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- All Subjects: Reform
- All Subjects: Multicultural education--United States--Psychological aspects.
- Creators: Swadener, Elizabeth B
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
Description
This study sought to create a holistic picture of Ethnic Studies as it relates to education through the voices and experiences of scholars who bridge Ethnic Studies and education. It examines Ethnic Studies through the conceptual lens of Safety Zone Theory (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). At the heart of Safety Zone Theory (SZT) is the concept that historically the U.S. federal government (and to an extent society as a result of this governmental framing) has designated certain elements of minority cultures as “safe” and other elements as “divisive.” SZT was originally applied to examine federal Indian education policy in the U.S. In this study, I expand that application to other minority and immigrant cultures within the United States. This research is significant because despite the minority population growth in the United States public school curricula typically only make reference to such groups and their histories a minimal side note (Loewen, 2007; U.S. Census, 2013; Zinn, 2003). For example, in 2010 the Arizona state legislature declared Ethnic Studies illegal on the grounds that it allegedly promotes “anti-American sentiments" (A.R.S. §15–112).
Using Seidman’s (2013) three-part interview protocol, leading figures in the field of Ethnic Studies as it relates to education were interviewed to gain their perspectives on the “life story” of this field. Again following Seidman’s (2013) protocol, narrative profiles were crafted for each participant. The profiles were analyzed individually for emerging themes; this was followed by a cross-case analysis. This multilevel qualitative analysis yielded a larger narrative of Ethnic Studies that helps us to understand its past and envision its future. My hope is that this research impacts future policy on Ethnic Studies and current curricula, particularly in states and school districts making decisions on the importance and need of Ethnic Studies as a part of the curriculum. Also, the research can aid preservice teachers and principals in learning to see the fullness of their students, the places they come from, and the value and funds of knowledge that they bring to the classroom. I also hope that this is the beginning of more studies on the impact of individual stories and the stories as a collective in regards to race and ethnicity. Demographics within the United States are changing at a rapid pace, and school is children’s introduction to society. As a mini-society/community, there is a responsibility to model what they are going step into in real life.
Using Seidman’s (2013) three-part interview protocol, leading figures in the field of Ethnic Studies as it relates to education were interviewed to gain their perspectives on the “life story” of this field. Again following Seidman’s (2013) protocol, narrative profiles were crafted for each participant. The profiles were analyzed individually for emerging themes; this was followed by a cross-case analysis. This multilevel qualitative analysis yielded a larger narrative of Ethnic Studies that helps us to understand its past and envision its future. My hope is that this research impacts future policy on Ethnic Studies and current curricula, particularly in states and school districts making decisions on the importance and need of Ethnic Studies as a part of the curriculum. Also, the research can aid preservice teachers and principals in learning to see the fullness of their students, the places they come from, and the value and funds of knowledge that they bring to the classroom. I also hope that this is the beginning of more studies on the impact of individual stories and the stories as a collective in regards to race and ethnicity. Demographics within the United States are changing at a rapid pace, and school is children’s introduction to society. As a mini-society/community, there is a responsibility to model what they are going step into in real life.
ContributorsAnderson, Joy (Author) / Mccarty, Teresa L (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Elizabeth B (Thesis advisor) / Scott, Kimberly A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation coheres together over a hundred insurgent testimonies published from within Arizona State Prison Complex – Perryville, the state’s only prison for women. These testimonies tell a people’s history of Arizona’s largest and most public legal intervention for prisoners’ rights: Parsons v. Ryan. In 2009, after Perryville correctional officers left Marcia Powell to bake to death in the Arizona summer sun, prisoners lit their mattresses on fire to proclaim that their lives were in danger, sparking a wave of resistance, including outside from family members and advocates, which prompted a class action lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Re-Entry (ADCRR). After years of prisoners’ calls for a systemic reckoning of the death-producing state punishment system, legal intervention distilled their suffering and demands into a set of discrete allegations. Meanwhile, settlement stipulations continue to implore ADCRR to meet minimum constitutional standards. While the accountability Parsons v. Ryan seeks is limited to the administration of medical care and extreme isolation, testimonies in this people’s history reveal a breadth of systemic violences that encompass and surpass the legal claims. These testimonies, which evidence strategies of care work, protest, and covert documentation, delineate the prison’s function to degrade human dignity and inflict physical and psychological harm in virtually every area of basic survival, including access to food, shelter, hygiene, and personal safety. Through use of the “rebel archive,” the resulting narrative, made possible by virtue of prisoners’ organizing for dignity, invokes a critical analysis of the sublimation of their resistance and demands for a project of liberal carceral care as prison reform.
ContributorsCooper, Ashley Ann (Author) / Quan, H.L.T. (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Elizabeth B (Committee member) / Talebi, Shahla (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024