Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Worldbuilding: A Theory Of Resilience In Transgender And Gender Expansive Young People, Jennifer Debower

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Transgender and gender expansive (TGE) young people have long histories of surviving, resisting, and even thriving despite hostility. However, dominant narratives rarely explore their stories of agency and resilience. This research aims to address that gap by asking: Where are the stories of TGE youth's strength, creativity, and resistance? What lessons lie within them? Using a critical, constructivist grounded theory approach, this study examines how 16 TGE young people navigate and challenge transphobia’s precarious conditions. Results suggest that because the current realities do not make space for their existence, TGE young people find strength in creative practices (fashion, hair, body …

Por Ellas: A Latina’S Autoethnography On Emotions, Achievement And Agentic Learning, Ivonne Barreras

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, students of Spanish-speaking descent classified as Hispanic, Latino, or Latinx attending public school districts continue to demonstrate alarmingly high academic underachievement and dropout rates. Standards-based learning environments and related assessments tend to marginalize people whose lived realities already make the prospect of achievement daunting. In other words, people living amid high-risk factors, including low educational and occupational aspirations, health, or family-related absenteeism, counterculture or early pregnancy, are often among those whose decision to drop out is most often influenced by social and academic experiences (Rumberger, 2011). Research on neuroplasticity and mindfulness explains the influence emotions have …

An Analysis Of Women And Terrorism: Perpetrators, Victims, Both?, Elizabeth Lauren Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze women’s participation in terrorism under groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It will research the use of violence within terrorist organizations, perpetrated by female participants. What leads women to join groups like the Islamic State? There will be an analysis of the factors that attract women to joining terrorist organizations, in addition to the practices of recruitment that aid in their radicalization. There is a misconception that women who join the Islamic State lack education, which is seen as the sole reasoning for their radicalization or involvement. In reality, several reasons exist leading to their …

Agentive Personhood: Finding Yourself Through Serving Others, Sasha M. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the core of this study, at the core the transformative experiences that will be described, is agency and what can occur when it is at the forefront of development and learning. I discuss educational spaces that give young learners the opportunity to recognize their ability to shift their perception of themselves and the world and lead to social change. I address this topic through the lens of my own experiences and the experiences of my peers. This study is a reflection on my experiences of participating in a social justice program. I hold a mirror to myself and contemplate …

Genealogy Of The Concept Of "Hate Crime": The Cultural Implications Of Legal Innovation And Social Change, Roslyn Myers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The term "hate crime" is new to legislative and public discourse, as well as legal and social science scholarship. A decade after the concept of a "hate crime" was introduced in Congress, the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA), to punish criminal actors who target victims because of their characteristics (race, color ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, gender, gender identity, or disability). Using relevant archival sources, this project uses genealogical qualitative methods to examine the interplay of cultural elements manifested in this provocative term, which reflect dominance and subjugation among social groups (In- and Out-Groups) …

Development Of Authoring And Agency In Early Childhood Through Play, Pi-Chun Grace Ho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The recent national focus on universal early childhood education programs has drawn attention to the challenges of organizing learning contexts and practices in which children can thrive as learners and community members. Preparing children for school and improving the quality of early childhood education face limits, however, when the role of play is dismissed or reduced to merely instrumental activity. Framed in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, Bakhtin’s dialogic approach, and Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, I reframe play as a process of authoring that fuels children’s passion for being agentive actors in the world and their own lives. This approach addresses how …

Exploring The Uses Of Cultural Funds Of Knowledge Among Ethnic Minority Immigrant College Students In Their Constructions Of Learning Identities Within A Collaborative Photovoice Project, Stacey Jennell Cooper

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Today’s college classrooms are distinguished by an increase in ethnic minority and immigrant student populations, yet there is little reflection of such diversity in the curriculum and teacher preparation and practice. Ethnic minority immigrant students bring with them into learning spaces much valuable cultural knowledge. If validated, this knowledge can become an essential resource from which these students can draw in creating their learning identities and goals.

This study explored how a group of ethnic minority immigrant community college students created potential identities in relation to learning by drawing on their culturally and historically informed funds of knowledge, including values, …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …