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- All Subjects: Education
- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
Description
The need for a critical education in a democracy, its difficulties, and how to reform this field requires urgent attention. This project begins with the premise that education is necessary for a vibrant democracy. While examining differing voices that advocate for educational reform, mainly that of Critical Pedagogy, it is shown how conflicting forms are advocating similar ideals. Henry Giroux and David Horowitz, both reformers that are on opposite sides of the political spectrum appear to have similar goals. Yet, the question becomes how to solve these differences between these parties? By examining the philosophical origins of these projects and explicating differences rooted in human nature and the good, the basic differences can begin to be shown. In showing these differences it requires going back to the work of Kant. Kant shows the necessity of beginning with philosophy and examining basic assumptions in order to begin to critique and build an education that would guarantee equality.
ContributorsNolen, Matthew (Author) / Wise, Greg (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Owen (Committee member) / Ramsey, Ramsey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Internet sites that support user-generated content, so-called Web 2.0, have become part of the fabric of everyday life in technologically advanced nations. Users collectively spend billions of hours consuming and creating content on social networking sites, weblogs (blogs), and various other types of sites in the United States and around the world. Given the fundamentally emotional nature of humans and the amount of emotional content that appears in Web 2.0 content, it is important to understand how such websites can affect the emotions of users. This work attempts to determine whether emotion spreads through an online social network (OSN). To this end, a method is devised that employs a model based on a general threshold diffusion model as a classifier to predict the propagation of emotion between users and their friends in an OSN by way of mood-labeled blog entries. The model generalizes existing information diffusion models in that the state machine representation of a node is generalized from being binary to having n-states in order to support n class labels necessary to model emotional contagion. In the absence of ground truth, the prediction accuracy of the model is benchmarked with a baseline method that predicts the majority label of a user's emotion label distribution. The model significantly outperforms the baseline method in terms of prediction accuracy. The experimental results make a strong case for the existence of emotional contagion in OSNs in spite of possible alternative arguments such confounding influence and homophily, since these alternatives are likely to have negligible effect in a large dataset or simply do not apply to the domain of human emotions. A hybrid manual/automated method to map mood-labeled blog entries to a set of emotion labels is also presented, which enables the application of the model to a large set (approximately 900K) of blog entries from LiveJournal.
ContributorsCole, William David, M.S (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis advisor) / Sarjoughian, Hessam S. (Committee member) / Candan, Kasim S (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
A statement appearing in social media provides a very significant challenge for determining the provenance of the statement. Provenance describes the origin, custody, and ownership of something. Most statements appearing in social media are not published with corresponding provenance data. However, the same characteristics that make the social media environment challenging, including the massive amounts of data available, large numbers of users, and a highly dynamic environment, provide unique and untapped opportunities for solving the provenance problem for social media. Current approaches for tracking provenance data do not scale for online social media and consequently there is a gap in provenance methodologies and technologies providing exciting research opportunities. The guiding vision is the use of social media information itself to realize a useful amount of provenance data for information in social media. This departs from traditional approaches for data provenance which rely on a central store of provenance information. The contemporary online social media environment is an enormous and constantly updated "central store" that can be mined for provenance information that is not readily made available to the average social media user. This research introduces an approach and builds a foundation aimed at realizing a provenance data capability for social media users that is not accessible today.
ContributorsBarbier, Geoffrey P (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis advisor) / Bell, Herbert (Committee member) / Li, Baoxin (Committee member) / Sen, Arunabha (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Conceptual change has been a large part of science education research for several decades due to the fact that it allows teachers to think about what students' preconceptions are and how to change these to the correct scientific conceptions. To have students change their preconceptions teachers need to allow students to confront what they think they know in the presence of the phenomena. Students then collect and analyze evidence pertaining to the phenomena. The goal in the end is for students to reorganize their concepts and change or correct their preconceptions, so that they hold more accurate scientific conceptions. The purpose of this study was to investigate how students' conceptions of the Earth's surface, specifically weathering and erosion, change using the conceptual change framework to guide the instructional decisions. The subjects of the study were a class of 25 seventh grade students. This class received a three-week unit on weathering and erosion that was structured using the conceptual change framework set by Posner, Strike, Hewson, and Gertzog (1982). This framework starts by looking at students' misconceptions, then uses scientific data that students collect to confront their misconceptions. The changes in students' conceptions were measured by a pre concept sketch and post concept sketch. The results of this study showed that the conceptual change framework can modify students' preconceptions of weathering and erosion to correct scientific conceptions. There was statistical significant difference between students' pre concept sketches and post concept sketches scores. After examining the concept sketches, differences were found in how students' concepts had changed from pre to post concept sketch. Further research needs to be done with conceptual change and the geosciences to see if conceptual change is an effective method to use to teach students about the geosciences.
