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Description
In 2005 the Navajo Nation Tribal Council passed the Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act (NSEA). The NSEA has been herald as a decisive new direction in Diné education with implications for Diné language and cultural revitalization. However, research has assumed the NSEA will lead to decolonizing efforts such as language

In 2005 the Navajo Nation Tribal Council passed the Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act (NSEA). The NSEA has been herald as a decisive new direction in Diné education with implications for Diné language and cultural revitalization. However, research has assumed the NSEA will lead to decolonizing efforts such as language revitalization and has yet to critically analyze how the NSEA is decolonizing or maintains settler colonial educational structures. In order to critically investigate the NSEA this thesis develops a framework of educational elimination through a literature review on the history of United States settler colonial elimination of Indigeneity through schooling and a framework of decolonizing education through a review of literature on promising practices in Indigenous education and culturally responsive schooling. The NSEA is analyzed through the decolonizing education framework and educational elimination framework. I argue the NSEA provides potential leverage for both decolonizing educational practices and the continuation of educational elimination.
ContributorsPreston, Waquin (Author) / Vicenti Carpio, Myla (Thesis advisor) / Sumida Huaman, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Tippeconnic III, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
In order to examine the concept of Pueblo Indian epistemology and its relevance to western science, one must first come to some understanding about Pueblo Indian worldviews and related philosophies. This requires an analysis of the fundamental principles, perspectives, and practices that frame Pueblo values. Describing a Pueblo Indian worldview

In order to examine the concept of Pueblo Indian epistemology and its relevance to western science, one must first come to some understanding about Pueblo Indian worldviews and related philosophies. This requires an analysis of the fundamental principles, perspectives, and practices that frame Pueblo values. Describing a Pueblo Indian worldview and compartmentalizing its philosophies according to western definitions of axiology, ontology, epistemology, and pedagogy is problematic because Pueblo ideas and values are very fluid and in dynamic relationship with one another. This dissertation will frame a Pueblo Indian epistemology by providing examples of how it is used to guide knowledge production and understandings. Using the Community-Based Education program (CBE), at the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I will demonstrate how this unique epistemology guides the CBE philosophy by creating meaningful hands-on learning opportunities for students. What sets this program apart from typical formal schooling classes in schools in the United States is that the local Pueblo communities define the curriculum for students. Their participation in curriculum design in the CBE process enables students to participate in seeking solutions to critical issues that threaten their Pueblos in the areas of environment and agriculture. This program also supports the larger agenda of promoting educational sovereignty at the Santa Fe Indian School by giving the Pueblo tribes more control over what and how their students learn about issues within their communities. Through the community-based agriculture and environmental science programs, students study current issues and trends within local Pueblo Indian communities. In two linked classes: Agriscience and Native American Agricultural Issues, students work with community farms and individual farmers to provide viable services such as soil testing, seed germination tests, and gathering research for upcoming agriculture projects. The policies of the governing body of Santa Fe Indian School mandate the use of CBE methods throughout all core classes. There are steps that need to be taken to ensure that the CBE model is applied and supported throughout the school.
ContributorsDorame, Anthony, 1944- (Author) / Sumida-Huaman, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Brayboy, Bryan (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
This study enters on the heels of a trend of public school closures across the United States. Using qualitative methods, the study concerns the curriculum experiences of six African American students attending a majority-white high school in a white, middle-class community in the Midwest, one year after the closure of

This study enters on the heels of a trend of public school closures across the United States. Using qualitative methods, the study concerns the curriculum experiences of six African American students attending a majority-white high school in a white, middle-class community in the Midwest, one year after the closure of their predominantly Black high school in their hometown.

The study draws from Michel Foucault’s philosophy on care of the self as an analytical tool to look at students’ care of the ‘racialized’ self, or more specifically, how African American students are forming a ‘self’ in a majority-white school in relation to the ways they are being racialized. Background of the schools and a description of the conditions under which the school change occurred are provided for context. Data collection involved conducting life history interviews with students, observing students in their classes, and shadowing students throughout their school day.

