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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

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
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Description
This study is a discourse analysis and deconstruction of public documents published electronically in connection with the evaluation of the Advanced Placement Language and Composition Examination, found on the educational website: apcentral.collegeboard.com. The subject of this dissertation is how the characteristic of writing identified as Voice functions covertly in the

This study is a discourse analysis and deconstruction of public documents published electronically in connection with the evaluation of the Advanced Placement Language and Composition Examination, found on the educational website: apcentral.collegeboard.com. The subject of this dissertation is how the characteristic of writing identified as Voice functions covertly in the calibration of raters' evaluation of student writing in two sets of electronic commentaries: the Scoring Commentaries and the Student Performance Q&A;'s published between the years 2000-2010. The study is intended to contribute to both socio-linguistic and sociological research in education on the influence of inherited forms of cultural capital in educational attainment, with particular emphasis upon performance on high-stakes examinations. Modeled after Pierre Bourdieu's inquiry into the latent bias revealed in the "euphemized" language of teacher commentary found in The State Nobility, lists of recurrent descriptors and binary oppositions in the texts are deconstructed. The result of the deconstruction is the manifestation of latent class bias in the commentaries. Conclusions: discourse analysis reveals that a particular Voice, expressive of a preferred social class identity, which is initiated to and particularly deft in such academic performances, is rewarded by the test evaluators. Similarly, findings reveal that a low-scoring essay is negatively critiqued for being particularly unaccustomed to the form(s) of knowledge and style of writing required by the test situation. In summation, a high score on the AP Language Examination, rather than a certification of writerly competence, is actually a testament to the performance of cultural capital. Following an analysis of the language of classification and assessment in the electronic documents, the author provides several "tactics" (after de Certeau) or recommendations for writing the AP Language and Composition Examination, conducive to the stylistic performances privileged by the rating system.
ContributorsGraber, Stacy (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Tobin, Joseph (Committee member) / Nilsen, Alleen (Committee member) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
This project draws on sociocognitive rhetoric to ask, How, in complex situations not of our making, do we determine what needs to be done and how to leverage available means for the health of our communities and institutions? The project pulls together rhetorical concepts of the stochastic arts (those that

This project draws on sociocognitive rhetoric to ask, How, in complex situations not of our making, do we determine what needs to be done and how to leverage available means for the health of our communities and institutions? The project pulls together rhetorical concepts of the stochastic arts (those that demand the most precise, careful planning in the least predictable places) and techne (problem-solving tools that transform limits and barriers into possibilities) to forward a stochastic techne that grounds contemplative social action at the intersection of invention and intervention and mastery and failure in real time, under constraints we can't control and outcomes we can't predict. Based on 18 months of fieldwork with the Sudanese refugee diaspora in Phoenix, I offer a method for engaging in postmodern phronesis with community partners in four ways: 1) Explanations and examples of public listening and situational mapping 2) Narratives that elucidate the stochastic techne, a heuristic for determining and testing wise rhetorical action 3) Principles for constructing mutually collaborative, mutually beneficial community-university/ community-school partnerships for jointly addressing real-world issues that matter in the places where we live 4) Descriptions and explanations that ground the hard rhetorical work of inventing new paths and destinations as some of the Sudanese women construct hybridized identities and models of social entrepreneurship that resist aid-to-Africa discourse based on American paternalism and humanitarianism and re-cast themselves as micro-financers of innovative work here and in Southern Sudan. Finally, the project pulls back from the Sudanese to consider implications for re-figuring secondary English education around phronesis. Here, I offer a framework for teachers to engage in the real work of problem-posing that aims - as Django Paris calls us - to get something done by confronting the issues that confront our communities. Grounded in classroom instruction, the chapter provides tools for scaffolding public listening, multi-voiced inquiries, and phronesis with and for local publics. I conclude by calling for English education to abandon all pretense of being a predictive science and to instead embrace productive knowledge-making and the rhetorical work of phronesis as the heart of secondary English studies.
ContributorsClifton, Jennifer (Author) / Long, Elenore (Thesis advisor) / Gee, James Paul (Committee member) / Paris, Django (Committee member) / Warriner, Doris (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Description
Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, rural students have lower college enrollment rates. Despite many school and community benefits including small class sizes, close student-teacher relationships, and strong connections among community members, many rural high school students’ post-secondary educational opportunities are constrained by factors such as: fewer college

Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, rural students have lower college enrollment rates. Despite many school and community benefits including small class sizes, close student-teacher relationships, and strong connections among community members, many rural high school students’ post-secondary educational opportunities are constrained by factors such as: fewer college preparatory courses, narrow school curriculums, geographic isolation, high poverty rates, and limited access to college and career counseling. This action research study was conducted to examine how and to what extent underserved rural high school students constructed college-going capital through their participation in an English class designed to supplement their school’s limited college-access services. The study took place over a 19-week semester at Seligman High School, a small rural school comprised of approximately 55 students. To support their construction of college-going capital, students’ junior- and senior-level English class curriculums blended traditional college preparation activities with college-level reading and writing assignments focused on the U.S. educational system and its college-access inequities. The theoretical perspectives that framed this study included: social cognitive career theory, sociocultural theory, and critical literacy. Further, research on perceived post-secondary educational barriers and supports, dialogic discourse, and college access informed the study. By using a concurrent, transformative mixed methods research design, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected simultaneously. Then, while maintaining an advocacy stance, the data were analyzed separately and brought together to determine convergences and divergences. Drawing data from student surveys, student and researcher journal entries, student and college coach interviews, dialogic discussion transcripts, and an image elicitation process, this study showed that, through their participation in an English language arts college-going class, students developed college-going skills, knowledge, self-efficacy, and critical literacy. The study also revealed the following: students acquired varying levels of critical consciousness; students benefited from adult mentors coaching them about college-going; and students did not experience significant changes in their perceptions of barriers to and supports for college-going during their participation in the course.
ContributorsMorrison, Carissa (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Zucker, Stanley (Committee member) / Boreen, Jean (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
In 1976 Florynce R. Kennedy, a United States lawyer, activist, speaker, and

author famously stated that “anybody with the brains and energy to become a teacher ought to want to become something better.” With these stigmas surrounding the teaching profession, it becomes a wonder that anybody decides to become a teacher,

