ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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Description
Since the introduction of the common school in the United States (US), education has constantly been in a state of reform. Given the importance of student learning to the future state of our nation, it is important to understand how positive educational reform can be achieved. This ethnographic case study aims to try to understand how a reform effort works as an educational and a sociocultural process, and what the important contributing factors to actualizing school reform are, as well as the challenges of effective implementation. Specifically, this study focuses on a school-wide reform effort based upon Stephen Covey's Seven Habits (1989). Qualitative research methods were used to address the research questions in this study. The researcher drew upon interviews, observations, and artifact and field note collection to tell the story of an elementary school engaged in year three of a school-wide reform initiative from the viewpoint of 10 teachers involved. Three recurring themes emerged from the data. First, data indicate that school reform is most effective when a school culture is created that supports the activation of teacher voice, efficacy, and coparticipation. Second, time and support are factors impacting implementation. Third, teachers reported that the common language from the reform has impacted the culture of the school. The evolution of a school culture is not simple and is demonstrated in the different ways the teachers experience the reform. Questions of authenticity arise when the reform effort changes from a grassroots, bottom-up initiative to a more top-down, bureaucratized business model.
ContributorsLamp, Michelle (Author) / Mccarty, Teresa (Thesis advisor) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Powers, Jeanne (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This is a genealogical study of the taken-for-granted ‘free’ or ‘self-governed’ play practice at the free schools. The study places play practice within a historical trajectory. The study compares and analyzes the current (1960s to present) discursive formations of play practice as they emerge in various archival texts such as on free schools, and juvenile delinquency and youth crime, to the discursive formations of the 1890s to 1929s as they emerge in various archival texts such as on physical education, public bath, city problems, playground, outdoor recreation legislation, and recreation areas and juvenile delinquency. The study demonstrates how various “subjugated knowledges” appeared during these time periods around play practice. Foucauldian genealogy is crafted for the study through Foucault’s lectures, interviews, essays, and how other scholars wrote about Foucauldian genealogy and conducted genealogical work themselves. The study is to challenge what it seems to be the grand narrative of this play practice in free schools. Instead of being the form of learning that allows students to seek their truest capacity and interest, learning, and eventually growth and happiness, this practice does so at a great cost, and therefore it is a dangerous practice, opens up various power/knowledge such as play is used as a systematic and accurate technology to shape, mold, and organize the schooled children body, a means to interrupt and intervene with the children growth, as the technology of school hygiene, and as a governing tool to help the state, nation, family, and school, produce ‘good’ citizens, who will not commit to idleness, delinquency, gang-spirit, and similar others.
ContributorsAletheiani, Dinny Risri (Author) / Carlson, David L. (Thesis advisor) / Sandlin, Jennifer A. (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Project was conducted by a graduate student and teaching resident, alongside five middle school students at a public, Title-I charter school in a Southern California city. Together, the research team navigates the space of “yes and-” by examining what a school is doing well to affirm its students and what remains to be done better. The project’s guiding question is: how is positive change effectively created for marginalized communities at school? In pursuit of an answer, the YPAR group conducted a survey of about 220 middle school students, and interviews with five eighth graders. Data suggests that most students feel safe at school and that their identities are respected, but there is still significant room for growth. Implications suggest that the school should support more inclusion of student voice, intervention and practices that would eliminate the burden marginalized students carry.
ContributorsD'Antuono, Grace (Author) / Swadener, Elizabeth Blue (Thesis advisor) / Theisen-Homer, Victoria (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Within the past 10 years, there has been an increased interest in providing teachers with mindfulness training. This is due largely in part to the amount of stress that K-12 teachers report as a result of the profession and the research proposing that practicing mindfulness helps one cope with stress and offers the potential to promote one's well-being.
