Matching Items (10)
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- All Subjects: narrative
- All Subjects: Sociology Of Education
- Creators: Margolis, Eric
Description
ABSTRACT This qualitative study examines how high school art teachers conceive of being a good art teacher. Motivated by my own experiences as an art teacher, I designed this study to add teachers' voices to the conversation surrounding quality in education. My research design included a narrative strand and an arts-based strand. In the narrative strand, I interviewed and observed 12 high school art educators from a major city in the southwest. I conducted an autoethnographic reflection exploring my connection to the research topic and research process. In the arts-based strand I used fiber-arts to further understand my topic. I wrote this dissertation using a narrative approach, blending the traditional research format, voices of participants, and my autoethnographic reflection. I included the results of my arts-based approach in the final chapter. Findings suggest that the teachers in this study conceptualize being a good art teacher as a process of identity construction. Each of the teachers understood what it meant to be a good art teacher in unique ways, connected to their personal experiences and backgrounds. As the teachers engaged in identity work to become the kind of art teacher they wanted to be, they engaged in a process of identity construction that consisted of four steps. I propose a model of identity construction in which the teachers chose teaching practices, evaluated those practices, identified challenges to their identities, and selected strategies to confirm, assert, or defend their desired identities. The findings have implications for teachers to become reflective practitioners; for teacher educators to prepare teachers to engage in reflective practices; and for administrators and policy makers to take into account the cyclical and personal nature of identity construction. This study also has implications for further research including the need to examine the dispositions of art teachers, teachers' evolving conceptions of what it means to be a good art teacher, and the effect labeling teachers' quality has on their identity construction.
ContributorsAndrelchik, Hillary (Author) / Erickson, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Michael Apple's scholarship on curriculum, educational ideology, and official knowledge continues to be influential to the study of schooling. Drawing on the sociological insights of Pierre Bourdieu and the cultural studies approaches of Raymond Williams, Apple articulates a theory of schooling that pays particular attention to how official knowledge is incorporated into the processes of schooling, including textbooks. In an effort to contribute to Apple's scholarship on textbooks, this study analyzed high school American history textbooks from the 1960s through the 2000s with specific attention to the urban riots of the late-1960s, sixties counterculture, and the women's movement utilizing Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic concept of abjection to augment Apple's theory of knowledge incorporation. This combination reveals not only how select knowledge is incorporated as official knowledge, but also how knowledge is treated as abject, as unfit for the curricular body of official knowledge and the selective tradition of American history. To bridge the theoretical frameworks of incorporation and abjection Raymond Williams' theory of structures of feeling and Slavoj iek's theory of ideological quilting are employed to show how feelings and emotional investments maintain ideologies. The theoretical framework developed and the interpretive analyses undertaken demonstrate how textbook depictions of these historical events structure students' present educational experiences with race, class, and gender.
ContributorsKearl, Benjamin (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Blumenfeld-Jones, Donald (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The Civil Rights Project estimates that Black girls are among the least likely to graduate from high school. More specifically, only about half, or 56%, of freshman Black girls graduate with their class four years later. Beyond the statistics little is known about Black girls who drop out, why they leave school and what happens to them once they are gone. This study is a grounded theory analysis of the stories eight adult Black women told about dropping out of high school with a particular focus on how dropping out affected their lives as workers, mothers and returners to education. There is one conclusion about dropping out and another about Black female identity. First, the women in my study were adolescents during the 1980s, experienced life at the intersection of Blackness, womaness, and poverty and lived in the harsh conditions of a Black American hyperghetto. Using a synthesis between intersectionality and hyperghettoization I found that the women were so determined to improve their economic and personal conditions that they took on occupations that seemed to promise freedom, wealth and safety. Because they were so focused on their new lives, their school attendance suffered as a consequence. In the second conclusion I argued that Black women draw their insights about Black female identity from two competing sources. The two sources are their lived experience and popular controlling images of Black female identity.
ContributorsGriffin, Erica Nicole (Author) / Powers, Jeanne (Thesis advisor) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This study explores experiences of women as they pursue post-secondary computing education in various contexts. Using in-depth interviews, the current study employs qualitative methods and draws from an intersectional approach to focus on how the various barriers emerge for women in different types of computing cultures. In-depth interviews with ten participants were conducted over the course of eight months. Analytical frameworks drawn from the digital divide and explorations of the role of hidden curricula in higher education contexts were used to analyze computing experiences in earlier k-12, informal, workplace, and post-secondary educational contexts to understand how barriers to computing emerge for women. Findings suggest several key themes. First, early experiences in formal education contexts are alienating women who develop an interest in computing. Opportunities for self-guided exploration, play, and tinkering help sustain interest in computing for women of color to engage in computing at the post-secondary level. Second, post-secondary computing climates remain hostile places for women, and in particular, for women of color. Thirdly, women employ a combination of different strategies to navigate these post-secondary computing cultures. Some women internalized existing dominant cultures of computing programs. Others chose exclusively online programs in computing to avoid negative interactions based on assumptions about their identity categories. Some women chose to forge their own pathways through computing to help diversify the culture via teaching, creating their own businesses, and through social programs.