Findings show that African American student-participants are contending with what they describe as a “them”/“us” racial, cultural, and class divide that is operationalized through the curriculum. Students are in a struggle to negotiate how they are perceived and categorized as ‘racialized’ bodies through the curriculum, and, their own perceptions of these racializations. In this struggle, students enact self-practices to make maneuvers within curriculum spaces. A student can accept how the curriculum attempts to constitute her/him as a subject, resist this subjectification, or perform any combination of both accepting and resisting. In this way, a curriculum, with its distinctive and potentially polarizing boundaries, becomes a negotiated and contested space. And, because this curricular space is internally contradictory, a student, in relation to it, may practice versions of a ‘self’ (multiple ‘selves’) that are contradictory. Findings illuminate that in this complex process of self-making, African American students are producing a curriculum of self-formation that teaches others how they want to be perceived.
ContributorsLevin, Stacey S (Author) / Blumenfeld-Jones, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, David Lee (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to describe a new school model for Dine (Navajo) learners where Dine students will experience how to apply knowledge and skills personally, meaningfully, and socially relevant to life situations through the medium of Dine language and culture maintenance. This study explored a new

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to describe a new school model for Dine (Navajo) learners where Dine students will experience how to apply knowledge and skills personally, meaningfully, and socially relevant to life situations through the medium of Dine language and culture maintenance. This study explored a new way to perpetuate Dine (Navajo) culture and language through a model referred to as M.A.T.S. (Mathematics, Arts, Technology, Science, the renaming of STEM and STEAM). Oohoo’aah, Na’nitin Yee nooseel Xploria, which translates to a Center for Learning, acquiring knowledge and growing through a Navajo approach to exploration) is a public charter school serving students in grades K-3. As a public charter school ONYX is to serve all of Jeddito Community, with 98% ratio of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch. ONYX will employ dedicated educators and community members with excellent work ethics who are committed to closing the achievement gap, while promoting a creative outlook on the world around them. Students will leave ONYX School with skills in Navajo Language and Culture with a foundation in M.A.T.S. ONYX School’s educational program will be driven by a belief that all learning will be academically rigorous with a well-designed curriculum to students in becoming lifelong explorers of learning and productive members of society. This will allow ONYX to stay true to the mission to promote K’e (relationship in Navajo Culture), respect for self, others, and environment, most importantly to use natural/traditional scientific skills passed on through Navajo culture. In the learning environment, there will be constant and continuous communication among administrators, teachers, parents, and community leaders. This form of instruction is also transferable to learning how to read and write in Navajo. The program will allow for students to use hands on approach with inquiry based learning with a foundation in Navajo traditional/scientific approach to learning.
ContributorsCharlie, Fonda Rae (Author) / Spencer, Dee (Thesis advisor) / Appleton, Nicholas (Committee member) / Yazzie, Lamont L (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
This dissertation explores how historical changes in education shaped Diné collective identity and community by examining the interconnections between Navajo students, their people, and Diné Bikéyah (Navajo lands). Farina King investigates the ongoing influence of various schools as colonial institutions among the Navajo from the 1930s to 1990 in the

This dissertation explores how historical changes in education shaped Diné collective identity and community by examining the interconnections between Navajo students, their people, and Diné Bikéyah (Navajo lands). Farina King investigates the ongoing influence of various schools as colonial institutions among the Navajo from the 1930s to 1990 in the southwestern United States. The question that guides this research is how institutional schools, whether far, near, or on the reservation, affected Navajo students’ sense of home and relationships with their Indigenous community during the twentieth century.

