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In the US, menstrual education, which provides key information about menstrual hygiene and health to both young girls and boys, historically lacks biologically accurate information about the menstrual cycle and perpetuates harmful perceptions about female reproductive health. When people are unable to differentiate between normal and abnormal menstrual bleeding, based

In the US, menstrual education, which provides key information about menstrual hygiene and health to both young girls and boys, historically lacks biologically accurate information about the menstrual cycle and perpetuates harmful perceptions about female reproductive health. When people are unable to differentiate between normal and abnormal menstrual bleeding, based on a lack of quality menstrual education, common gynecological conditions often remain underreported. This raises a question as to how girls’ menstrual education experiences influence the ways in which they perceive normal menstrual bleeding and seek treatment for common abnormalities, such as heavy, painful, or irregular menstrual bleeding. A mixed methods approach allowed evaluation of girls’ abilities to recognize abnormal menstrual bleeding. A literature review established relevant historical and social context on the prevalence and quality of menstrual education in the US. Then, five focus groups, each including five to eight college-aged women, totaling thirty-three participants, allowed for macro-level analysis of current challenges and gaps in knowledge related to menstruation. To better examine the relationship between menstrual education and reproductive health outcomes, twelve semi-structured, one-on-one interviews allowed micro-level analysis. Those interviews consisted of women diagnosed with endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome, common gynecological conditions that include abnormal menstrual bleeding. Developing a codebook of definitions and exemplars of significant text segments and applying it to the collected data revealed several themes. For example, mothers, friends, teachers, the Internet, and social media are among the most common sources of information about menstrual hygiene and health. Yet, women reported that those sources of information often echoed stigmatized ideas about menstruation, eliciting feelings of shame and fear. That poor quality of information was instrumental to women’s abilities to detect and report abnormal menstrual bleeding. Women desire and need biologically accurate information about reproductive health, including menstruation and ovulation, fertility, and methods of birth control as treatments for abnormal menstrual bleeding. Unfortunately, menstrual education often leaves girls ill-equipped to identify and seek treatment for common gynecological conditions. Those findings may influence current menstrual education, incorporating biological information and actively dismissing common misconceptions about menstruation that influence stigma.
ContributorsSantora, Emily Katherine (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Hurlbut, Ben (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Description
More than half of the students who start this year at a community college will not return to the same institution the following year. This persistent problem negatively impacts students, institutions, and society at-large. However, institutions that experience greater success in retaining students place academic advising initiatives at the core

More than half of the students who start this year at a community college will not return to the same institution the following year. This persistent problem negatively impacts students, institutions, and society at-large. However, institutions that experience greater success in retaining students place academic advising initiatives at the core of their retention efforts. The Appreciative Advising Model (AAM) may be uniquely suited to promoting student persistence because the AAM engages a student in long-term planning, showing how their current and future academic efforts can be aligned to achieve their goals. Employing the AAM, advisors use open-ended questions to uncover a students’ dreams, and then co-construct, with the student, a set of systematic goals uniquely tailored to help the student reach their dreams. As part of this study, the AAM was implemented as an innovation at a community college advising center. Guided by a framework that includes theories of social constructivism, positive psychology, and appreciative inquiry, this qualitative action research study employed semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students and advisors to explore their perceptions and experiences related to the AAM as a potential tool to enhance community college retention. The goal of this study was to chronicle the implementation of a new advising model for a community college—the AAM—study the perceptions and experiences related to the new model, and to assess the model’s influence on a student’s likelihood of persisting at their community college. This work increases the understanding of the AAM in a community college setting and results may have implications for community colleges, advising centers, and retention efforts.
ContributorsDisrude, Jim (Author) / Sampson, Carrie (Thesis advisor) / Coronella, Tami (Committee member) / John, Beth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Description
Online learning in higher education has been increasing over the last two decades (NCES, 2016). Previous research has highlighted the importance of student engagement for academic achievement and performance (Fuller, Wilson, & Tobin, 2011; Northey et al., 2018). The current study aims to further understand students’ perceptions of

