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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
Description
Arguing for the importance of decolonial pedagogy in human rights education, this research is located at the intersection of human rights education, pedagogy, and justice studies, and is situated in the context of a contested neoliberal university in order to learn about and understand some of the challenges in implementing pedagogical change inspired by decolonial theory. This research focuses on pedagogical approaches of human rights professors to understand how and to what extent they are aligned with and informed by, incorporate, or utilize decolonial theory. This is accomplished through a content analysis of their syllabi, including readings and pedagogical statements, and semi-structured interviews about their praxis to draw attention to the what and how of their pedagogical practices and the ways in which it aligns with a decolonial pedagogical approach. This research calls attention to the specific manner in which they include decolonial pedagogical methods in their human rights courses. The findings determined that a decolonial pedagogical approach is only just emerging, and there is a need to address the barriers that impede their further implementation. In addition, there is a need for research that will further investigate the pedagogical approaches professors are employing, particularly those in alignment with decolonial criteria; the impact of decolonial and non-decolonial approaches on students’ epistemologies, and how to overcome barriers to advance implementation of a decolonizing pedagogical approach.
ContributorsAldawood, Danielle (Author) / Gomez, Alan (Thesis advisor) / Simmons, William (Committee member) / Rothenberg, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Indigenous students have not been achieving their educational goals similar to other racial and ethnic groups. In 2008 Native American students completed a bachelor's degree at a rate of 38.3% the lowest rate of all racial and ethnic groups and lower than the national average of 57.2%. The high attrition rate of Native students in post-secondary education, nationally, suggests that on-going colonization may be to blame. Much of the research exploring retention strategies found culturally sensitive institutions, family and peer support, supportive relationships with faculty and staff, skill development, and financial aid knowledge were consistent factors for student retention. No studies have examined the effects of cultural workshops as decolonizing practices, however. This action research examined the influence of a series of cultural workshops to address Native student and college community needs. Employing a mixed-methods design, this project framed the cultural workshops within decolonization and historical trauma. Five student participants attended five cultural workshops and completed questionnaires to offer insight into their college behaviors while journals were used to learn about their experiences within the workshops. The results of this study are consistent with the literature. There was no change in relationships as a result of the intervention, but relationships with faculty and staff that mimicked family were reported as important for student success. Participating students were at early stages in the decolonization process but were further along when they had experiences in college with American Indian Studies or faculty. Students felt that colonizing practices at the college must be challenged and Indigenous traditional practices must be integrated to create a culturally competent institution. Additional sessions are recommended to increase data collection and allow participants to develop and share their rich feedback with the college.
ContributorsScott, Mona (Mona C.) (Author) / Rotheram-Fuller, Erin (Thesis advisor) / Vicenti Carpio, Myla (Committee member) / Harper-Marinick, Maria (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Implementing an assimilative agenda within the traditional U.S. education system has prevented the authentic inclusion, validation, and development of American Indian students. The enduring ramifications, including the loss of cultural identity, underscored the critical need to decolonize, or challenge, the historic assimilative agenda of the school space. The purpose of this action research study was to examine the connection between the cultural exploration activities of Culture Club, cultural identity, and the creation of a Third Space to serve as a decolonizing framework for this Indigenous program conducted within a school space.
The epistemological perspective guiding this study was that of constructionism. The theoretical frameworks were post-colonial theory, Indigenous methodology, and, most prominently, Third Space theory. A thorough review of Third Space theory resulted in deduction of four criteria deemed to be necessary for creating a Third Space. These four theoretically-deduced criteria were (a) creating new knowledge, (b) reclaiming and reinscribing hegemonic notions of identity and school, (c) creating new or hybrid identities, and (d) developing more inclusive perspectives. The criteria were employed to create the Culture Club innovation and to determine whether a Third Space was effectively created within Culture Club.
This qualitative action research study focused on the Culture Club innovation, an after-school, cultural exploration, extracurricular program for sixth-grade American Indian students, at a Title I school in a large southwest metropolitan area. The participants were five, sixth-grade American Indian students. The role of the researcher was to facilitate a Third Space within Culture Club, as well as collect and analyze data.
Data were collected using semi-structured interviews; recorded Culture Club sessions; phase 3, and research journal entries. Once the data were transcribed, eclectic coding methodology, consisting of open, descriptive, and in vivo coding was employed and interpretive analysis procedures followed.
Findings showed modest changes in participants’ cultural identities but confirmed the creation of a Third Space within Culture Club. Findings have important implications for both practice and future research. Recommendations for improving and sustaining the decolonizing framework of Culture Club to create safe spaces for American Indian students and their explorations of their Indigeneity are also proposed.
