Matching Items (72)
Description
ABSTRACT This study describes student interactions in the academic social network site Edmodo versus student interactions in Facebook. This qualitative case study relies upon four high school juniors enrolled in Advanced Placement Language and Composition who use Edmodo to complete assignments for their English class. Their experiences were gathered in an attempt to describe specific experiences in a complex system. Students were selected using an Internet Connectedness Index survey. Using a Virtual Community of Practice framework, students were asked about their experiences in Edmodo. This study concludes that Edmodo and Facebook can be compared in three categories: accessibility, functionality, and environment. Unlike Facebook, which students access regularly, students access Edmodo only to fulfill the teacher's participation expectations for the specific grade they wish to receive. Additionally, students appreciated the convenience of using Edmodo to complete assignments. The functionality of Edmodo is quite similar in layout and appearance to Facebook, yet students were unaware of the media sharing capability, wished for private messaging options, and desired the ability to tag peers for direct comment using the @ sign, all options that are available in Facebook. Students felt the environment in Edmodo could best be characterized as intellectual and academic, which some mentioned might best be used with honors or AP students. A surprising benefit of Edmodo is the lack of social cues enable students to feel free of judgment when composing writing. Some felt this allowed students to know their classmates better and share their true personae free from judgment of classmates. As a result of the case studies of four students, this study seeks to illustrate how students interact in Edmodo versus Facebook to provide a robust image of the academic social network site for teachers seeking to implement educational technology in their classes.
ContributorsCurran-Sejkora, Elizabeth (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Nilsen, Alleen (Committee member) / Rodrigo, Rochelle (Committee member) / Turchi, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Multivariate forms of social oppression, such as racism, linguicism, and heterosexism, are manifested in schools that, as part of our communities, reflect the societal stratification and structural inequalities of a larger society. Teacher educators engaged in multicultural education are responsible for providing pre-service teachers with opportunities to critically examine the intricacies of cultural diversity in U.S. classrooms, developing critical multicultural dispositions. What are effective pedagogical strategies that encourage pre-service teachers to develop such critical multicultural practices? The researcher has found that participatory theatre, including Boalian theatre games, Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, and ethnodrama, can be a transformative, emancipatory pedagogical tool to engage students in critical and creative exploration of cultural diversity. The primary objective of this study is to illustrate how pre-service teachers develop critical consciousness through attending the researcher's multicultural teacher education classroom, which was designed at the nexus of Freirean and Boalian critical (performance) pedagogy, followed by analyzing his teaching practice, which focuses mainly on participatory theatre exercises. This doctoral dissertation is an ethnographic documentary of the researcher's striving to challenge the hegemonic status quo in teacher education by liberating himself from the anti-dialogical banking educator, and encouraging his students to liberate themselves as passive consumers of education. Such reflection may provide teacher educators with examples of counter-hegemonic (artistic) practice for social change relating to their own work.
ContributorsMitsumura, Masakazu (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Saldana, Johnny (Committee member) / Sterling, Pamela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is experienced in a variety of ways within families particularly among siblings with and without ASD. The effects of ASD on sibling relationships are integral to family life. While some studies have examined sibling relationships, research regarding sibling roles exhibited during play activities and social interactions is lacking. Further, siblings' voices are rarely revealed in research on play. In response to a need for greater understanding of the role of play among siblings impacted by ASD, this dissertation used a cultural historical activity theory lens to understand how play and social interactions evolved among siblings since childhood development is informed by access to and participation in play. Siblings may be considered actors with unique cultural histories as they create and re-create their own identities through play. In this study, an emphasis was placed on the complex processes siblings experience while locating their own niche with their families. The study focused on the use of a variety of tools, division of labor, the rules families utilized to interact and how these rules were disturbed. As a result, the study offers a more complete understanding of how play and social interactions affect the ways ASD impact siblings, families, and community members. This study provides holistic views of the development and impact of sibling play on identity development and relationships.