This qualitative study explores the intersection of mindfulness and K-12 teaching. Four K-12 teachers who self-identified as mindfulness practitioners were interviewed, and their lived experiences as mindfulness practitioners and teachers are explored throughout this study. Through in-depth, phenomenologically-based interviews, the participants' life histories in relation to becoming mindfulness practitioners and teachers are uncovered, as well as their experiences as mindfulness practitioners in the classroom, and their reflections upon what is means to be a mindfulness practitioner and a teacher.
For the participants in this study, they believed their mindfulness practices helped them cope with the demands of teaching. The participants also viewed mindfulness practices as a pedagogical tool for promoting their students' social and emotional well-being. As one of the first studies to explore teachers who have personal mindfulness practices and how those practices transfer or do not transfer into their professional experiences, it adds teachers' voices to the mindfulness in education phenomena.
This qualitative study explores the intersection of mindfulness and K-12 teaching. Four K-12 teachers who self-identified as mindfulness practitioners were interviewed, and their lived experiences as mindfulness practitioners and teachers are explored throughout this study. Through in-depth, phenomenologically-based interviews, the participants' life histories in relation to becoming mindfulness practitioners and teachers are uncovered, as well as their experiences as mindfulness practitioners in the classroom, and their reflections upon what is means to be a mindfulness practitioner and a teacher.
For the participants in this study, they believed their mindfulness practices helped them cope with the demands of teaching. The participants also viewed mindfulness practices as a pedagogical tool for promoting their students' social and emotional well-being. As one of the first studies to explore teachers who have personal mindfulness practices and how those practices transfer or do not transfer into their professional experiences, it adds teachers' voices to the mindfulness in education phenomena.
ContributorsFrias, Elizabeth Leigh (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Hyde, Andrea (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
In the years following Lance Freeman’s seminal study, There Goes the ‘Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up (2006), the literature about how Black residents experience gentrification and its impacts on education, agency, and life has grown only slightly, and tends to explore gentrification as a class-based phenomenon. Yet, in America, race is inextricably linked to economics and geographical space. Therefore any discussion of urban blight and economic redevelopment must necessarily locate race as its nucleus to connect the vestiges of systemic racism to contemporary issues of social transformation. Using Critical Race Theory as a construct, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate the interconnectedness of racism and capitalism to extend the academic and practical discussions of gentrification.
This ethnographically inspired study begins with a historical analysis of Olde Towne East (OTE), a gentrifying community in Columbus, Ohio and then moves to a contemporary analysis of relevant data to demonstrate the vast disparities across myriad measures between the neighborhood’s Black and White residents. The crux of the dissertation features interviews with Black residents (N=17) who shared their stories about life in OTE and reflected upon the dynamics they perceive and ascribe to be associated with the transformation of their community.
Using grounded theory to analyze the values, attitudes, and beliefs contained in participant reflections, findings indicate that Black folks in this study are keenly aware of the systemic forces, including institutionalized racism, that have resulted in the gentrifying of their community. In addition to the systemic factors these participants ascribe to be associated with the transformation of OTE, they also contend that a lack of Black critical consciousness exacerbated the racially inequitable outcomes associated with gentrification.
This ethnographically inspired study begins with a historical analysis of Olde Towne East (OTE), a gentrifying community in Columbus, Ohio and then moves to a contemporary analysis of relevant data to demonstrate the vast disparities across myriad measures between the neighborhood’s Black and White residents. The crux of the dissertation features interviews with Black residents (N=17) who shared their stories about life in OTE and reflected upon the dynamics they perceive and ascribe to be associated with the transformation of their community.
Using grounded theory to analyze the values, attitudes, and beliefs contained in participant reflections, findings indicate that Black folks in this study are keenly aware of the systemic forces, including institutionalized racism, that have resulted in the gentrifying of their community. In addition to the systemic factors these participants ascribe to be associated with the transformation of OTE, they also contend that a lack of Black critical consciousness exacerbated the racially inequitable outcomes associated with gentrification.
ContributorsStigler, Monica L (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo E (Thesis advisor) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Scott, Kimberly A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016