The epistemological perspective guiding this study was that of constructionism. The theoretical frameworks were post-colonial theory, Indigenous methodology, and, most prominently, Third Space theory. A thorough review of Third Space theory resulted in deduction of four criteria deemed to be necessary for creating a Third Space. These four theoretically-deduced criteria were (a) creating new knowledge, (b) reclaiming and reinscribing hegemonic notions of identity and school, (c) creating new or hybrid identities, and (d) developing more inclusive perspectives. The criteria were employed to create the Culture Club innovation and to determine whether a Third Space was effectively created within Culture Club.
This qualitative action research study focused on the Culture Club innovation, an after-school, cultural exploration, extracurricular program for sixth-grade American Indian students, at a Title I school in a large southwest metropolitan area. The participants were five, sixth-grade American Indian students. The role of the researcher was to facilitate a Third Space within Culture Club, as well as collect and analyze data.
Data were collected using semi-structured interviews; recorded Culture Club sessions; phase 3, and research journal entries. Once the data were transcribed, eclectic coding methodology, consisting of open, descriptive, and in vivo coding was employed and interpretive analysis procedures followed.
Findings showed modest changes in participants’ cultural identities but confirmed the creation of a Third Space within Culture Club. Findings have important implications for both practice and future research. Recommendations for improving and sustaining the decolonizing framework of Culture Club to create safe spaces for American Indian students and their explorations of their Indigeneity are also proposed.
ContributorsRoy, Brittani Kalyani (Author) / Buss, Ray R. (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, David (Committee member) / Mccarty, Teresa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Nohokáá Dine’é Diyinii’s (Empowered Earth Surface People, Diné People) story begins with the origin of the cosmos as detailed in Diné emergence narratives, and continues in Diné ceremonial songs, film, and poetry. Diné people’s emergence narratives describe how life moved through the four worlds and how Changing Woman brought Diné people into existence. In the present, Diné people often tell stories against violent colonial domination that aims to unsettle the hope and safety that undergirds their life and prosperity. Through their stories, Diné people bring their past and present together to make futures where Diné life can flourish. Each dissertation chapter explores the contours of storytelling as imagination, power, and future-making through selected Diné stories. Chapter 1 draws from the story of Gus Bighorse as set forth in his as-told-to autobiography (1990). The chapter describes how this Diné warrior, who survived the 1860s forced removal of Diné people, spoke from the heart to tell of a future beyond the US Cavalry’s violence. Such future-focused storying illustrates how Diné people apply elements of Sa’ah’ Naghai Bike’ Hózhǫ (SNBH) in the present to encourage the people to live. SNBH is a philosophy, worldview, and organizing principle for the underlying power through and by which Diné people imagine, create, remake, and renew our reality to realize hózhǫ, beauty. Chapter 2 examines the critical discourse within and around the 2014 Navajo election language fluency controversy that led to Christopher L. Clark Deschene’s removal from the general election ballot. Chapter 3 analyzes the hooghan and the Treaty of 1868 to show how construction in the United States always has sustained and marked the permanence of settler colonialism as white colonizers usurped Diné people’s lands and destroyed their homes. Chapter 4 employs the concept of feminist rehearsal to map the production of life and death in the border town of Gallup. This chapter interweaves the author’s family’s border town experience, the Nááhwíiłbįįhí Story, and Sydney Freeland’s feature film Drunktown’s Finest (2014). Chapter 5, an examination of Diné narratives of catastrophe and emergence, establishes a Diné-based approach to the threat of removal that climate change imposes.
ContributorsClark, Jerome (Author) / Horan, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / Fonseca-Chávez, Vaness (Committee member) / Yazzie, Melanie K. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
For decades, music educators have discussed the need to expand the standard choral canon to address disparities across student demographics in collegiate choral programs. These conversations have proved insufficient, because they do not address the systemic and structural issues that are the main cause for the racial and gender disparities within various areas of choral music. To address how structural oppression has found its way into collegiate choral music, I have studied how the discourse, or language, found on several collegiate choral music program public websites upholds two main power structures within collegiate choral music: the white racial frame and settler colonialist thought. Through a fictionalized narrative based on my personal music education experiences called “Decolonizing Kiki: A Socratic Dialogue,” I provide a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of language found on current American collegiate choral program websites. The narrative analysis intentionally centered my body and marginalized identities in order to illustrate the need to reflect upon the impact of language in choral music education. In addition to addressing the white racial frame and colonialist knowledge systems and practices in the discourse of collegiate choral music, this document departs from a typical Western approach to educational research. The narrative analysis also serves as a personal educational currere, which has helped me affirm my cultural and ethnic identities, ground my teaching philosophy, and further reconceptualize the future of choral music education
ContributorsSteiner, Kiernan Marlene (Author) / Schildkret, David (Thesis advisor) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Thompson, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021