ContributorsPapacek, Amy M (Author) / Kozleski, Elizabeth B. (Thesis advisor) / Tobin, Joseph (Committee member) / Swadener, Beth B (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In this document I detail the inception of the community service learning program, Flashback, that I created for Actor's Youth Theatre of Mesa Arizona. I first provide the organization's history and then expound upon my beliefs and how the ASU theatre for youth program, along with the needs of AYT, led me to create the program. I then describe the goals and processes of implementing the community based project. I also define service learning and why the program was designed around its principles. Finally, I describe the program's curriculum, devising process and Flashback's first trial run, and then continue, evaluating the performance and reflecting upon the process. The appendix includes the devised script, photos of the performance and interaction with the community, some of the planned curriculum and portions of my journals written during the process.
ContributorsEllsworth, Marcus (Author) / Sterling, Pamela (Thesis advisor) / Bowditch, Rachel (Committee member) / Woodson, Stephani Etheridge (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT This mixed methods study examines 126 community college students enrolled in developmental reading courses at a mid-sized Southwestern community college. These students participated in a survey-based study regarding their reading experiences and practices, social influence upon those practices, reading sponsorship, and reading self-efficacy. The survey featured 33 structured response prompts and six free response prompts, allowing for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The study¡&brkbar;s results reflected the diverse reading interests and practices of developmental college students, revealing four main themes: -the diversity and complexity of their reading practices; -the diversity in reading genre preferences; -the strong influence of family members and teachers as reading sponsors in the past with that influence shifting to friends and college professors in the present; and, -the possible connection between self-efficacy and social engagement with reading. Findings from this study suggest these college students, often depicted as underprepared or developmental readers, are engaging in diverse and sophisticated reading practices and perceive reading as a means to achieve their success-oriented goals and to learn about the real world.This study adds to the limited field of community college literacy research, provides a more nuanced view of what it means to be an underprepared college reader, and points to ways community college educators can better support their students by acknowledging and building upon their socio-culturally influenced literacy practices. At the same time, educators can advantage students academically in terms of building their cultural capital with overt inculcation into disciplinary literacies and related repertoires of practice. Keywords: college students, reading, sponsorship, multimodal reading practices, developmental education, social networking, and literacy
ContributorsKiefer, Cynthia (Author) / Early, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation shares findings from a yearlong qualitative case study of Young Voices Rise (YVR), a diverse spoken word poetry group in the urban Southwest. The study examined the group's characteristics and practices, adolescent members' views of their writing and themselves as writers, and changes members attributed to their experiences in YVR. Data sources included interviews with six adolescent poets and two adult teaching artists, observations of writing workshops and poetry slams, collection of group announcements through social media, and collection of poems. Sociocultural theory guided the study's design, and grounded theory was used to analyze data. This study found that YVR is a community of practice that offers multiple possibilities for engagement and fosters a safe space for storytelling. The adolescent participants have distinct writing practices and a strong sense of writing self; furthermore, they believe YVR has changed them and their writing. This study has several implications for secondary English language arts. Specifically, it recommends that teachers build safe spaces for storytelling, offer spoken word poetry as an option for exploring various topics and purposes, attend to writers' practices and preferences, encourage authentic participation and identity exploration, and support spoken word poetry school-wide.
ContributorsWilliams, Wendy (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation examines Japanese preschool teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development. The study is an interview-based, ethnographic study, which is based on the video-cued mutivocal ethnographic method. This study focuses on the emic terms that Japanese preschool teachers use to explain their practices, such as amae (dependency), omoiyari (empathy), sabishii (loneliness), mimamoru (watching and waiting) and garari (peripheral participation). My analysis suggests that sabishii, amae, and omoiyari form a triad of emotional exchange that has a particular cultural patterning and salience in Japan and in the Japanese approach to the socialization of emotions in early childhood. Japanese teachers think about the development of the class as a community, which is different from individual-centric Western pedagogical perspective that gives more attention to each child's development. Mimamoru is a pedagogical philosophy and practice in Japanese early childhood education. A key component of Japanese teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development is that the process requires the development not only of children as individuals, but also of children in a preschool class as a community. In addition, the study suggests that at a deeper level these emic concepts reflect more general Japanese cultural notions of time, space, sight, and body. This dissertation concludes with the argument that teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs is "A cultural art of teaching." Teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs are harmonized in the teachers' mind and body, making connections between them, and used depending on the nuances of a situation, as informed by teachers' conscious and unconscious thoughts. The study has also shown evidence of similar practices and logic vertically distributed within Japanese early childhood education, from the way teachers act with children, to the way directors act with teachers, to the way government ministries act with directors, to the way deaf and hearing educators act with their deaf and hearing students. Because these practices are forms of bodily habitus and implicit Japanese culture, it makes sense that they are found across fields of action.
