Matching Items (7)
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- All Subjects: Education Policy
- Creators: Silova, Iveta
Description
In the United States, there is a national agenda to increase the number of qualified science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) professionals and a movement to promote science literacy among the general public. This project explores the association between formal human evolutionary biology education (HEB) and high school science class enrollment, academic achievement, interest in a STEM degree program, motivation to pursue a STEM career, and socioscientific decision–making for a sample of students enrolled full–time at Arizona State University. Given a lack of a priori knowledge of these relationships, the Grounded Theory Method was used and was the foundation for a mixed–methods analysis involving qualitative and quantitative data from one–on–one interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and an online survey. Theory development and hypothesis generation were based on data from 44 students. The survey instrument, developed to test the hypotheses, was completed by 486 undergraduates, age 18–22, who graduated from U.S. public high schools. The results showed that higher exposure to HEB was correlated with greater high school science class enrollment, particularly for advanced biological science classes, and that, for some students, HEB exposure may have influenced their enrollment, because the students found the content interesting and relevant. The results also suggested that students with higher K–12 HEB exposure felt more prepared for undergraduate science coursework. There was a positive correlation between HEB exposure and interest in a STEM degree and an indirect relationship between higher HEB exposure and motivation to pursue a STEM career. Regarding a number of socioscientific issues, including but not limited to climate change, homosexuality, and stem cell research, students' behaviors and decision–making more closely reflected a scientific viewpoint—or less–closely aligned to a religion–based perspective—when students had greater HEB exposure, but this was sometimes contingent on students' lifetime exposure to religious doctrine and acceptance of general evolution or human evolution. This study has implications for K–12 and higher education and justifies a paradigm shift in evolution education research, such that more emphasis is placed on students' interests, perceived preparation for continued learning, professional goals and potential contributions to society rather than just their knowledge and acceptance.
ContributorsSchrein, Caitlin M (Author) / Toon, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Johanson, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Hackett, Edward (Committee member) / Molina-Walters, Debra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In this three-article dissertation, I explore the history of Western gardens in educational literature as well as the ontologies and epistemologies that underpin contemporary learning in gardens. Through a critical posthumanist and Indigenous scholarship lens, I collaborated with a school garden, a community garden and an indigenous garden to examine onto-epistemologies that permeate the relationships between humans and more-than-humans in gardens, revealing ways of being and knowing that are favored and the ones that are pushed out of gardening experiences, while exploring entryways to non-Western ways of being and learning in the garden.While each article stands on its own, taken together they paint a complex, rich and nuanced picture of more-than-human relationalities that occur in gardens and of human engagement deriving from different ontoepistemological orientations. This research contributes to the existing literature by exploring issues regarding environmental and sustainability education’s (ESE) approach to learning in gardens, specifically the salient role of gardens in ESE’s strategy in attenuating the climate crisis, by examining how gardens are conceptualized, who has agency in gardens, and what knowledges are privileged in gardens as learning spaces.
Contributorsdo Lago e Pretti, Esther (Author) / Silova, Iveta (Thesis advisor) / Koro, Mika (Committee member) / Weinberg, Andrea (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Higher education in Ethiopia has undergone significant expansion since the 1990s, with increases in the number of institutions, professors, and students. In the context of this rapid expansion, the Higher Diploma Program (HDP) was introduced to improve the quality of higher education by training university faculty in pedagogy and shifting pedagogy from teacher-centered to student-centered methods, specifically focusing on the introduction of Active Learning Methods (ALMs). This dissertation examines how the HDP was introduced and implemented in Ethiopian higher education through the theoretical lens of education policy transfer/borrowing and decolonial studies. Using ALMs as a case of a borrowed education policy, this research explores policy-practice gaps and factors hindering implementation of ALMs across different institutional and disciplinary contexts in Ethiopian higher education. Overall, the findings indicate that the HDP did not radically transform pedagogy and that teacher-centered instruction continues to dominate teaching and learning. Despite variations in institutional resources, geographical locations, or disciplinary contexts, ALMs were not commonly implemented. Drawing on the intensive analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, including over 150 faculty surveys, nearly 80 interviews with faculty (n=58), universities leaders (n=15), and policymakers (n=6), and 15 focus group discussions with 100 students, this research has identified barriers to the implementation of ALMs that exceed the often-cited factors such as large class sizes, lack of resources, overloaded curricula, lack of pedagogical knowledge, or a lack of faculty commitment. In addition to the previously documented barriers, this research has also identified the broader interconnected meso- and macro-level barriers related to the economy, politics, culture, and global/local dynamics that reflect the logic of coloniality through the continued influence of international donors using soft power (e.g., international aid, knowledge expertise, and international study tours). Combined, these findings suggest that the barriers to the implementation of ALMs in Ethiopia are rooted in systemic and complex power asymmetry between Ethiopia and the Global West/North, and therefore require not only technical assistance involving multiple sectors and stakeholders, but a radical reconfiguration of the modern/colonial logic that forms the foundation of the HDP and other borrowed education reforms.