ContributorsTillman, Ashley (Author) / Luft, Julie (Thesis advisor) / Middleton, James (Committee member) / Semken, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Meter-resolution topography gathered by LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) has become an indispensable tool for better understanding of many surface processes including those sculpting landscapes that record information about earthquake hazards for example. For this reason, and because of the spectacular representation of the phenomena that these data provide, it is appropriate to integrate these data into Earth science educational materials. I seek to answer the following research question: "will using the LiDAR topography data instead of, or alongside, traditional visualizations and teaching methods enhance a student's ability to understand geologic concepts such as plate tectonics, the earthquake cycle, strike-slip faults, and geomorphology?" In order to answer this question, a ten-minute introductory video on LiDAR and its uses for the study of earthquakes entitled "LiDAR: Illuminating Earthquake Hazards" was produced. Additionally, LiDAR topography was integrated into the development of an undergraduate-level educational activity, the San Andreas fault (SAF) earthquake cycle activity, designed to teach introductory Earth science students about the earthquake cycle. Both the LiDAR video and the SAF activity were tested in undergraduate classrooms in order to determine their effectiveness. A pretest and posttest were administered to introductory geology lab students. The results of these tests show a notable increase in understanding LiDAR topography and its uses for studying earthquakes from pretest to posttest after watching the video on LiDAR, and a notable increase in understanding the earthquake cycle from pretest to posttest using the San Andreas Fault earthquake cycle exercise. These results suggest that the use of LiDAR topography within these educational tools is beneficial for students when learning about the earthquake cycle and earthquake hazards.
ContributorsRobinson, Sarah Elizabeth (Author) / Arrowsmith, Ramon (Thesis advisor) / Reynolds, Stephen J. (Committee member) / Semken, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This paper outlines the three research projects that I performed between 2009-present: Slow Movement Training (SMT) lab, Self-education Through Embodied Movement (STEM), and the Athletic Movement Program (AMP). It first evaluates the major issues that spawned each research project, and then provides a framework for understanding the shift in the student-centered physical and mental movement practices that I developed in response to the need for reform. The content will address the personal and professional paradigmatic shift that I experienced through the lens of a practitioner and educator. It will focus heavily on the transitions between each of the projects and finally the emergence of the Athletic Movement Program. The focal point becomes one of community needs, alternate resources and hybrid-online classroom support. The paper concludes with an overview and content comparison between the one-size-fits-all model used within public movement education and Athletic Movement Programs' strengths and challenges.
ContributorsCroitoru, Michael (Author) / Mitchell, John D. (Thesis advisor) / Fitzgerald, Mary (Committee member) / Coleman, Grisha (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Effectively educating students with autism is a necessary element in providing all students with a free and appropriate public education, and as the number of students diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder continues to increase in both public and private educational settings, providing successful and satisfactory professional development opportunities in the area of autism is becoming increasingly essential. This study explored the experiences of twenty-three educators in a suburban southwest K-12 public school district, as they participated in a fifteen-hour professional development course in an online or face-to-face format, and collaboratively problem-solved their challenges in educating students with autism. Qualitative data was collected from participants' weekly written reflections and comments from a pre- and post-survey on attitudes, to determine quality of and satisfaction with collaboration in relation to course format. Results indicated that the online format produced higher-quality collaboration when it came to presenting one's own situation(s) to the group, finding group discussions helpful, having enough time to collaborate, providing feedback/suggestions to group members, and perceiving suggestions for one's own situation as helpful (as evidenced by the number of suggestions that participants said they would likely implement). The face-to-face format produced higher-quality collaboration when it came to in-depth problem-solving regarding a situation, implementing suggestions for one's own situation, and relating course content to collaborative activities. Participants' attitudes about using technology as a means of collaboration showed little change overall from pre- to post-survey. Though slight increases in positive attitudes concerning technology were found in various areas, many participants still thought highly of a face-to-face format for collaborative purposes, even after participating in the online professional development course. Findings may be of use to educational institutions developing online or face-to-face professional development opportunities in the area of autism.