The study relies on a Diné historical framework that centers on a Navajo mapping of the world and earth memory compass. The four directions of their sacred mountains orient the Diné towards hózhǫ́, the ideal of society, a desirable state of being that most translate as beauty, harmony, or happiness. Their sacred mountains mark Diné Bikéyah and provide an earth memory compass in Navajo life journeys that direct them from East, to South, to West, and to North. These four directions and the symbols associated with them guide this overarching narrative of Navajo educational experiences from the beginning of Diné learning in their home communities, to the adolescent stages of their institutionalized schooling, to the recent maturity of hybrid Navajo-American educational systems. After addressing the Diné ancestral teachings of the East, King focuses on the student experiences of interwar Crownpoint Boarding School to the South, the postwar Tuba City Boarding School and Leupp Boarding School to the West, and self-determination in Monument Valley to the North.

This study primarily analyzes oral histories and cultural historical methodologies to feature Diné perspectives, which reveal how the land and the mountains serve as focal points of Navajo worldviews. The land defines Diné identity, although many Navajos have adapted to different life pathways. Therefore, land, environment, and nature constituted integral parts and embeddedness of Diné knowledge and epistemology that external educational systems, such as federal schools, failed to overcome in the twentieth century.
ContributorsKing, Farina (Author) / Fixico, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Committee member) / Iverson, Peter (Committee member) / Osburn, Katherine M.B. (Committee member) / Tohe, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
This study examines ninth graders’ negotiation of meaning with one canonical work, Romeo and Juliet. The study’s sample was 88% Latino at a Title I high school. The study adopts a sociocultural view of literacy and learning. I employed ethnographic methods (participant observation, data collection, interviews, and focus groups) to

This study examines ninth graders’ negotiation of meaning with one canonical work, Romeo and Juliet. The study’s sample was 88% Latino at a Title I high school. The study adopts a sociocultural view of literacy and learning. I employed ethnographic methods (participant observation, data collection, interviews, and focus groups) to investigate the teacher’s instructional approaches and the literacy practices used while teaching the canonical work. With a focus on students’ interpretations, I examined what they said and wrote about Romeo and Juliet. One finding was that the teacher employed instructional approaches that facilitated literacy practices that allowed students to draw on their cultural backgrounds, personal lived experiences, and values as they engaged with Romeo and Juliet. As instructional approaches and literacy practices became routine, students formed a community of learners. Because the teacher allowed students to discuss their ideas before, during, and after reading, students were provided with multiple perspectives to think about as they read and negotiated meaning. A second finding was that students drew on their personal lived experiences, backgrounds, and values as they made sense and negotiated the meaning of Romeo and Juliet’s plot and characters. Although the text’s meaning was not always obvious to students, in their work they showed their growing awareness that multiple interpretations were welcomed and important in the teacher’s classroom. Through the unit, students came to recognize that their own and their peers’ understandings, negotiations, and interpretations of the canonical work were informed by a variety of complex factors. Students came to find relevance in the text’s themes and characters to their experiences as adolescents. The study’s findings point to the importance of allowing students to draw from their cultural backgrounds and experiences as they negotiate meaning with texts, specifically canonical ones, and to welcome and encourage multiple meanings in the English classroom.
ContributorsBaez, Felipe J., Jr (Author) / Warriner, Doris (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Kate (Committee member) / Early, Jessica (Committee member) / Gee, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
Despite its rich history in the English classroom, popular culture still does not have a strong foothold in first-year composition (FYC). Some stakeholders view popular culture as a “low-brow” topic of study (Bradbury, 2011), while others believe popular culture distracts students from learning about composition (Adler-Kassner, 2012). However, many instructors

Despite its rich history in the English classroom, popular culture still does not have a strong foothold in first-year composition (FYC). Some stakeholders view popular culture as a “low-brow” topic of study (Bradbury, 2011), while others believe popular culture distracts students from learning about composition (Adler-Kassner, 2012). However, many instructors argue that popular culture can cultivate student interest in writing and be used to teach core concepts in composition (Alexander, 2009; Friedman, 2013; Williams, 2014). This dissertation focuses on students’ perceptions of valuable writing—particularly with regards to popular culture—and contributes to conversations about what constitutes “valuable” course content. The dissertation study, which was conducted in two sections of an FYC course during the Spring 2016 semester, uses three genre domains as a foundation: academic genres, workplace genres, and pop-culture genres. The first part of the study gauges students’ prior genre knowledge and their beliefs about the value of academic, workplace, and pop-culture genres through pre- and post-surveys. The second part of the study includes analysis of students’ remix projects to determine if and how students can meet FYC learning outcomes by working within each domain.