ContributorsHalkiyo, Atota Bedane (Author) / Silova, Iveta (Thesis advisor) / Hailu, Meseret (Committee member) / Mlambo, Yeukai (Committee member) / Koro, Mirka (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
In the Cold War era, educational broadcasting became a new technological instrument in less industrialized countries, to enhance the quality of education. Specifically, the use of mass media in classrooms was starting to be considered a modernized way for developing the educational system in less industrialized regions. This study argues that educational broadcasting in less industrialized areas, including South Korea, reveals the effects of Cold War politics in educational development in many countries. Through the concept of localized modernization, this study highlights American educational aid programs in establishing an educational broadcasting system in a foreign country and its effects on changing the entire educational system focusing on the case of South Korea.
By investigating various archival sources published by governmental agencies, international organizations, and local governments, this dissertation reveals how some less industrialized regions sought to change their educational system by using a new modern technology, educational broadcasting, and how a new educational idea—that the use of mass media in school instruction can change the entire educational system—influenced, changed, and was adopted in these areas.
Although the U.S. Agency for International Development introduced mass media to modernize education, this study shows how local people adapted a new educational broadcasting system to their own purposes and unique circumstances. Korean policymakers and educators agreed with some parts of the U.S. recommended system, but used them for their own needs. The educational broadcasting system in Korea proceeded differently from the U.S. recommended system. The author thus argues that the case of educational broadcasting in South Korea is an example of how local countries constructed their own educational broadcasting systems, how individual countries adapted U.S. systems during the Cold War era to their own needs, and how the localization of the modernization process can be an alternative lens for an overview of the historical pathway of U.S. educational aid projects in the Cold War era.
ContributorsKim, Woo Yeong (Author) / Dorn, Sherman (Thesis advisor) / Silova, Iveta (Committee member) / Powers, Jeanne M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The current sustainability crisis is born from a specious notion that humans are separate from and in a position of control over nature. In response, this dissertation reconceptualizes education beyond its current anthropocentric model to imagine education as learning through relationality with all that is ‘beyond’ the human. The study leaves behind hegemonic binary distinctions (human
ature, teacher/student, formal
on-formal education) to reimagine education as a multidirectional process of learning as worlding and becoming-with Earth (Haraway, 2016a). It explores what matters in education and how it comes to matter.
This dissertation introduces the concept of storyworlding to describe what occurs when multispecies, multi-mattered assemblages (re)write Earth’s narratives through their relationships with one another. Taking its inspiration from the work of the Common Worlds Research Collective, Donna Haraway, and Isabelle Stengers, storyworlding acknowledges that the relationships between and among all biotic and abiotic forces on Earth make stories through their interactions, and these stories make a pluriverse of worlds.
The study is structured as a natureculture (Haraway, 2003) ethnography. This innovation on ethnography, a traditionally human-centered method, focuses on agential, multispecies/ multi-mattered assemblages rather than the description of human culture. Data is not generated and then labeled as fixed in this study. It is emergent in its assemblages as a co-narrator in sympoietic storyworlding (Haraway, 2016b).
Data generation took place over 6 months in a small, coffee-producing region of Southeastern Brazil. Data generation methods included walking conversations with children and the more-than-human world, participation in a multi-grade, one-room schoolhouse, and the collection of visual and audio data such as drawings, photographs, videos, and audio recordings.
Using an intentionally slow, messy, and fluid diffractive analysis, I follow the data where it leads as I think with the concept of storyworlding (Barad, 2007; Mazzei, 2014). Drawing inspiration from Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, and Iveta Silova, the dissertation concludes with an Epilogue of speculative fabulation (SF) imaginings through which I invite the reader to engage in the thought experiment of reimagining not only what matters in education, but what education, itself, is.
ature, teacher/student, formal
on-formal education) to reimagine education as a multidirectional process of learning as worlding and becoming-with Earth (Haraway, 2016a). It explores what matters in education and how it comes to matter.
