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- All Subjects: Educational leadership
Description
This research is a reversal of the traditional concept of the student-teaching research experiment. Instead of studying the clear and stated goal of an apprenticeship, that of a pupil learning from the tutelage of a master, the focus here is on what a mentor-teacher learns from a student-teacher. During the act of teaching a novice, what can a mentor-teacher learn about her own practice, while demonstrating it to a pre-service teacher? Using the conceptual framework of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' Architecture of Accomplished Teaching, and using it within a framework centered around cognitive coaching and reciprocal mentoring, this action research study implemented an intervention that called for series of five cognitive coaching cycles between a mentor- and student-teacher designed to foster dialogue and reflection between them. The ultimate aim of this case study was to help determine what a mentor-teacher learned about her own practice as a result of mentoring a student-teacher. Qualitative data were collected over sixteen weeks in a charter high school. Five findings were identified created after the data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach, and four conclusions were drawn about the intervention's role in the mentor-teacher's reciprocal learning.
ContributorsMcCloy, Daniel (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the literate practices of women reading and writing in the press during the civil rights movement in the 1950s/60s. Through a textual analysis of literacy events (Heath) in the memoirs of Sarah Patton Boyle (The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition), Anne Braden (The Wall Between), Daisy Bates (The Long Shadow of Little Rock) and Melba Pattillo Beals (Warriors Don't Cry), this dissertation highlights the participatory roles women played in the movement, including their ability to act publicly in a movement remembered mostly for its male leaders. Contributing to scholarship focused on the literate lives of women, this study focuses on the uses of literacy in the lives of four women with particular emphasis on the women's experiences with the literacy they practice. Drawing on ideological views of literacy (Gee, Street) and research focused on the social, cultural and economic influences of such practices (Brandt), the women's memoirs served as the site for collecting and analyzing the women's responses and reactions to literacy events with the press. Through an application of Deborah Brandt's notion of sponsor, literacy events between the women and the press were recorded and the data analyzed to understand the relationship the women had with the literacy available and the role the sponsor (the press) played in shaping the practice and the literate identities of the women. Situated in the racist climate of the Jim Crow South in the 1950s/60s and the secondary role women played in the movement, the women's memoirs and the data analyzed revealed the role the women's perception of the practice, shaped by personal history and lived experiences, played in how the women experienced and used their literacy. This dissertation argues that their responses to literacy events and their perceptions of the power of their reading and writing highlight the significant public role women played in the movement and argues that, although the women remain relatively unremembered participants of the movement, their memoirs act as artifacts of that time and proof of the meaningful public contributions women made to the movement.
ContributorsAdams, Kelly R (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT There are currently 82,369 teachers nationwide who are National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs). In Arizona the number of NBCTs is 678. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect cognitive coaching conversations and participation in a community of practice had on National Board candidates' self-efficacy and their understanding of the National Board Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). A mixed methods research approach was used to collect data including: surveys, interviews, researcher observations, and cognitive coaching transcripts. I conducted a case study of five National Board candidates at my school. Drawing on the social cognitive theory, this study was framed by the construct of self-efficacy. Through the use of open-ended questions, cognitive coaching conversations pushed candidates' thinking to a deeper level of understanding. The teachers involved in the National Board certification process represented a community of practice as the expectations and language of the NBPTS standards and portfolio directions also provided a common connection. Findings in this study reveal that cognitive coaching conversations and membership in a community of practice have a positive impact on teachers' self-efficacy during the National Board certification process. In addition, on-going cognitive coaching conversations and participation in a community of practice positively impact National Board candidates' understanding and articulation of the NBPTS standards.
ContributorsRobinson, Jennifer M (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Surbeck, Elaine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
It is commonly accepted that undergraduate degree attainment rates must improve if postsecondary educational institutions are to meet macroeconomic demands. Involvement in co-curricular activities, such as student clubs and organizations, has been shown to increase students' satisfaction with their college experience and the rates by which they might persist. Yet, strategies that college administrators, faculties, and peer leaders may employ to effectively promote co-curricular engagement opportunities to students are not well developed. In turn, I created the Sky Leaders program, a retention-focused intervention designed to promote commuter student involvement in academically-purposeful activities via faculty- and peer-lead mentoring experiences. Working from an interpretivist research paradigm, this quasi-experimental mixed methods action research study was intended to measure the intervention's impact on participants' re-enrollment and reported engagement rates, as well as the effectiveness of its conceptual and logistical aspects. I used enrollment, survey, interview, observation, and focus group data collection instruments to accommodate an integrated data procurement process, which allowed for the consideration of several perspectives related to the same research questions. I analyzed all of the quantitative data captured from the enrollment and survey instruments using descriptive and inferential statistics to explore statistically and practically significant differences between participant groups. As a result, I identified one significant finding that had a perceived positive effect. Expressly, I found the difference between treatment and control participants' reported levels of engagement within co-curricular activities to be statistically and practically significant. Additionally, consistent with Glaser and Strauss' grounded theory approach, I employed open, axial, and selective coding procedures to analyze all of the qualitative data obtained via open-ended survey items, as well as interview, observation, and focus group instruments. After I reviewed and examined the qualitative data corpus, I constructed six themes reflective of the participants' programmatic experiences as well as conceptual and logistical features of the intervention. In doing so, I found that faculty, staff, and peer leaders may efficaciously serve in specific mentoring roles to promote co-curricular engagement opportunities and advance students' institutional academic and social integration, thereby effectively curbing their potential college departure decisions, which often arise out of mal-integrative experiences.