Online learning in higher education has been increasing over the last two decades (NCES, 2016). Previous research has highlighted the importance of student engagement for academic achievement and performance (Fuller, Wilson, & Tobin, 2011; Northey et al., 2018). The current study aims to further understand students’ perceptions of peer interactions, assess the application of the Theory of Involvement in online learning environments, and identify factors of student engagement. Data were collected from 1,514 undergraduate students enrolled in online courses at Arizona State University (Mage = 25.96 years old; SD = 7.64; 1,259 female, 232 male, 12 non-binary, and 1 gender fluid). The results of this dissertation study indicate that the vast majority of students (94% of the sample) want opportunities for peer interaction in their online courses. Confirmatory Factor Analyses were conducted to validate three of the primary measures and these measurement models were used in subsequent analyses. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) revealed that students who demonstrated high levels of Academic, Online Community, Life Application, and Social Engagement were more likely to perform well on measures of Academic Performance (i.e., doing well on quizzes or tests, earning higher letter grades). Additional SEM analyses indicated that sense of a community was related to all four aspects of student engagements. There was evidence that certain pedagogical factors were also associated with higher rates of student engagement. For example, students who reported high levels for Instructional Design (e.g., felt the course objectives were clear) were more likely to be academically engaged (i.e., demonstrated strong study habits). Lastly, while there were no significant differences in student engagement by gender, ethnicity, or living arrangements, students who valued peer interaction were more likely to report higher levels of Online Student Engagement. The findings of this research emphasize the desire online students have to interact with their peers, demonstrates the importance of engaging online students, and serves as a guide for educators in creating online courses that foster student engagement.
ContributorsCortes, Khaerannisa (Author) / Ladd, Becky (Thesis advisor) / Ladd, Gary (Committee member) / Thompson, Marilyn (Committee member) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Expansive framing is a promising approach to understanding transfer but little is known about how it might work in teacher professional development, an area that research suggests would be improved by the use of situative strategies. The Content, Person, Context framework (CPC) that has been developed in online learning contexts

Expansive framing is a promising approach to understanding transfer but little is known about how it might work in teacher professional development, an area that research suggests would be improved by the use of situative strategies. The Content, Person, Context framework (CPC) that has been developed in online learning contexts draws on the concept of expansive framing and further develops it through a focus on positioning content, person and context for value creation. However, little is known about how it promotes transfer. I studied how these two situative approaches, individually and together, illuminated near-transfer in the context of an online teacher professional development (PD) course. In this mixed methods study I adapted and created rubrics to analyze educators’ stories about how they intended to implement what they had learned in the course. I concluded that CPC and expansive framing support different understandings of authorship, with the former prioritizing immediate action planned for specific contexts and the latter emphasizing learner creation and ownership over time. These different views have consequences for how transfer is understood but can be used to create a model of how transfer can be fostered that is more robust than either framework taken on its own. Because this study is part of an evaluation phase of an ongoing design-based research project, I make recommendations for how expansive framing and CPC can be further used as tools for designing the next iteration of the PD module.
ContributorsJongewaard, Rebekah (Author) / Zuiker, Steven (Thesis advisor) / Barab, Sasha (Committee member) / Jordan, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Through an interdisciplinary American Studies approach, this thesis examines access to education and immigrant “illegality” as tools of racial domination by investigating colonial legacies and structural inequalities linked with immigration policy. Providing a background on the political formation of immigrant “illegality”, this research focuses on how race relations have influenced

Through an interdisciplinary American Studies approach, this thesis examines access to education and immigrant “illegality” as tools of racial domination by investigating colonial legacies and structural inequalities linked with immigration policy. Providing a background on the political formation of immigrant “illegality”, this research focuses on how race relations have influenced immigration policies, as well as political efforts to exclude racialized and minoritized groups from lawful immigration, naturalization, and national belonging. These historic texts shed light on overarching connections between the racialized policy construction of immigrant “illegality” and the role of education in nation building and class conservation. Comprising three analytic chapters; the first historicizes how education was used as a tool of the nation-state in the early formation of U.S. territories, the second chapter applies discourse analysis to link contemporary political rhetoric with color-blind ideologies. The third analytic chapter is a critical review of existing quantitative findings on the effects of legal status on educational attainment for Mexican and Central American immigrants and their descendants living in the United States. Challenging the dominant narrative around immigrant “illegality”, this work highlights the racist formation and continued application of unequal access (to both education and citizenship), further demonstrating how structural inequalities remain racialized.
ContributorsOlsen-Medina, Kira (Author) / Yellow Horse, Aggie (Thesis advisor) / Vega, Sujey (Committee member) / Diaz McConnell, Eileen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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This study explored the science learning experiences of elementary English Language Learners (ELLs) in a fourth-grade mainstream science classroom in an urban setting. Informed by ethnographic research and case study design, this study interrogated the celebrated and marginalized practices within common classroom procedures and what science-related identities the focal ELLs