ContributorsWozniak, Renee M (Author) / McCoy, Kathleen M. (Thesis advisor) / Puckett, Kathleen (Committee member) / Gehrke, Rebecca (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This study examines the experiences of participants enrolled in an online community college jazz history course. I surveyed the participants before the course began and observed them in the online space through the duration of the course. Six students also participated in interviews during and after the course. Coded data from the interviews, surveys, and recorded discussion posts and journal entries provided evidence about the nature of interaction and engagement in learning in an online environment. I looked for evidence either supporting or detracting from a democratic online learning environment, concentrating on the categories of student engagement, freedom of expression, and accessibility. The data suggested that the participants' behaviors in and abilities to navigate the online class were influenced by their pre-existing native media habits. Participants' reasons for enrolling in the online course, which included convenience and schedule flexibility, informed their actions and behaviors in the class. Analysis revealed that perceived positive student engagement did not contribute to a democratic learning environment but rather to an easy, convenient experience in the online class. Finally, the data indicated that participants' behaviors in their future lives would not be affected by the online class in that their learning experiences were not potent enough to alter or inform their behavior in society. As online classes gain popularity, the ability of these classes to provide meaningful learning experiences must be questioned. Students in this online jazz history class presented, at times, a façade of participation and community building but demonstrated a lack of sincerity and interest in the course. The learning environment supported accessibility and freedom of expression to an extent, but students' engagement with their peers was limited. Overall, this study found a need for more research into the quality of online classes as learning platforms that support democracy, student-to-student interaction, and community building.
ContributorsHunter, Robert W. (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra L (Thesis advisor) / Tobias, Evan (Thesis advisor) / Bush, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Pilafian, Sam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation reports on an action research study that sought to discover how a new WiFi, tablet computing device, the Apple iPad, affected, enhanced, and impacted student engagement in an English Honors course at Scottsdale Community College. The researcher was also the instructor in the two semester, first-year, college composition sequence (English 101/102) in which all 18 students were provided the new Apple iPad tablet computing device. The researcher described how students adapted the Apple iPads to their academic lives, assessed iPad compatibility with current instructional technology systems, and interviewed participating students to document their beliefs about whether iPad activities enhanced the course. At the conclusion of the college composition sequence, 13 students agreed to participate in focus groups to describe how they made use of the iPad and to report on how the iPad influenced their engagement. Among other findings, students reported that there were compatibility problems with current SCC instructional technology systems, that the iPad increased their efficiency in completing informal educational tasks, but that the iPad was not useful for doing word processing and research. Recommendations for future use of the iPad in this course include reducing the number of iPads accessing the WiFi network at the same time, piloting the use of iPad word processing applications, researching more "mobile-friendly" web sites and documents, and developing innovative assignments that take advantage of iPad capabilities.
ContributorsTualla, Larry Tech (Author) / Clark, Christopher M. (Thesis advisor) / De Los Santos Jr., Alfredo G (Thesis advisor) / Young, Lisa C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Accounts in the media often demonize teachers and misrepresent what is happening in schools. Meanwhile, teachers' voices are largely absent from the national and international debates on school reform. This dissertation privileges the voices of nine participating Kindergarten through second grade teachers from a variety of public schools, including affluent schools and schools receiving full and partial Title I funding. Through observations and interviews teachers shared their narratives of classroom joys and challenges while also describing how policy has affected these experiences. A preliminary discourse analysis of these narratives was performed, identifying narratives related to nodes of the activity system of schooling. Further discourse analysis of these identified narratives revealed how these teachers' classroom experiences position them within an activity system strongly influenced by tensions between maternal relationships and the patriarchal project of schooling. A critical feminist theoretical perspective is utilized to respond to these tensions and to describe possibilities for future studies in education and the future of education in general.
ContributorsGaches, Sonya (Author) / Swadener, Elizabeth B (Thesis advisor) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Gee, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011