In 1976 Florynce R. Kennedy, a United States lawyer, activist, speaker, and

author famously stated that “anybody with the brains and energy to become a teacher ought to want to become something better.” With these stigmas surrounding the teaching profession, it becomes a wonder that anybody decides to become a teacher, or even more difficult, stay in the profession. The state of Arizona, specifically, has reached landmark attrition rates and dissatisfaction surrounding lack of education funding. The stories of those leaving have been well publicized over the last year, but what about those who choose to stay? This dissertation examines the counter narrative behind the teacher attrition crisis by focusing on the stories of the teachers in the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classroom who have decided to remain in the profession. Through narrative inquiry, this study examines how teachers narrate their experiences as teachers and how those constructs may have contributed to their retention. This study collected data from four high school English teachers through two in-depth interviews, classroom observations, a self-made teacher journey concept map, and teaching artifacts in the form of a teaching experience “time capsule.” Through this data, the participants’ stories highlighting their journey to teaching, current careers, and insights on retention were re- storied then thematically coded and analyzed. Findings are in essence the stories themselves, but also reveal how these teachers narrate their career, societal impacts, quality of life, as well as what motivating factors inspire them to stay in the classroom and teach.
ContributorsLuszeck, Amanda (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Durand, Elizabeth S (Thesis advisor) / Bickmore, Steven (Committee member) / Crowe, Christopher (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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Description
While the literacy narrative genre has been studied in first-year composition and methods of teaching courses, investigations of the literacy narrative as a multimodal project for pre-service teachers (PSTs) of English Language Arts remain scarce. This research shares a qualitative classroom-based case study that focuses on a literacy narrative project,

While the literacy narrative genre has been studied in first-year composition and methods of teaching courses, investigations of the literacy narrative as a multimodal project for pre-service teachers (PSTs) of English Language Arts remain scarce. This research shares a qualitative classroom-based case study that focuses on a literacy narrative project, redesigned as a Multimodal Writing History Memoir (see Appendix 1), the first assignment in a required writing methods course in a teacher training program for English Language Arts (ELA) teachers at a large public university in the southwest. The study took place during the fall semester of 2019 with 15 ELA undergraduate pre-service English Education or Secondary Education majors. The study described here examined the implementation and outcomes of the multimodal writing history memoir with goals of better understanding how ELA PSTs design and compose multimodally, of understanding the topics and content they included in their memoirs, to discover how this project reflected PSTs’ ideas about teaching writing in their future classrooms. The memoir project invited pre-service teachers to infuse written, audio, and visual text while making use of at least four different mediums of their choice. Through combined theoretical frames, I explored semiotics, as well as pre-service teachers’ use of multiliteracies as they examined their conceptions of what it means to compose. In this qualitative analysis, I collected students’ memoirs and writing samples associated with the assignment, a demographics survey, and individual mid-semester interviews. The writing activities associated with the memoir included a series of quick writes (Kittle, 2009), responses to questions about writing and teachers’ responsibilities when it comes to teaching composition, and letters students wrote to one another during a peer review workshop. Additionally, my final data source included the handwritten notes I took during the presentations students gave to share their memoirs. Some discoveries I made center on the nuanced impact of acts of personal writing for PSTs, some of the specific teaching strategies and areas of teaching focus participants relayed, and specifically, how participants worked with and thought about teaching multimodal composition.
ContributorsHope, Kate (Author) / Early, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Saidy, Christina (Committee member) / Durand, Sybil (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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Description
This research shares findings from a qualitative case study featuring pre-service teachers enrolled in an undergraduate English methods course at a large public university. The participants engaged in a semester long course focused on different critical pedagogies, such as culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014), funds of knowledge (Moll

This research shares findings from a qualitative case study featuring pre-service teachers enrolled in an undergraduate English methods course at a large public university. The participants engaged in a semester long course focused on different critical pedagogies, such as culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014), funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992), and multicultural education (hooks, 1992). The purpose of the study was to determine what effect the study of critical pedagogies would have on the pre-service teachers’ design of a civic action unit for a secondary English language arts context. In terms of which critical pedagogies influenced the design of the civic action units, how the critical pedagogies were adapted for specific contexts, and how the critical pedagogies are negotiated with other systemic educational forces.

The data collection occurred over the final six weeks of the course and in a follow-up interview a month later. Data were drawn from the following sources: (1) participant’s weekly reflections, (2) audio recorded class discussions, (3) researcher field notes, (4) participant’s civic action units, and (5) follow-up interviews. The participant reflections, civic action units, and interviews went through three rounds of coding and were categorized to identify salient findings. The audio recordings and field notes were referenced to provide contextual details.

These findings show that when pre-service teachers engage in an ongoing dialogue about critical pedagogies, they design civic action units that apply a variety of critical pedagogies for a unique context while accounting for different systemic forces including educational standards, colleagues, and parents and policies. For the course, the participants were able to pick their unit’s focus and were responsible for the unit’s design. The participants designed units that engaged students in consciousness-raising experiences, and created opportunities for students to critically reflect on their world and take action to improve it. As a result, the participants in this study all reported that they planned on using their civic action unit in their future classrooms.
ContributorsCelaya, Anthony (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Durand, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Garcia, Antero (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020