This dissertation introduces the concept of storyworlding to describe what occurs when multispecies, multi-mattered assemblages (re)write Earth’s narratives through their relationships with one another. Taking its inspiration from the work of the Common Worlds Research Collective, Donna Haraway, and Isabelle Stengers, storyworlding acknowledges that the relationships between and among all biotic and abiotic forces on Earth make stories through their interactions, and these stories make a pluriverse of worlds.
The study is structured as a natureculture (Haraway, 2003) ethnography. This innovation on ethnography, a traditionally human-centered method, focuses on agential, multispecies/ multi-mattered assemblages rather than the description of human culture. Data is not generated and then labeled as fixed in this study. It is emergent in its assemblages as a co-narrator in sympoietic storyworlding (Haraway, 2016b).
Data generation took place over 6 months in a small, coffee-producing region of Southeastern Brazil. Data generation methods included walking conversations with children and the more-than-human world, participation in a multi-grade, one-room schoolhouse, and the collection of visual and audio data such as drawings, photographs, videos, and audio recordings.
Using an intentionally slow, messy, and fluid diffractive analysis, I follow the data where it leads as I think with the concept of storyworlding (Barad, 2007; Mazzei, 2014). Drawing inspiration from Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, and Iveta Silova, the dissertation concludes with an Epilogue of speculative fabulation (SF) imaginings through which I invite the reader to engage in the thought experiment of reimagining not only what matters in education, but what education, itself, is.
ContributorsGoebel, Janna (Author) / Silova, Iveta (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Beth Blue (Committee member) / Koro, Mirka (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Borders have deep symbolic, cultural, historical, and religious meanings, and can therefore become mobilized for various political endeavors. Using a critical educational ethnographic approach, my dissertation examines educators’ memories of bordering practices and experiences to rethink national borders and identities in Armenian education. I argue that teachers have the potential to act as key change agents in transforming the Armenia-Azerbaijan and Armenia-Turkey conflicts of the Caucasus region through their distinctive influence both on curriculum and pedagogy, and by creating supportive learning environments in classrooms. This dissertation suggests that borders are central to the defining of identity – as studied among Armenians – and that border thinking has the potential to expand pedagogical practices to not only inform/(re)define identity, but also to sustain peace and make room for an alternative way of being that refutes the dichotomies of colonialism and imperialism, and other prevalent isms. Specifically, my research focuses on the ways in which the idea and reality of “the border” – as well as teachers’ memories of the “border” – shape classroom practices, textbook content, and pedagogical theory in post-conflict Armenia. This research analyzes the capacity and potential of educators to contribute to more peaceful relationships and makes clear the constraints of schools in fulfilling this role. My dissertation contributes to the current scholarship of border studies, post-Soviet transformations, and education in conflict territories by expanding the scope of pedagogical practices necessary for peaceful coexistence. Fieldwork for this study was conducted in Armenia between June 2019 and March 2020 with a one-month site visit in Turkey. This study includes textbook analyses, interviews with teachers, fieldwork observations, as well as document and visual analyses.
ContributorsPalandjian, Garine (Author) / Silova, Iveta (Thesis advisor) / Brown, Keith (Committee member) / Carlson, David L (Committee member) / O'Connor, Brendan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This dissertation research explores the complexity of transformations of academic lives and academic identities along the multiple, non-linear, conflicting, and paradoxical trajectories of the pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet times and spaces. Academic literature on the post-Soviet transformations of higher education has usually focused on structural reforms and policy changes, as well as their compatibility with the European and Western higher education policy agenda. Guided by the theoretical insights from the decolonial and post-Socialist transformation studies, this dissertation research intends to decenter the education policies and reforms from being a focal point of analysis; instead, it spotlights the transformation of Georgian academics through their memories, lived experiences, and imaginations about the future. The study offers insights into personal and collective experiences of being and becoming an academic in the process of navigating the evolving historical, political, cultural, and institutional contexts at three public universities in Georgia. Drawing on the narrative-ethnographic methodology, this study explores the complicated scenes and nuances of Georgian academic space by portraying how academics construct, reconstruct, adjust, resist, negotiate, and reinvent their academic selves during the post-Soviet transformations. Diffractive analysis of the narratives and ethnographic observations illustrates multiple intra-actions of academic identities through various temporal and spatial reconfigurations, revealing that the Soviet past is not left behind, and the European future is not that certain. Instead, the liminal academic space is haunted by the (re)awakened pasts and (re)imagined futures, and their inseparability enacts various co-existing scenarios of defuturing and refuturing of academic identities.
ContributorsTsotniashvili, Keti (Author) / Silova, Iveta (Thesis advisor) / Hailu, Meseret (Committee member) / Oleksiyenko, Anatoly (Committee member) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023