This study explored the science learning experiences of elementary English Language Learners (ELLs) in a fourth-grade mainstream science classroom in an urban setting. Informed by ethnographic research and case study design, this study interrogated the celebrated and marginalized practices within common classroom procedures and what science-related identities the focal ELLs developed within classroom interactions through the lens of identity as position. Additionally, this study examined how the focal ELLs perceived themselves as science learners and how they affiliated with what scientists do and school science. Data collection lasted for two months and included video recordings of science instruction and classroom interactions, interviews with the focal ELLs, and students’ artifacts. Findings revealed that “doing science” in this fourth-grade science classroom was narrowly defined, as the celebrated practices involved mainly following the classroom behavioral codes and telling the right answer to the teacher’s questions. Findings also showed that the three focal ELLs complied with the celebrated practices to various degrees and were positioned marginally or negatively by the teacher and peers. The marginal and negative positioning affected the focal ELLs’ opportunities to engage meaningfully in classroom learning activities. Finally, findings regarding the focal ELLs’ perceptions of themselves as science learners showed the various ways in which they used their experiences inside and outside the classroom to construct their understanding of and relations with scientists and the science subject. This study provided implications for student science identity research and practice for supporting ELLs in the mainstream science classroom.
ContributorsQiao, Xue (Author) / Moses, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Bernstein, Katherine (Committee member) / Jimenez-Silva, Margarita (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Description
The growth of electronic sports (esports) is undeniable. One dimension of esports’ growth can be seen in its adoption as an extracurricular club activity across an increasing number of high schools in the United States. Researchers and educators in literacy have increasingly recognized and emphasized the study of students’ everyday

The growth of electronic sports (esports) is undeniable. One dimension of esports’ growth can be seen in its adoption as an extracurricular club activity across an increasing number of high schools in the United States. Researchers and educators in literacy have increasingly recognized and emphasized the study of students’ everyday lives and interests, calling for responsiveness to the ways students actually experience literacies versus how they are traditionally taught. In this respect, the popularity of esports in high schools positions it as an activity in the everyday lives of an increasing number of students. As such, this dissertation project explored the topic of esports in high schools through a lens of multiliteracies and digital-age literacies. This work addresses an important knowledge gap because students are converging to reveal an ecosystem where they are drawing from and building on their everyday literacies in non-trivial ways. And although there is a growing body of multidisciplinary scholarly work on esports, relatively little work has explored esports in high schools. Therefore, I asked the overarching question: How are digital-age multiliteracies taking place in high school esports contexts? Specifically, I focused on the digital-age literacy practices, demands, and perspectives in high school esports. Guided by research questions on these three topics, I carried out a study of two high school esports clubs for 22 weeks. This study was guided by qualitative, interpretive, naturalistic, ethnographic, and case study research designs. My findings describe six assertions: (1) literacy practices were used to engage with each other in communal and competitive ways; (2) the social functions of esports’ literacy practices take precedence over scholastic goals; (3) literacy demands of esports emphasize unambiguous and timely multimodal communication for managing teams and scheduling events; (4) literacy demands of high school esports focus on multidimensional fluencies between what is on and what is around the screens; (5) participants characterize the engagement with esports as positively contributing to “belonging”, of a “safe space”, and of opportunities for “critical thinking”; and (6) participants characterize their engagement with high school esports as positively contributing to future occupational or educational preparedness and health.
ContributorsPerez Cortes, Luis (Author) / Nelson, Brian C (Thesis advisor) / Gee, Elisabeth R (Committee member) / Anderson, Kate T (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Physical activity (PA) has been shown to increase cognitive function, with higher test scores being reported for students engaged in higher levels PA. Additionally, the integration of the Common Core content into physical education allows for more Common Core content practice while students meet physical education objectives. Integration can be