Through this study, as well as through frameworks in culturally sustaining pedagogy, writing studies, and genre studies, this dissertation aims to assist in the reconciliation of opposing views surrounding the content of FYC while filling in research gaps on the knowledge, interests, and perceptions of value students bring into the writing classroom. Ultimately, this dissertation explores how pop-culture composition can facilitate student learning just as well as academic and workplace composition, thereby challenging course content that has traditionally been privileged in FYC.
ContributorsKushkaki, Mariam (Author) / Boyd, Patricia (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Saidy-Hannah, Christina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
Implementing an assimilative agenda within the traditional U.S. education system has prevented the authentic inclusion, validation, and development of American Indian students. The enduring ramifications, including the loss of cultural identity, underscored the critical need to decolonize, or challenge, the historic assimilative agenda of the school space. The purpose of

Implementing an assimilative agenda within the traditional U.S. education system has prevented the authentic inclusion, validation, and development of American Indian students. The enduring ramifications, including the loss of cultural identity, underscored the critical need to decolonize, or challenge, the historic assimilative agenda of the school space. The purpose of this action research study was to examine the connection between the cultural exploration activities of Culture Club, cultural identity, and the creation of a Third Space to serve as a decolonizing framework for this Indigenous program conducted within a school space.

The epistemological perspective guiding this study was that of constructionism. The theoretical frameworks were post-colonial theory, Indigenous methodology, and, most prominently, Third Space theory. A thorough review of Third Space theory resulted in deduction of four criteria deemed to be necessary for creating a Third Space. These four theoretically-deduced criteria were (a) creating new knowledge, (b) reclaiming and reinscribing hegemonic notions of identity and school, (c) creating new or hybrid identities, and (d) developing more inclusive perspectives. The criteria were employed to create the Culture Club innovation and to determine whether a Third Space was effectively created within Culture Club.

This qualitative action research study focused on the Culture Club innovation, an after-school, cultural exploration, extracurricular program for sixth-grade American Indian students, at a Title I school in a large southwest metropolitan area. The participants were five, sixth-grade American Indian students. The role of the researcher was to facilitate a Third Space within Culture Club, as well as collect and analyze data.

Data were collected using semi-structured interviews; recorded Culture Club sessions; phase 3, and research journal entries. Once the data were transcribed, eclectic coding methodology, consisting of open, descriptive, and in vivo coding was employed and interpretive analysis procedures followed.

Findings showed modest changes in participants’ cultural identities but confirmed the creation of a Third Space within Culture Club. Findings have important implications for both practice and future research. Recommendations for improving and sustaining the decolonizing framework of Culture Club to create safe spaces for American Indian students and their explorations of their Indigeneity are also proposed.
ContributorsRoy, Brittani Kalyani (Author) / Buss, Ray R. (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, David (Committee member) / Mccarty, Teresa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
This dissertation shares findings from a qualitative case study of Latina adolescent girls (ninth and 10th graders) and their mothers and fathers participating in Somos Escritores/We Are Writers. Somos Escritores was a five-week bilingual writing workshop for Latina adolescent girls and their mothers and fathers that invited them to write,

This dissertation shares findings from a qualitative case study of Latina adolescent girls (ninth and 10th graders) and their mothers and fathers participating in Somos Escritores/We Are Writers. Somos Escritores was a five-week bilingual writing workshop for Latina adolescent girls and their mothers and fathers that invited them to write, draw, and share stories from their lived realities on a variety of topics relevant to their lives. The stories, voices, experiences, and ways of knowing of the Latina adolescent girls, mothers, and fathers who allowed me a window into their lives are at the center of this study.

