogy, Ryan Slesinger

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

To teach a course on the Grateful Dead I developed a praxis I call “spontaneous pedagogy” that pairs academic rigor with flexible curriculum details to enable creativity and engagement among students in a truly studentcentered classroom. The pairing of spontaneous pedagogy with the Grateful Dead course worked well because the subject emphasizes improvisation, which initially inspired and—during the course—paralleled my praxis. I had developed this praxis previously, implementing it each semester from 2007 to2010 for one Composition II unit on definitional arguments entitled, “The Nature of Reality.” Students were asked to define what they consider as real and apply that …

Collaborative Pedagogy: Teaching (With) The Grateful Dead On Tour, On Campus, And Online, Rebecca G. Adams

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay describes my experiences teaching with the Grateful Dead “on tour” in 1989, on campus in the early 2000s, and online in 2019. Using a life course framework, I discuss how my own development as a teacher, Deadhead, and Grateful Dead scholar and the changing context over time shaped these experiences and how teaching with the Grateful Dead opened a pedagogical space for experimentation that allowed the students and me to take risks and to collaborate despite status differences. Rather than unpacking these experiences entirely, my goal here is to focus on how these three experiences of teaching with …

Media Literacy, Education, And A Global Pandemic: Lessons Learned In A Gender And Pop Culture Classroom, Jessica Lowell Mason, Ebehitale Imobhio

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks writes that “to engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries.” Hence, this paper explores, through narrative dialogue, teacher and student perspectives on the pedagogical impact of the global pandemic on the process of engaging with and learning about media literacy. By naming and narrating teacher and student experiences and perspectives from a course on gender and pop culture that took place during the Spring 2020 semester, the paper aims to demonstrate the …

Experimental Forms And Identity Politics In 21st Century American Poetry, Ronnie Stephens

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

“Experimental Forms and Identity Politics in 21st Century American Poetry” explores the function of form in American poetry and its proximity to whiteness. Through an analysis of experimental and nontraditional forms I argue that poets Fatimah Asghar, Jericho Brown, Franny Choi, Natalie Diaz, Ilya Kaminsky, and Danez Smith challenge traditional notions of what a poem is; these authors use graphics and co-opt familiar text objects to challenge larger assumptions about gender identity, ableism, and the immigrant experience. These experimental forms are grounded in a larger poetic tradition that alters traditional forms, such as the sonnet, to disrupt and further dialogue …

What We Owe Our Students: The Good Place, Pedagogy, And The Architecture Of Engaged Learning, Shala A. Mills, Darrell Hamlin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the architecture of a learning environment. The discipline of philosophy has often operated according to a pedagogy of conversation, clarity, and reflection, certainly since the era of Socratic dialogue in the streets of Athens. We argue that The Good Place occupies that space, re-setting this pedagogy as an architecture of learning through entertainment associated with ultimate matters of eternal disposition. A critical character driving conversation, clarity, and reflection across four seasons of the story’s arc is a philosopher – doomed by their own indecisive flaws – who teaches deep understanding of ethical development through a variety of relevant …

Conceptualizing Empathy And Prosocial Action: Teaching Film Within The Literature Classroom, Mayuri Deka

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The experience of viewing a movie in the global era is multi-faceted. A viewer’s response to a cinematic experience as Carl Plantinga explains in Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience is not only admiration for the aesthetics and techniques employed in the movie but also in the emotions aroused by the storyline. Audiences react to the story and characters presented with directed emotions by imagining either their mental lives and feelings or their situations. Empathy occurs within this framework of imagination where the audience engages with the story and character based on these directed emotions. The audience …

Hell You Talmbout: Mixtapes As Method For Online Environmental Justice Pedagogy, Elspeth Iralu, Caitlin Grann

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper takes on the mixtape as a pedagogical method for approaching urgent and critical topics within the undergraduate online classroom. Drawing on two case studies from different sections of an introductory course on environmental and social justice taught in an American studies department, we demonstrate how mixtape-inspired assignments offer a method for theorizing and enacting the connections between popular culture and critical scholarship around injustice in the humanities and social sciences while also altering the space of the classroom to promote deeper student engagement, comprehension, and reflection. We argue that introducing popular culture as both content and method within …

Queerly Cultivating Anti-Racist Feminist Pedagogy, Laurie Fuller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Queerly Cultivating Anti-Racist Feminist Pedagogy raises questions and analyzes classroom practices based on adrienne maree brown’s (2017) Emergent Strategy, a radical self-help manual for our current political climate that calls for a paradigm shift in organizing work. Black, mixed, queer, pansexual, feminist writer, pleasure activist, facilitator and sci-fi scholar, brown builds on a continuous tradition of women of color feminists resisting oppression to bring together science fiction and permaculture, biomimicry and organizing, pleasure and activism. She offers fresh perspectives on how to imagine liberation and provides dynamic ways to think about teaching and learning. Emergent Strategy provides principles to …