Physical activity (PA) has been shown to increase cognitive function, with higher test scores being reported for students engaged in higher levels PA. Additionally, the integration of the Common Core content into physical education allows for more Common Core content practice while students meet physical education objectives. Integration can be defined as the teaching of two or more subject areas simultaneously to enhance students’ learning and understanding. This novel shift to integration is underpinned by Fullan’s Change Theory where students may learn content in new and meaningful ways that meet the goals of multiple realms in education. The purpose of this crossover, replication design study was to investigate first-grade students’ enjoyment levels (enjoyment exit slips), attitudes (pre- & post-surveys), step counts (accelerometers), reading and listening comprehension (Accelerated Reader testing), as well as students’ and teachers’ perceptions (interviews & field notes) when integrating children’s literature into the fitness segment of physical education. Twenty-one first-grade students, two first-grade classroom teachers, and two physical education teachers from two different schools (Private and Public) in Southwestern, US participated in this study for six weeks each (12 weeks across the two schools). At each school, one first grade class participated as both the control and intervention groups. Overall, the results from integrating children’s literature into the physical education fitness segment were positive. Students’ enjoyment levels were high, their attitudes remained positive, they maintained similar step counts throughout the intervention periods, and the students scored similarly on the Accelerated Reader assessments from content taught in the classroom versus content presented in physical education. Additionally, students’ and teachers’ perceptions were positive, underpinned by Fullan’s Change Theory and resulted in the following three themes for students: (a) Motivation and engagement, (b) learning as perceived by students, and (c) home environment, as well as the following two themes for teachers: (a) Motivation and resources, and (b) stay the course. To my knowledge, this is the first experimental investigation of the integration of children’s literature into physical education which provides necessary evidence and an invaluable start to this important line of inquiry.
ContributorsGriffo, Janelle Marie (Author) / Kulinna, Pamela H. (Thesis advisor) / Van Der Mars, Hans (Committee member) / Marttinen, Risto H.J. (Committee member) / Johnston, Kelly (Committee member) / Moses, Lindsey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This dissertation deals with the confluence of neoliberal and dominant Western social pressures in tension with researchers and educators striving toward a more sustainable world in light of the Anthropocene. Although scientists see the Anthropocene as a problem of human activity and environmental degradation, many social scientists and humanities researchers

This dissertation deals with the confluence of neoliberal and dominant Western social pressures in tension with researchers and educators striving toward a more sustainable world in light of the Anthropocene. Although scientists see the Anthropocene as a problem of human activity and environmental degradation, many social scientists and humanities researchers also see it as a problem with entrenched ways of thought. Current ways of thought complicit in the making of the Anthropocene include centering all thought, control, and agency in the radically individual human, centering science as the only legitimate access to knowledge, and presenting that knowledge as apolitical absolute truth. I engage in research creation activated by the minor gestures of human/nature entanglement in the Anthropocene and the promise of place in environmental and sustainability education. As such, I embark on the invention of a new ecology of practices that takes the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead as their guiding foundation. As part of this invention circumventing normative neoliberal and Western logics, I take Ajo, Arizona and the surrounding Sonoran Desert as a partner in more-than-human process inquiry. I live in Ajo and explore the Sonoran Desert for four months of data generation employing basic techniques of ethnography divorced from their neopositivist founding theories. Bodies generated from my entanglement with Ajo and the desert participate in inventing Remixing Data Experiences (RDE), a novel data engagement technique. Through RDE, my more-than-human partners and I create ideas by engaging in arts-based techniques that form multimedia art-workings. The ideas generated include Oasis, Decline, Celebrate, Precarity, and Directions. I respond to each idea through anarchival written texts in a variety of genres including ethnographic memoir, short fiction, essay, ballad, and talk poem. I put these ideas into conversation with current methodological and education literature to illustrate that aesthetic-based inquiry contributes new ways forward in the Anthropocene. These new ways include rhythms of certainty and uncertainty in knowledge creation, participating in reciprocal affective capabilities of bodies in joyful knowing, developing modest abstractions that frequently engage concrete experience, and inclusion of aesthetic experiences in learning and inquiry.
ContributorsBowers, Nicole (Author) / Carlson, David L (Thesis advisor) / Koro, Mirka (Committee member) / Jordan, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Description
Serious or educational games have been a subject of research for a long time. They usually have game mechanics, game content, and content assessment all tied together to make a specialized game intended to impart learning of the associated content to its players. While this approach is good for developing

Serious or educational games have been a subject of research for a long time. They usually have game mechanics, game content, and content assessment all tied together to make a specialized game intended to impart learning of the associated content to its players. While this approach is good for developing games for teaching highly specific topics, it consumes a lot of time and money. Being able to re-use the same mechanics and assessment for creating games that teach different contents would lead to a lot of savings in terms of time and money. The Content Agnostic Game Engineering (CAGE) Architecture mitigates the problem by disengaging the content from game mechanics. Moreover, the content assessment in games is often quite explicit in the way that it disturbs the flow of the players and thus hampers the learning process, as it is not integrated into the game flow. Stealth assessment helps to alleviate this problem by keeping the player engagement intact while assessing them at the same time. Integrating stealth assessment into the CAGE framework in a content-agnostic way will increase its usability and further decrease in game and assessment development time and cost. This research presents an evaluation of the learning outcomes in content-agnostic game-based assessment developed using the CAGE framework.
ContributorsVerma, Vipin (Author) / Craig, Scotty D (Thesis advisor) / Bansal, Ajay (Thesis advisor) / Amresh, Ashish (Committee member) / Baron, Tyler (Committee member) / Levy, Roy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021