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- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
ABSTRACT
Over the past decades, there has been growth in student academic success programs in institutions of higher learning. However, with this growth instructors in these programs have not always been prepared to teach courses focused on supporting student academic success. The purpose of this study was to understand the role that mentoring plays in the performance of new faculty in the Success Courses department at Arizona State University. The guiding questions of the study examined the degree to which mentoring affected instructors’ efficacy in implementing the core tenets of the Success Courses Department and the features of the mentoring program that new instructors found useful. I used an action research, mixed method approach with focus groups, interviews, and surveys serving as data collection tools. The participants in the study were new department faculty mentees who taught for the Success Courses department at ASU in the fall of 2018. The quantitative data suggested that the faculty mentoring program helped new instructors improve their understanding of their students and the classroom environment. The qualitative findings indicated that faculty mentoring provided overall support, enhanced preparedness to deliver course content, created opportunities for professional growth and development, and supported positive relationships and collaboration. The faculty mentoring program enhanced the development of relationships between mentors and mentees, which is important for assisting new instructors as they seek to address individual challenges related to their teaching practices.
Over the past decades, there has been growth in student academic success programs in institutions of higher learning. However, with this growth instructors in these programs have not always been prepared to teach courses focused on supporting student academic success. The purpose of this study was to understand the role that mentoring plays in the performance of new faculty in the Success Courses department at Arizona State University. The guiding questions of the study examined the degree to which mentoring affected instructors’ efficacy in implementing the core tenets of the Success Courses Department and the features of the mentoring program that new instructors found useful. I used an action research, mixed method approach with focus groups, interviews, and surveys serving as data collection tools. The participants in the study were new department faculty mentees who taught for the Success Courses department at ASU in the fall of 2018. The quantitative data suggested that the faculty mentoring program helped new instructors improve their understanding of their students and the classroom environment. The qualitative findings indicated that faculty mentoring provided overall support, enhanced preparedness to deliver course content, created opportunities for professional growth and development, and supported positive relationships and collaboration. The faculty mentoring program enhanced the development of relationships between mentors and mentees, which is important for assisting new instructors as they seek to address individual challenges related to their teaching practices.
ContributorsAtkins, Allison (Author) / McArthur Harris, Lauren (Thesis advisor) / Rhoden, Stuart (Committee member) / Kaplan, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Afghani women's resistance: their struggle for autonomy under the Soviet Occupation and Taliban rule
Description
The American-led 'war on terror' affected how media outlets and some contemporary literature addressed and stereotyped Islam. One of the most common stereotypes regarded the status of women in society. The constant images of oppressed Afghani women generated a wave of negativity toward Islam. Afghani women were portrayed as passive characters during the Taliban rule awaiting liberation from the west. Defending their rights became one of the moral justifications for waging the 'war on terror' after the tragedy of 9/11. Gender politics in Afghanistan is closely tied to the regime in power. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the social and cultural transformation of society that followed also directly affected women and their identity as Muslims. Both the Soviet and the Taliban regimes envisioned a drastic transformation of women's participation in the public sphere. Each regime's gender politics oppressed Afghani women and sought to take away their agency. Some women welcomed the freedom under the Soviets, but others found the freedoms to be oppressive. The Taliban aimed to preserve men's authority over women. However, Afghani women never gave up the hope of freedom and equality. My main argument is to challenge the contemporary belief that Afghani women were passive characters in their history. This study introduces a fresh perspective on to women's role as change makers in the society. I argue that Afghani women maintained their autonomy and fought for their rights, before the rest of the world rushed to liberate them. They engaged in different forms of resistance from directly attacking the oppressors to keeping their resistance hidden. This thesis challenges the notion of Afghani women as victims in need of saving. On the contrary, they were the agents of change in their communities. On the basis of ethnographic interviews and three memoirs written by women who lived in Afghanistan during Soviet and Taliban rule. Their resistance against the oppressors is an affirmation of their courage and bravery.
ContributorsRezai, Shabnam (Author) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Thesis advisor) / Ali, Souad (Thesis advisor) / Kefeli, Agnes (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This dissertation explores the roles of ethnic minority cultural elites in the development of socialist culture in the Soviet Union from the mid-1930s through the late 1960s. Although Marxist ideology predicted the fading away of national allegiances under communism, Soviet authorities embraced a variety of administrative and educational policies dedicated to the political, economic, and cultural modernization of the country’s non-Russian populations. I analyze the nature and implementation of these policies from the perspective of ethnic Tatars, a Muslim Turkic group and contemporary Russia’s largest minority. Tatar cultural elites utilized Soviet-approved cultural forms and filled them with Tatar cultural content from both the pre-Revolutionary past and the socialist present, creating art and literature that they saw as contributing to both the Tatar nation and to Soviet socialism. I argue that these Tatar cultural elites believed in the emancipatory potential of Soviet socialism and that they felt that national liberation and national development were intrinsic parts of the Soviet experiment. Such idealism remained present in elite discourses through the 1930s, 1940s, and into the 1950s, but after Stalin’s death it was joined by open disillusionment with what some Tatars identified as a nascent Russocentrism in Soviet culture. The coexistence of these two strands of thought among Tatar cultural elites suggests that the integration of Tatar national culture into the broad, internationalist culture envisioned by Soviet authorities in Moscow was a complex and disputed process which produced a variety of outcomes that continue to characterize Tatar culture in the post-Soviet period.
This dissertation is based on significant archival research and utilizes various state and Communist Party documents, as well as memoirs, letters, and other personal sources in both Russian and Tatar. It challenges traditional periodization by bridging the Stalin and post-Stalin eras and emphasizes on-the-ground developments rather than official state policy. Finally, it offers insight into the relationship between communism and ethnic difference and presents a nuanced vision of Soviet power that helps to explain the continuing role of nationalism in the contemporary Russian Federation and other post-communist states.
This dissertation is based on significant archival research and utilizes various state and Communist Party documents, as well as memoirs, letters, and other personal sources in both Russian and Tatar. It challenges traditional periodization by bridging the Stalin and post-Stalin eras and emphasizes on-the-ground developments rather than official state policy. Finally, it offers insight into the relationship between communism and ethnic difference and presents a nuanced vision of Soviet power that helps to explain the continuing role of nationalism in the contemporary Russian Federation and other post-communist states.
ContributorsRomero, John Mulvey (Author) / Von Hagen, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Manchester, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Kefeli, Agnes (Committee member) / Geraci, Robert P. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019