Matching Items (3)
Filtering by

Clear all filters

150597-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
This action research project explores masters level graduate student writing and academic identity during one semester in an interdisciplinary masters program. Informing this study is a two part theoretical framework including the Academic Literacy Model (Lea and Street) and Wenger's concept of identity. The purpose of this exploration was to

This action research project explores masters level graduate student writing and academic identity during one semester in an interdisciplinary masters program. Informing this study is a two part theoretical framework including the Academic Literacy Model (Lea and Street) and Wenger's concept of identity. The purpose of this exploration was to understand how first semester graduate students experienced academic writing and what characteristics of their academic identity emerged. A mixed-methods approach was used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data included results from the Inventory of Processes in Graduate Writing (Lavelle and Bushrow, 2007) and the Graduate Student Identity Survey. Qualitative data was collected through researcher observations, student blog entries, writing group transcripts, and individual interviews. The following themes emerge from the data: a) graduate students attribute their successes in writing to previous experiences, b) graduate students experience struggles related primarily to academic quality and faculty expectations, c) graduate students negotiate ways of being in the academy through figuring out expectations of faculty and program, d) work done in the writing group meetings shows evidence of meaning-making for the graduate students, e) the focus of the MA program was critically important to graduate students in the graduate writing project, e) participants' role as graduate students felt most strongly in contexts that include academic activity, and f) students acknowledge change and increasingly identify themselves as writers. Ideas for future cycles of research are discussed.
ContributorsRuggles, Tosha M (Author) / Wetzel, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Ewbank, Ann (Committee member) / Friedrich, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
150880-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
This dissertation is an exploration of various identity labels available for first-year composition (FYC) students that tend to classify them into categories which may or may not relate to the students' perception of themselves. If there remains a gap between self-identification and institutional labeling then students may find themselves negotiating

This dissertation is an exploration of various identity labels available for first-year composition (FYC) students that tend to classify them into categories which may or may not relate to the students' perception of themselves. If there remains a gap between self-identification and institutional labeling then students may find themselves negotiating unfamiliar spaces detrimental to their personal goals, expectations, and understanding of their writing abilities. This may trigger a rippling effect that may jeopardize the outcomes expected from a successful FYC program stipulated in the WPA Outcomes Statement. For this study I approached 5 sections of mainstream FYC and 7 sections of ESL/ international FYC with in-class questionnaire based surveys. The 19 questions on the survey were cued to address students' concern for identity and how course labels may or may not attend to them. With feedback from 200 participants this study endeavors to realize their preference for identity markers and definitions for mainstream and ESL sections of FYC. The survey also checks if their choices correlate and in some ways challenge ongoing research in the field. The survey reports a marked preference for NES and English as a second language speaker as prominent choices among mainstream and ESL/ international students, respectively, but this is at best the big picture. The "truth" lies in the finer details - when mainstream students select NNESs and / or resident NNESs the students demonstrate a heightened awareness of individual identity. When this same category of resident NNESs identify themselves in ESL/ international sections of FYC, the range of student identities can be realized as not only varied but also overlapping between sections. Furthermore, the opinions of these students concur as well as challenge research in the field, making clear that language learning is a constant process of meaning making, innovation, and even stepping beyond the dominant mores and cultures.
ContributorsChaudhuri, Anita (Author) / Friedrich, Patricia (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / James, Mark A (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
187614-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Current economic and social realities of higher education have placed increasing emphasis on using Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the classroom. However, missing from the discussion is how prepared these TAs are for the rigors of teaching and the effects of the increasing emphasis on their education and the education of

Current economic and social realities of higher education have placed increasing emphasis on using Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the classroom. However, missing from the discussion is how prepared these TAs are for the rigors of teaching and the effects of the increasing emphasis on their education and the education of their future students. To better understand the process a TA underwent to learn to teach in a higher education classroom, the following study explores what teaching assistants within a Writing Program (WP) at a research-one university say about how they learned to teach writing. The study aims to explore what strategies future TAs relied on and how they experienced their training to teach in hopes of exploring the problem space of learning to teach writing. The literature review explores some themes researched in the history of TA training. The study itself is a focus group of 9 Graduate Student TAs at a research one facility. The research suggests that the complex negotiation of learning to teach is situated within the framework of multiliteracies in that future TA’s utilize available designs from all over their lived experiences, design them for their own course, and eventually redesign their courses and pedagogies with selected available designs. This research offers new ways to conceptualize TA training and make it more scalable to better serve future TA’s.
ContributorsDuston, Trevor (Author) / Friedrich, Patricia (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Long, Eleanore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023