ContributorsRatnabalasuriar, Sheruni (Author) / Romero, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Lim, Merlyna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This action research study is the culmination of several action cycles investigating cognitive information processing and learning strategies based on students approach to learning theory and assessing students' meta-cognitive learning, motivation, and reflective development suggestive of deep learning. The study introduces a reading assignment as an integrative teaching method with the purpose of challenging students' assumptions and requiring them to think from multiple perspectives thus influencing deep learning. The hypothesis is that students who are required to critically reflect on their own perceptions will develop the deep learning skills needed in the 21st century. Pre and post surveys were used to assess for changes in students' preferred approach to learning and reflective practice styles. Qualitative data was collected in the form of student stories and student literature circle transcripts to further describe student perceptions of the experience. Results indicate stories that include examples of critical reflection may influence students to use more transformational types of reflective learning actions. Approximately fifty percent of the students in the course increased their preference for deep learning by the end of the course. Further research is needed to determine the effect of narratives on student preferences for deep learning.
ContributorsBradshaw, Vicki (Author) / Carlson, David L. (Thesis advisor) / Jordan, Michelle (Committee member) / Gagnon, Marie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This narrative study sought to understand the socialization experiences of Hispanic entrepreneurs. While several studies have explored socialization and work-life wellness, few have focused specifically on Hispanics or entrepreneurs. A total of 25 participants were formally interviewed for this study including 16 entrepreneurs and 9 of their family members. Data were also collected through participant observation in which 210 participants were observed at several venues. Participants were recruited from three Southwestern states including: Arizona, Colorado, and Texas. The study employed qualitative interpretive methods to collect and analyze data. Research questions focused on the socialization experiences Hispanic entrepreneurs' reported, how they narrated the ways in which these experiences influenced their work-lives as entrepreneurs, and what they and their family members reported about the relationship between family and work. Results indicate Hispanic entrepreneurs were exposed to work at very young ages, acquired a variety of skills (e.g. sales and leadership) that transferred to their careers as entrepreneurs, and developed coping skills which helped them deal with business and personal hardships. Moreover, participants noted the ways in which faith, positive self-talk, and emotional labor played a role in their work lives. Finally, this research extends current constructions of care and what constitutes work and quality family time.
ContributorsMontoya, Yvonne Jay (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT Stress and burnout in the educational field primarily in teaching is not a new phenomenon. A great deal of research and analysis to the contributing factors of causation to teacher burnout has been executed and analyzed. The struggle of the artist/teacher, hybrid professionals that maintain two concurrent roles, offers a perspective to burn out that has gone unnoticed. The conflict of roles for the artist/teacher does not infer that the teacher role is incapable of reconciling with the artist role but because of this unique scenario the stories of art teachers and burnout often go unheard. Today's public educator is contending with established stress factors as well as emerging and evolving stress factors. How does this phenomenon impact the artist/teacher's ability or inability to be creative? What are the implications of burnout and its impact on artist/teachers personal and professional work? This qualitative study was conducted using Narrative/Autoethnograpy, Narrative/Ethnography and A/r/tography. The stories of four artist/teachers provides in-depth accounts of their experiences as teachers and how that profession has affected their art making process and well being.
ContributorsMack, Paul (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Saldana, Johnny (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In an attempt to gain a greater understanding of the interpretations and attitudes of higher education faculty in education programs teaching critical pedagogy, social justice, student empowerment and related concepts I conducted interviews with twenty faculty members in education programs in the New York City area. It is a study looking at the philosophies and conceptions of faculty and the relationship between those philosophies and their actions in the classroom. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed for trends and patterns. The nature of the questions focused on various aspects of critical pedagogy and allowed for an easy transition to preliminary categories based on the interview questions. The data was reviewed again for similarities and trends, and then again for comparison between the three identified perspectives: Professionalization Perspective, Democratic Student Development Perspective, and Critical Action Perspective.
ContributorsBoudon, Daniel John (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Romero, Mary (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The Burning Man Festival, a free-spirited yet highly sophisticated social experiment celebrating "radical self expression and radical self reliance" is well-known for its large-scale and highly interactive public art installations. For twenty-five years, Burners (as festival participants are called) have been creating and displaying amazing works of art for the annual event, which currently takes place in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. In the desert, Burners build a temporary city, appropriate the open space to serve as their "tabula rasa" or "blank canvas," and unleash their creative potential in the name of "active participation" and social civility. In the process, they produce public art on a scale unprecedented in United States history. This dissertation, a visual and narrative ethnography, explores the layers of aesthetic and social meanings Burners associate with public art. Told in narrative form, this project utilizes "in situ" field notes, photographic field notes, rhetorical analyses of art installations, thematic analysis of Burner storytelling, and writing as a method of inquiry as means for investigating and understanding more fully the ways Burners create, display, and consume public art. Findings for this project indicate Burners value public art beyond its material presentation. Preparing for, building, celebrating, and experiencing aesthetic transformation through the engagement of public art all are viewed as valuable"art" experiences at Burning Man. Working in tandem, these experiences also produce profound feelings of connection and collaboration in the community, suggesting Burning Man's methods for producing public art could serve as model to follow, or points for reflection, for other groups wishing to use public art and other forms of material expression to bring their members closer together.
ContributorsStewart, Karen Ann (Author) / Goodall, Jr., Harold (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
Media is a powerful tool used to reflect and affect change in society. Within this study, a brief historical context is provided of roles African Americans in film were traditionally cast in. By employing Critical Race Theory (CRT), cultural capital, and NewBlackMan frameworks, I analyzed how Black male film directors and producers depicted race, class, gender within the Black film boom of the early 2000s. I examined the depictions of educational outcomes of the characters within films utilized in this study. My results display progress that still needs to be made in breaking down traditional gender roles, how race needed to be more critically examined, and how educational outcomes of the characters were not realistic. I also provide suggestions for conducting media studies through the discipline of education in the future.
ContributorsWilliams, Jernine (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Brayboy, Bryan (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010