Pedagogy, Ideology, & Composition: Is There A Better Way To Teach?, Erin Guydish Buchholz

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

While academia tends to focus on differentiating various groups of students, prioritizing similar learning practices can have surprising and potentially transforming outcomes. In classrooms that are often filled with students who do not quite comprehend the significance of critical thinking processes or practices, the role they will play as global citizens, or why studying abstract topics is necessary, interchanging effective pedagogy from one classroom or student type to another may result in more engaged and productive learning. Additionally, students may mature and create their personas more clearly when classes interject ‘basic’ classroom practices such as modeling respect while discussing politics …

“I Am A Conversation”: Media Literacy, Queer Pedagogy, And Steven Universe In College Curriculum, Misty Thomas

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The recent cartoon show on Cartoon Network Steven Universe allows for the blending of both queer theory and media literacies to create a pedagogical space for students to investigate and analyze not only queerness, but also normative and non-normative identities. This show creates characters as well as relationships that both break with and subvert what would be considered traditional masculine and feminine identities. Additionally, Steven Universe also creates a space where sexuality and transgender bodies are represented. This paper demonstrates both the presence of queerness within the show and the pedagogical implications for using this piece of media within a …

We All Have Jobs Here: Teaching And Learning With Multiple Intelligences In The Walking Dead, Lizabeth Gartley

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

With the rise of cultural studies, positivism and formalism fell out of favor. But in recent years, altered versions of these methodologies have been suggested as solutions to the deficiencies of the ideological approach dominating the field. Where the ideological approach looks at the content of texts to determine their meaning, the aesthetic approach adopted by media scholars in recent years returns to the close textual readings of formalism (while abandoning its assertion that meaning resides in the text alone). Similarly, where the ideological approach tends to use textual analysis devoid of sociological empiricism, the use of “big data” in …

Grounded Aesthetics: Pedagogy For A Post-Truth Era, Becca Cragin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

With the rise of cultural studies, positivism and formalism fell out of favor. But in recent years, altered versions of these methodologies have been suggested as solutions to the deficiencies of the ideological approach dominating the field. Where the ideological approach looks at the content of texts to determine their meaning, the aesthetic approach adopted by media scholars in recent years returns to the close textual readings of formalism (while abandoning its assertion that meaning resides in the text alone). Similarly, where the ideological approach tends to use textual analysis devoid of sociological empiricism, the use of “big data” in …

Dumbledore’S Uncertain Past: A Harry Potter Approach To Evaluating Sources, Kathryn N. Mcdaniel

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Teaching students to evaluate sources—for accuracy, bias, and agenda—and to use them effectively despite their weaknesses, presents a challenge, and yet is essential in today’s crowded media landscape. Most humanities and social science teachers spend at least some class time helping students develop a critical eye for documentary evidence. Using the fictional informational sources J. K. Rowling presents in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to understand Albus Dumbledore’s troubled youth can provide students the analytic skills they need through an entertaining exercise. The Harry Potter stories intrinsically value the past, though Rowling is not naïve about the difficulty of …

The Pedagogy And Politics Of Racial Passing: Examining Media Literacy In Turn-Of-The-Century Activist Periodicals, Tara Propper

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores how we can use African American activist media to theorize the role of pedagogy in the public sphere. Focusing on how racial passing stories expose the limiting (and often tropic) binaries through which racial identity is deciphered, this analysis further highlights the extent to which these binary constructions of identity are learned through media narration.

Using the December 1912, issue of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crisis Magazine as a touchstone for investigation, this analysis considers how pedagogy is taken up as both a theme and project in the magazine. Foregrounding the degree to which Crisis critiques …

From The Vertical To The Horizontal: Introducing Mikhail Epstein’S Transculture To Perplexed Educators, Sheldon S. Kohn

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

A shift in focus from supporting or opposing vertical, grand narratives to the horizontal, the ordinary and the everyday, can lead educators to transformative developments. Educators find themselves in a false dichotomy of being restricted to supporting or opposing competing vertical utopian visions of education. Mikhail Epstein’s ideas about transculture can help perplexed educators make a shift from the vertical to the horizontal, focusing their praxis and pedagogy on the ordinary and the everyday, including objects and artifacts of popular culture. In a radical move, Epstein argues that commodification represents resistance to totalitarian controls and impulses; he urges educators to …