Matching Items (11)
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- All Subjects: Writing
- Creators: Department of English
- Creators: Roen, Duane
- Resource Type: Text
Description
This dissertation shares findings from a yearlong qualitative case study of Young Voices Rise (YVR), a diverse spoken word poetry group in the urban Southwest. The study examined the group's characteristics and practices, adolescent members' views of their writing and themselves as writers, and changes members attributed to their experiences in YVR. Data sources included interviews with six adolescent poets and two adult teaching artists, observations of writing workshops and poetry slams, collection of group announcements through social media, and collection of poems. Sociocultural theory guided the study's design, and grounded theory was used to analyze data. This study found that YVR is a community of practice that offers multiple possibilities for engagement and fosters a safe space for storytelling. The adolescent participants have distinct writing practices and a strong sense of writing self; furthermore, they believe YVR has changed them and their writing. This study has several implications for secondary English language arts. Specifically, it recommends that teachers build safe spaces for storytelling, offer spoken word poetry as an option for exploring various topics and purposes, attend to writers' practices and preferences, encourage authentic participation and identity exploration, and support spoken word poetry school-wide.
ContributorsWilliams, Wendy (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
ABSTRACT Controversies surrounding multilingual language programs, disparities on educational achievement measures, and tracking represent some of the conflicts concerning race that continue to take place in school districts around the country. These debates are especially significant today as schools experience shifts in demographics. Racial and ethnic minorities now account for at least one-third of the nation's population (United States Census Bureau, 2010), and schools are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). The continued importance of race in education serves as the impetus behind this dissertation's inquiries into race and language in the high school English classroom. This study explores how one group of students, attending a predominately White high school with growing racial and ethnic diversity, write and talk about race in the English classroom. I examine how explicitly or implicitly students engaged in everyday language, school talk, and school writing about racial and ethnic identity, as well as how students responded to an English language arts curriculum devoted to issues of race and equity. On a broader scale, this study seeks to understand the school, community, and larger social context of racial and ethnic division and unity, particularly the role language and literacy pedagogies can play in addressing these issues. Blending two qualitative methodologies, including ethnography and the design and implementation of a race-conscious English curriculum, I spent eight months in one high school classroom, resulting in an analysis of a series of field notes, student writing, and in-depth participant interview transcripts. Findings from this study may help complicate researchers' and teachers' notions of how racial and ethnic identity operates in classrooms with shifting demographics. This study also highlights the importance of bringing race-conscious literacy activities to the forefront of English classrooms where structured discussions and carefully crafted writing prompts can facilitate discourse on race that might otherwise be muted in the context of traditional English language arts curriculum. Finally, this dissertation calls for a greater focus on collaborative research and teaching teams comprised of classroom teachers and university researchers.
ContributorsDeCosta, Meredith (Author) / Roen, Duane (Thesis advisor) / Early, Jessica (Committee member) / Paris, Django (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Increasing numbers of courses are offered online and increasing numbers of students are pursuing post-secondary studies. At broad-access institutions, such as land grant universities and community colleges, this presents a particular concern around student persistence--that is, the number of students who complete diploma, certificate, or degree requirements from an institution. Such increased access and increased enrollment also present unique challenges to first-year writing instructors, who are often the first professionals with whom first-year students are in contact. Here I explore the many reasons why student persistence should interest first-year writing instructors, in particular, those who are teaching online. Student persistence has important civic, economic, ethical, institutional, and disciplinary implications that first-year instructors cannot ignore. I propose a persistence-based pedagogy that involves six essential elements: designing learner-centered online writing courses, demonstrating mattering by valuing student writing, fostering self-efficacy by making assignments relevant, fostering student connections through collaboration and community, engaging virtual learners by fostering a sense of place and presence, and recognizing the challenges and minimizing the risks of teaching online. Such an undertaking is necessarily transdisciplinary and draws on scholarship in rhetoric and composition, instructional design, educational psychology, applied linguistics, and higher education administration. It connects pedagogical principles advanced nearly fifty years ago with digital pedagogies that are in their infancy and attempts to balance the social epistemic nature of writing instruction with the real-world demands of diverse student populations, increasing course sizes, and ever-changing technologies. Perhaps most importantly, this dissertation focuses on strategies that online writing instructors can adopt regardless of their theoretical leanings, academic training, or institutional requirements. While persistence-based instruction does not change the purpose or outcomes of first-year composition and does not replace proper placement measures or address early-term drop rates, it does provide a framework for facilitating online courses that is rooted in rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy and promotes informed teaching and lifelong learning.
ContributorsBergin, Jeffrey R (Author) / Roen, Duane (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This project focuses on techniques contemporary American poets use in their work. Ten different poetry collections are analyzed for dominant writing styles and techniques, which I then apply to my own poems, concentrating on modeling that particular poet. I then reflect on those poems through an evaluation of my writing process, how those techniques were implemented, and how they affected the poem. In addition to these reviews and reflections, I also wrote three articles about the literary community and what I've learned from my interactions in that community. All these materials are organized into a website, which shows the connections between the different writings via links and menus. Creating this website brings all the materials together to demonstrate my growth as a poet, writer, and designer. This heavy focus on poetry and analysis has helped sharpen my critical thinking skills and has better prepared me for a career in design and journalism.