This study explored the ways a safe space was coconstructed for the sharing of stories and voices and what was learned from families through their writing about who they are, what matters to them, and what they envision for their futures. To understand Somos Escritores, and the Latina adolescent girls, mothers, and fathers who participated in this space and the stories that are shared, I weave together multiple perspectives. These perspectives include Chicana feminist epistemology (Delgado Bernal, 1998), third space (Gutiérrez, 2008), Nepantla (Anzaldúa, 1997) and sociocultural theories of writing (Goncu & Gauvain, 2012; Prior, 2006). Data were drawn from the following sources: (a) postworkshop survey, (b) audio recording and transcription of workshops, (c) interviews, (d) workshop artifacts, and (e) field notes. They were analyzed using narrative methods. I found that Latina adolescent girls and their mothers and fathers are “Fighting to be Heard,” through the naming and claiming of their realities, creating positive self-definitions, writing and sharing silenced stories, the stories of socially conscious girls and of parents raising chicas fuertes [strong girls]. In addition, Somos Escritores families and facilitators coconstructed a third space through intentional practices and activities. This study has several implications for teachers and teacher educators. Specifically, I suggest creating safe space in literacy classroom for authentic sharing of stories, building a curriculum that is relevant to the lived realities of youth and that allows them to explore social injustices and inequities, and building relationships with families in the coconstruction of family involvement opportunities.
ContributorsFlores, Tracey T (Author) / Blasingame, James B. (Thesis advisor) / Vega, Sujey (Thesis advisor) / Early, Jessica (Committee member) / Gee, Betty (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
The question of whether there has been an American Indian genocide has been contested, when genocide is defined according to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Yet, I argue that both social and cultural genocide of American Indians has had volatile consequences for

The question of whether there has been an American Indian genocide has been contested, when genocide is defined according to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Yet, I argue that both social and cultural genocide of American Indians has had volatile consequences for both Native and non-Native peoples. Because of the contested nature of this genocide, American Indian Studies scholars contend that Indigenous people's experiences often get marginalized and reconstructed, relegating stories to the category oppression, rather than proof of genocide, which has created intellectual and social absences (Vizenor 2009). Other American Indian Studies scholars argue for reform within American Indian educational settings, where Indigenous nations use their values and traditions within curricula to combat national absences. Despite excellent work on American Indian education, scholars have not addressed the central questions of how such absences affect both Native and non-Native students, why those absences exist, and why the U.S. dialogue around genocide is a rhetoric of avoidance and erasure, once any comparison begins with other genocide victims. Without adequate analysis of both American Indian genocide and absences within curricula, particularly humanities courses such as literature, where stories about American Indians can have a prominent space, we undervalue their impact on America's past and present histories, as well as current knowledges and values. Erasure of American Indian presence affects both Native and non-Native youth. Many American Indians are traumatized and believe their tribe’s stories are not worthy of inclusion. As well many non-Natives are unaware of Indigenous experiences and often left with stereotypes rather than realities.

A Haudenosaunee paradigm of Good Mind can re-situate how we think about the canon, literature, and the classroom. The Good Mind allows for a two-way path where ideas pass back and forth, respecting differences, rather than replacing those differences with one ideology. This path is meant to open minds to connections with others which are kind and loving and lead to peaceful relationships. Theorizing literary erasure and genocide of the mind through experiences from Native and non-Native students and teachers embodies the Good Mind.
ContributorsMichal, Melissa (Author) / Maring, Heather (Thesis advisor) / Kelsey, Penelope (Thesis advisor) / Poe, Mya (Committee member) / Fredrick, Sharonah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017