Matching Items (3)
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Description
This study examines the multiple and complicated ways that Native American students engage, accept, and/or reject the teachings of a Native American literature course, as they navigate complex cultural landscapes in a state that has banned the teaching of ethnic studies. This is the only classroom of its kind in

This study examines the multiple and complicated ways that Native American students engage, accept, and/or reject the teachings of a Native American literature course, as they navigate complex cultural landscapes in a state that has banned the teaching of ethnic studies. This is the only classroom of its kind in this major metropolitan area, despite a large Native American population. Like many other marginalized youth, these students move through "borderlands" on a daily basis from reservation to city and back again; from classrooms that validate their knowledges to those that deny, invalidate and silence their knowledges, histories and identities. I am examining how their knowledges are shared or denied in these spaces. Using ethnographic, participatory action and grounded research methods, and drawing from Safety Zone Theory (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2006) and Bakhtin's (1981) dialogism, I focus on students' counter-storytelling to discover how they are generating meanings from a curriculum that focuses on the comprehension of their complicated and often times contradicting realities. This study discusses the need for schools to draw upon students' cultural knowledges and offers implications for developing and implementing a socio-culturally sustaining curriculum.
ContributorsSan Pedro, Timothy Jose (Author) / Paris, Django (Thesis advisor) / Romero-Little, Mary Eunice (Thesis advisor) / Mccarty, Teresa (Committee member) / Ortiz, Simon (Committee member) / Chin, Beverly A (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The aim of this study was to explore how counselors of a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focused out-of-school time (OST) program understood ways to support students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) and STEM identity development, as well as the impact on counselors’ awareness of their own SEL and STEM identity.

The aim of this study was to explore how counselors of a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focused out-of-school time (OST) program understood ways to support students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) and STEM identity development, as well as the impact on counselors’ awareness of their own SEL and STEM identity. To do this, I developed the STEM-Social Emotional Learning for Facilitators (STEM-SELF) intervention. The STEM-SELF intervention focused on 1) implementing a series of workshops; 2) engaging counselors in a cycle of praxis as they created and implemented experiences for students; and 3) engaging counselors in reflection on the learning gained within the program context and in their own personal context. For the intervention, I used a professional learning community (PLC) to engage counselors in cycles of praxis and designed learning activities based on Knowles’ (1980) principles of adult learning. The content counselors learned focused on STEM identity theory, the SEL framework developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), and modification of the Ways of Being model. The design was a primarily qualitative action research study and data collection and analysis happened in stages that aligned with the stages of implementation of the STEM-SELF intervention. Data included counselors' reflective journals and one-on-one interviews; the analysis was based on a reflexive thematic analysis approach. The study concluded that counselors gained confidence in facilitating SEL and STEM identity development activities and their understanding of SEL and STEM identity became more refined. Counselors also reflected that their learning was directly applicable to their contexts outside of the OST program. Additionally, counselors' awareness of their own SEL increased, and their conception of what made someone a “STEM person” changed.
ContributorsBettis, Megan M. (Author) / Markos, Amy (Thesis advisor) / Gomes, Aldrin (Committee member) / Henderson, Bryan (Committee member) / Jimenez-Silva, Margarita (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Description
The following study is based on my individual and collective practice as a former staff member of El Centro de Desarrollo Alternativo Indígena A.C., a non-profit who works in the Sierra Madre Occidental in the north of Mexico, and my experience as a master student in the US. I am

The following study is based on my individual and collective practice as a former staff member of El Centro de Desarrollo Alternativo Indígena A.C., a non-profit who works in the Sierra Madre Occidental in the north of Mexico, and my experience as a master student in the US. I am developing this research as a reflective instrument to improve the strategies that I have been developing and implementing. To reach this goal I present the concept of praxis, which Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci used some years ago, as a methodology to shorten the gap between my practice and theory. Furthermore, I use the theoretical framework of popular education, and other ideas from the complementary fields of community development, and Critical Race Theory/TribalCrit, to shed light on how to improve our practice and the pedagogies we use as part of our work. The main question that is guiding this study is: What is the learning dynamic of organizations and participants who are doing community development work with Indigenous communities? To answer this, I analyze the data I collected in 2016, which includes: two months of participant observation, sixteen in-depth interviews, and one focus group with staff members. The findings of this research suggest that staff members have learned to respect time and culture of the community and to validate local knowledge; community members have shared that they have learned new agricultural practices, production of organic fertilizers and pesticides, earthworm compost, food conservation methods, communication skills and to work together. The ways identified in which participants have learned are: by doing, by observation, by dialogue, by receptivity, by recognition, through meetings and by reflection. The results of this research are consistent with what popular educators say: neutrality is impossible. Practices of the nonprofits do not occur in a vacuum; therefore, the mechanisms of auto analysis and reflection that CEDAIN staff shared, in conjunction with the attempt of this research to unveil the hidden and explicit curriculum of the practices of CEDAIN, are great tools to trigger critical consciousness, challenge what we have taken for granted, and recreate better practices. This research is a result of the compilation and analysis of the narratives, experiences and knowledge of community and staff members who participated in this study. In this sense, these set of ideas, which place grassroots experiences as the principal source of knowledge, could be applied to plan and design future pedagogical interventions.
ContributorsMorales Guerrero, Jorge (Author) / Sumida Huaman, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018