ContributorsHayashi, Akiko (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Committee member) / Nakagawa, Kathryn (Committee member) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This study examines the experiences of parents in mixed marriages (Vietnamese married to non-Vietnamese) raising their children in the United States. Specifically, this study focused on what factors influence parents' development of family language policies and patterns of language use. While research has been done on language policy and planning at the macro-level and there are an increasing number of studies on family language policy at the microlevel, few studies have focused on couples in mixed marriages who are heritage language speakers of the language they are trying to teach their children. This study used both surveys and interviews to gather data about parents' beliefs and attitudes towards bilingualism and the heritage language (HL), strategies parents are using to teach their children the HL, and major challenges they face in doing so. There were three main findings. First, parents without full fluency in the HL nevertheless are able to pass the HL on to their children. Second, an important factor influencing parents' family language policies and patterns of language use were parents' attitudes towards the HL--specifically, if parents felt it was important for their children to learn the HL and if parents were willing to push their children to do so. Third, proximity to a large Vietnamese community and access to Vietnamese resources (e.g., Vietnamese language school, Vietnamese church/temple, etc.) did not assure families' involvement in the Vietnamese community or use of the available Vietnamese resources. The findings of this study reveal that though language shift is occurring in these families, parents are still trying to pass on the HL to their children despite the many challenges of raising them bilingually in the U.S.
ContributorsLam, Ha (Author) / Wiley, Terrence (Thesis advisor) / Appleton, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Tobin, Joseph (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT "In the Penal Colony" is a three-act play based on the original short story by Franz Kafka and adapted by ASU MFA playwright Christian Krauspe. Told in flashback-form; a lone female Traveler arrives at a nameless penal colony where she is asked to comment on an old execution device known simply as, "the apparatus." She is pressured by the colonies administration to condone the practice while simultaneously asked to endorse the machine by her guiding officer in hopes of preserving the mystical powers the apparatus seems to possess. The Traveler must make the choice to endorse or condone the machine while she faces her own demons in the process.
ContributorsKrauspe, Christian (Author) / Reyes, Guillermo (Thesis advisor) / Taylor, Philip (Committee member) / Sterling, Pamela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The pace of technological development and the integral role technologies play in the lives of today's youth continue to transform perceptions and definitions of literacy. Just as the growth in completely online texts and the use of audio books and e-readers expands the definition of reading, digital platforms like blogs expand the notion of literary response and analysis. Responding to the complexities of literacy, this study examines the ways in which the literacy practice of blogging about young adult literature might elicit the active, intellectual orientation, or habits of mind, often sought in adolescent literacy development. Employing Gardner's Five Minds theory as an analysis tool and what Erickson calls "key linkages" as a framework, blog transcripts were read and coded. Those coded literacy acts were then linked to reveal any evidence of the creating, respectful, ethical, disciplined, and synthesizing habits of mind. From these overlays, empirical data tables emerged, accompanied by integrated case study narratives. Empirical data illustrate the aspects of the cases, and exposition provides a feature analysis of the habits of mind observed during blogging as a form of literary response to young adult literature. Results of this study suggest that bloggers writing about young adult books in a weblog environment reveal 1) some proficiency at synthesizing material, 2) a tendency to evaluate, 3) only moderate demonstration of the disciplined and respectful/ethical habits, 4) minimal evidence of the creating mind, and 5) moderate proficiency in basic transactional writing. Aligning with previous research, Talking with Our Fingertips illuminates possibilities for adopting pedagogical principles that provide student agency and potentially increase motivation and productivity.
ContributorsMiller, Donna L. (Donna Lynn) (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Chin, Beverly A (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine P (Committee member) / Nilsen, Alleen P (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011