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.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5
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- All Subjects: pedagogy
- Creators: Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958-
Description
The United States is currently the world's largest reception and placement country of the nearly 22 million refugees worldwide. Of the numbers of refugees resettled, almost half of them are under the age of 18 and are arriving in American schools having experienced trauma, stress, and limited education during the conflict in their home country. Teacher experiences with refugee students can have a profound effect on the way refugee children feel they are received in the school community. Drawing on previous studies that emphasize the challenges that refugee students face, this thesis looks at the training that teachers receive that prepares them to work with refugee students in public schools in Maricopa County, Arizona. Through a review of the literature and data collected from teacher and former refugee student interviews, this research explores what teachers know and need to know to teach refugee students successfully. Innovative practices that teachers employ are also highlighted, and recommendations for further research, policy, and practice are provided.
ContributorsHenderson, Joanna (Author) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Thesis advisor) / Arzubiaga, Angela (Thesis advisor) / Androff, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
The following study is based on my individual and collective practice as a former staff member of El Centro de Desarrollo Alternativo Indígena A.C., a non-profit who works in the Sierra Madre Occidental in the north of Mexico, and my experience as a master student in the US. I am developing this research as a reflective instrument to improve the strategies that I have been developing and implementing. To reach this goal I present the concept of praxis, which Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci used some years ago, as a methodology to shorten the gap between my practice and theory. Furthermore, I use the theoretical framework of popular education, and other ideas from the complementary fields of community development, and Critical Race Theory/TribalCrit, to shed light on how to improve our practice and the pedagogies we use as part of our work. The main question that is guiding this study is: What is the learning dynamic of organizations and participants who are doing community development work with Indigenous communities? To answer this, I analyze the data I collected in 2016, which includes: two months of participant observation, sixteen in-depth interviews, and one focus group with staff members. The findings of this research suggest that staff members have learned to respect time and culture of the community and to validate local knowledge; community members have shared that they have learned new agricultural practices, production of organic fertilizers and pesticides, earthworm compost, food conservation methods, communication skills and to work together. The ways identified in which participants have learned are: by doing, by observation, by dialogue, by receptivity, by recognition, through meetings and by reflection. The results of this research are consistent with what popular educators say: neutrality is impossible. Practices of the nonprofits do not occur in a vacuum; therefore, the mechanisms of auto analysis and reflection that CEDAIN staff shared, in conjunction with the attempt of this research to unveil the hidden and explicit curriculum of the practices of CEDAIN, are great tools to trigger critical consciousness, challenge what we have taken for granted, and recreate better practices. This research is a result of the compilation and analysis of the narratives, experiences and knowledge of community and staff members who participated in this study. In this sense, these set of ideas, which place grassroots experiences as the principal source of knowledge, could be applied to plan and design future pedagogical interventions.
ContributorsMorales Guerrero, Jorge (Author) / Sumida Huaman, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The pace of segregation of races continues to increase as the gap between wealthy people, and the rest of the human race, increases. Technological advances in human communication ironically decrease human communication as people choose news and social media sites that feed their ideological frames. Bridging the sociopolitical gap is increasingly difficult. Further, privileged hegemonic forces exert pressure to maintain the status quo at the expense of greater humanity. Despite this grave account, some members of the privileged hegemony have moved away from their previous adherence to it and emerged as activists for marginalized populations.
Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Pedagogy for the Privileged, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Transformative Learning Theory and Critical White Studies, this study asks the question: what factors lead to an ideological shift?
Fifteen participants agreed to an in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interview. There were four main themes that emerged. Most participants experienced significant childhood challenges as well as segregated environments. Additionally, they possessed personality traits of curiosity and critical thinking which left them at odds with their family members; and finally, each experienced exposure to new environments and new people. Most notably, in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity and to remedy the disconnect between the imposed family values and their own internal inclinations, most actively sought out disorienting dilemmas that would facilitate an ideological shift. This journey typically included copious reading, critically analyzing information and, mostly importantly, immersion in new environments.
The goal of this study was to understand which factors precipitate an ideological shift in the hope of using the data to create effective interventions that bridge ideological gaps. It was revealed that some of the initiative for this shift is innate, and therefore unreachable. However, exposure to disorienting dilemmas successfully caused an ideological shift. Critically, this research revealed that it is important to identify those individuals who possess this innate characteristic of curiosity and dissatisfaction with the status quo and create opportunities for them to be exposed to new people, information and environments. This will likely lead to a shift from White hegemonic adherent to an emerging advocate for social justice.
Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Pedagogy for the Privileged, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Transformative Learning Theory and Critical White Studies, this study asks the question: what factors lead to an ideological shift?
Fifteen participants agreed to an in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interview. There were four main themes that emerged. Most participants experienced significant childhood challenges as well as segregated environments. Additionally, they possessed personality traits of curiosity and critical thinking which left them at odds with their family members; and finally, each experienced exposure to new environments and new people. Most notably, in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity and to remedy the disconnect between the imposed family values and their own internal inclinations, most actively sought out disorienting dilemmas that would facilitate an ideological shift. This journey typically included copious reading, critically analyzing information and, mostly importantly, immersion in new environments.
The goal of this study was to understand which factors precipitate an ideological shift in the hope of using the data to create effective interventions that bridge ideological gaps. It was revealed that some of the initiative for this shift is innate, and therefore unreachable. However, exposure to disorienting dilemmas successfully caused an ideological shift. Critically, this research revealed that it is important to identify those individuals who possess this innate characteristic of curiosity and dissatisfaction with the status quo and create opportunities for them to be exposed to new people, information and environments. This will likely lead to a shift from White hegemonic adherent to an emerging advocate for social justice.
ContributorsKolomyjec, Wanda (Author) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Lee, Charles (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Rohd, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This master's thesis examines negative stereotypes of blackness in mainstream media in the Dominican Republic, and analyzes the manner in which racial identity has been reinforced and contested. Discourse analysis is utilized to analyze the language and rhetoric of editorials from Listin Diario. The rationale for this study is to assess how Dominicans have learned about blackness through the depictions in media and popular music, and therefore draw conclusions as to how Dominicans view their own racial identity. Considerable attention will be paid to the years between 2010-2013, using the Haitian earthquake disaster of 2010 and Verdict TC 0168-13 of the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal of 2013 as major historical events to frame the study. To these assumptions, this inquiry addresses the following questions: How have Haitians been portrayed in the mainstream newspaper of Listin Diario between the period of 2010-2013? How do the pedagogies in media and popular music educate Dominicans about portrayals of blackness during this period? What are the historiographical roots of these portrayals, particularly regarding the dynamics of race and citizenship? I will demonstrate that the prevailing depictions of Haitians adhere to a historically oriented construction of Dominican identity, known as "Dominicanidad" or "Dominicanness," and that these depictions largely omit African heritage as a contributor to national identity.
ContributorsMora, Omar V (Author) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Thesis advisor) / Bontemps, Alex (Committee member) / Gomez, Alan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
These are unprecedented times. Like never before, humans, having separated themselves from the web of life through the skillful use of their opposable thumbs, have invented the means of extinction and have systematized it for the benefit of the few at the expense of all else. Yet humans are also designing fixes and alternatives that will soon overcome the straight line trajectory to ugliness and loss that the current order would lead the rest of humanity through. The works in this dissertation are connected by two themes: (1) those humans who happen to be closely connected to the lands, waters and wildlife, through millennia of adaptation and inventive association, have a great deal to share with the rest, who, through history have become distanced from the lands and waters and wildlife they came from; and (2) as the inheritors of all the insults that the current disrespectful and wasteful system is heaping upon all true sensibilities, young people, who are Indigenous, and who are the critical generation for biocultural survival, have an immense role to play - for their cultures, and for all of the rest. The survivance of autochthonous culture through intergenerational conduct of cultural practice and spirituality is profoundly affected by fundamental physical factors of resilience related to food, water, and energy security, and the intergenerational participation of youth. So this work is not so much an indictment of the system as it is an attempt to reveal at least two ways that the work of these young Indigenous people can be expedited: through the transformation of their education so that more of their time as youths is spent focusing on the wonderful attributes of their cultural associations with the lands, waters, and wildlife; and through the creation of a self-sustaining youth owned and operated enterprise that provides needed services to communities so they can adapt to and mitigate the increasingly variable, unpredictable, and dangerous effects and impacts of global heating and climate disruption.
ContributorsEricson, Mark (Author) / Brayboy, Bryan (Thesis advisor) / Sumida Huaman, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015