ContributorsHansen, Elizabeth Sarah (Author) / Murphy, Patricia (Thesis director) / Savard, Jeannine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The process of playwriting is much more than merely writing the script itself; it is a process of outlining, writing, rewriting, and rewriting some more. This project explores that process from the very beginning to the late stages of final rewrites on a full-length, two-act stage play, Forget Me Not. Thematically, the play addresses issues such as legacy, ambition, the limitations of memory, and the complex relationships between women. It also speaks to the possibility of hope and revolves around twenty-something characters who are not nihilistic or pretentious as in the frequently-dominant portrayal of that demographic, but rather witty, intelligent, and layered. The play applies techniques of playwriting with a focus on character development as the element that drives the story, while also playing with conceptions of memory and time through the framing device, structure, and narration. A craft essay follows the script of the play, detailing the process of conceptualizing, writing, and revising the play.
ContributorsPrahl, Amanda Catherine (Author) / Sterling, Pamela (Thesis director) / Campbell, Corey (Committee member) / Jennings-Roggensack, Colleen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The purpose of this study is to determine the types of classroom instructional activities commonly used in teaching literature. Data were collected at ASU Preparatory High School. The study determined that literature-based lessons and activities fall under three categories: reading, writing, and discussion. Classroom observations revealed that reading, writing, and discursive activities were designed to promote higher-ordering thinking. These activities included silent reading, annotating text, reading aloud, keeping reading response journals, practicing essay writing, and participating in Socratic discussion. The teachers at ASU Prep used the listed activities with the intent to challenge their English students to engage in active learning, to improve reading, writing, and discursive skills, and promote critical thinking skills.
ContributorsSarik, Vivian Roathany (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis director) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
DescriptionA short collection of poems.
ContributorsLee, Mary Hayoung (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Liston, Chelsea (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Writing is an important lifelong skill. Most college freshmen are required to take first-year composition (FYC) to meet the needs of writing across disciplines. Yet, a great number of students enter college unprepared. To combat this, the writing process should be practiced as part of a solid writing program. The Common Core State Standards, the “WPA Outcomes for First-Year Composition,” and the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Education address the use of the writing process as a lifelong skill. Using Emig’s (1971) work on the composing process and Flower and Hayes’ (1981) cognitive process theory as a theoretical framework, this study seeks to define the components of the writing process and how these evolve for students in an online FYC course.
A qualitative, descriptive case study approach was used to explore qualitative documents. These documents were coded according to themes gleaned from the writing process literature. These emerging themes: invention work, multiple draft production, and the collaborative and social aspects of writing were used throughout the process-based curriculum. Participants made changes to their general writing process by conducting more invention work than they had before and finding the practice worthwhile, by producing more drafts than they had on previous writing projects, and by reflecting more about what the collaborative and social aspects of writing mean to them. The online FYC course curriculum gave students the tools to build and shape their existing writing practices, or as one participant wrote, “I wasn’t reinventing the wheel, just operating the tools.”
ContributorsWilliamson, Melissa (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Nilsen, Alleen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Composition historians have increasingly recognized that local histories help test long-held theories about the development of composition in higher education. As Gretchen Flesher Moon argues, local histories complicate our notions of students, teachers, institutions, and influences and add depth and nuance to the dominant narrative of composition history. Following the call for local histories in rhetoric and composition, this study is a local history of composition at Arizona State University (ASU) from 1885-1985. This study focuses on the institutional influences that shaped writing instruction as the school changed from a normal school to teachers` college, state college, and research university during its first century in existence. Building from archival research and oral histories, this dissertation argues that four national movements in higher education--the normal school movement, the standardization and accreditation movement, the "university-status movement," and the research and tenure movement--played a formative role in the development of writing instruction at Arizona State University. This dissertation, therefore, examines the effects of these movements as they filtered into the writing curriculum at ASU. I argue that faculty and administrators` responses to these movements directly influenced the place of writing instruction in the curriculum, which consequently shaped who took writing courses and who taught them, as well as how, what, and when writing was taught. This dissertation further argues that considering ASU`s history in relation to the movements noted above has implications for composition historians attempting to understand broader developments in composition history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Notwithstanding ASU`s unique circumstances, these movements had profound effects at institutions across the country, shaping missions, student populations, and institutional expectations. Although ASU`s local history is filled with idiosyncrasies and peculiarities that highlight the school`s distinctiveness, ASU is representative of hundreds of institutions across the country that were influenced by national education movements which are often invisible in the dominant narrative of composition history. As such, this history upholds the goal of local histories by complicating our notions of students, teachers, institutions, and influences and adding depth and nuance to our understanding of how composition developed in institutions of American higher education.
ContributorsSkinnell, Ryan (Author) / Goggin, Maureen Daly (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Thesis advisor) / Matsuda, Paul Kei (Committee member) / Rose, Shirley K. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This paper is an examination of my own personal experience living and studying abroad in Scotland and how this experience relates to the concept of tourist versus traveler. The concept of tourist versus traveler is found in many different work of travel writing. Paul Fussell described the tourist versus traveler idea best. Travelers, according to Fussell, "learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government, they learn, if they are lucky, humility." The aim of this project is to look at the differences between a tourist and a traveler is reference to my own personal experiences studying abroad. After spending a semester living and studying in Scotland I noticed that my behavior had changed, becoming more likely to try new things and immerse myself in Scottish society, instead of seeing the important historical places. I spent five months living in Scotland and during this time I noticed that the more time I spent abroad the less I wanted to do the tourist traps and the more I wanted experience Scotland through the parts of the country most generally would not see. My paper moves from my experience as a tourist to later in the semester when I had been living there for a while. This work can also be used to examine what living and studying abroad is like for students. Different countries have different ways of handling education and this work can help highlight these differences.
ContributorsDominy, Rachel Marie (Author) / Scott Lynch, Jacquelyn (Thesis director) / McAdams, Charity (Committee member) / Department of Management (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05