ContributorsSebold, Brent (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Wharton, Christopher (Christopher Mack), 1977- (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This qualitative study begins with the supposition that all schools have cultural biases and that even within the same school culture, people see things differently. Internal biases can negatively affect the approach to school improvement. To disrupt these culture bound realities, parent perspectives were sought out to provide an alternate view into Zaharis Elementary School. Two critical assumptions were built into this study. One, that the vast reservoir of cultural knowledge among parents could be tapped, and two, once that cultural knowledge was uncovered, they the schoolpeople (1986) of Zaharis Elementary could do something with it to make a difference in the lives of children. A focus group framework was employed over a series of parent group interviews to explore the following research question: What are the multiple realities expressed by parents and what similarities and differences exist across these realities? Focus group discussions were transcribed, participant responses were coded, and a thorough and comprehensive analysis revealed that the majority of parent perceptions expressed fell within three emergent parent realities that were defined and presented. One, parents perceived that teaching and learning were social processes that support the development of student voice and nurture rich relationships. Two, parents perceived that learning through inquiry elevated class work to purposeful student learning, activates critical thinking, and fosters authentic real-world experience. And the third parent perception was teaching is teamwork and all members of the classroom community were teachers and learners.
ContributorsOliver, Michael (Author) / Marsh, Josephine P (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Moses, Lindsey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
While the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s is one of the most famous and celebrated parts of American history, rhetoric scholars have illuminated the ways this subversive movement has been manipulated beyond recognition over time. These narrative constructions play a role in preserving what Maegan Parker Brooks calls the "conservative master narrative of civil rights history," a narrative that diminishes the work of activists while simultaneously promoting complacency to prevent any challenge to the white supremacist hegemony. This dissertation argues that the graphic memoir trilogy March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell challenges this conservative master narrative through visual rhetoric, in particular through the comics techniques "braiding" and "weaving."
Braiding occurs when authors create "webs of interrelation" (Miodrag 134) by repeating a technique throughout the text, which can sometimes involve a secondary narrative (Groensteen). Braids are associations in the network of panels of the comic that go beyond the parameters of strictly linear storytelling as panels echo those the reader has encountered before. The braids in March compare the past and present through a direct juxtaposition of January 20, 2009—the inauguration day of Barack Obama—with John Lewis' activism from 1959 to 1965. While this juxtaposition risks reinforcing a progress narrative that suggests racism is in the past, in fact, the braided inauguration scenes help the reader connect the moments of the past with their present, calling to mind the ways white supremacy endures in contemporary America. Weaving refers to the reader’s action of moving back and forth in the comics narrative to create meaning, and artists use techniques that facilitate this behavior, such as leaving out or minimizing significant cues and creating a sense of ambiguity that leads the reader to become curious about the events in the sequence. Weaving can disrupt an easy linear narrative of depicted events—such as Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony at the Democratic National Convention—as artists present several opportunities for the reader to interpret these stories in ways that challenge a conservative master narrative of the events in the trilogy.
Braiding occurs when authors create "webs of interrelation" (Miodrag 134) by repeating a technique throughout the text, which can sometimes involve a secondary narrative (Groensteen). Braids are associations in the network of panels of the comic that go beyond the parameters of strictly linear storytelling as panels echo those the reader has encountered before. The braids in March compare the past and present through a direct juxtaposition of January 20, 2009—the inauguration day of Barack Obama—with John Lewis' activism from 1959 to 1965. While this juxtaposition risks reinforcing a progress narrative that suggests racism is in the past, in fact, the braided inauguration scenes help the reader connect the moments of the past with their present, calling to mind the ways white supremacy endures in contemporary America. Weaving refers to the reader’s action of moving back and forth in the comics narrative to create meaning, and artists use techniques that facilitate this behavior, such as leaving out or minimizing significant cues and creating a sense of ambiguity that leads the reader to become curious about the events in the sequence. Weaving can disrupt an easy linear narrative of depicted events—such as Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony at the Democratic National Convention—as artists present several opportunities for the reader to interpret these stories in ways that challenge a conservative master narrative of the events in the trilogy.
ContributorsBoykin, Jessica (Author) / Miller, Keith D. (Thesis advisor) / Lamp-Fortuno, Kathleen (Committee member) / Ore, Ersula J. (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019