Matching Items (54)
Description
Media is a powerful tool used to reflect and affect change in society. Within this study, a brief historical context is provided of roles African Americans in film were traditionally cast in. By employing Critical Race Theory (CRT), cultural capital, and NewBlackMan frameworks, I analyzed how Black male film directors and producers depicted race, class, gender within the Black film boom of the early 2000s. I examined the depictions of educational outcomes of the characters within films utilized in this study. My results display progress that still needs to be made in breaking down traditional gender roles, how race needed to be more critically examined, and how educational outcomes of the characters were not realistic. I also provide suggestions for conducting media studies through the discipline of education in the future.
ContributorsWilliams, Jernine (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Brayboy, Bryan (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
This thesis examines media rhetoric promoting neoliberal education reform, including the advancement of school-choice systems and movements towards privatization. Films like Waiting for Superman and Won't Back Down have ushered in new, markedly "progressive" narratives that show neoliberal reform as both a model for a consumer-led culture in education and as a path towards educational equity, a goal typically associated with public schools promoted as a public interest.
ContributorsMorrow, Victoria Rose (Author) / Brass, Jory (Thesis director) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
This paper analyzes the television show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine within the context of the other Trek series, especially the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, with a particular focus on multiculturalism. Previous Trek series present an image of the United Federation of Planets that has evolved into a peaceful, cooperative, post-scarcity, multicultural utopia, but gloss over the difficulties the Federation governments must have faced in creating this utopia and must still face in maintaining it. I argue that DS9’s shift in focus away from exploration and towards a postcolonial, multicultural, stationary setting allows the show to interrogate the nature of the Federation’s multicultural utopia and showcase the difficulties in living in and managing a space with a plurality of cultures. The series, much more than those that precede and follow it, both directly and indirectly criticizes the Federation and its policies, suggesting that its utopian identity is based more in assimilation than multiculturalism. Nonetheless, this criticism, which is frequently abandoned and even undermined, is inconsistent. By focusing on three of the show’s contested spaces/settings—the space station itself, the wormhole, and the demilitarized zone—I analyze the ways in which DS9’s ambivalent criticism of the success of multiculturalism challenges the confidence of the Trek tradition.
ContributorsPoterack, Vivien Eulalie (Author) / Free, Melissa (Thesis director) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In Kenya, there is a growing population of deaf individuals, creating a higher demand for inclusion and acceptance of deafness, as well as resources to best educate deaf youths. Despite the increasing presence of deaf individuals in Kenya, a hegemonic view of deafness as a form of deviance persists and fosters stigmatizing beliefs towards the deaf community. The hegemonic view of deafness as a form of deviance permeates into not only societal and familial acceptance of deaf individuals, but educational, medical, and political institutions, as well, and is unsustainable and destructive towards the advancement of Deaf culture in Kenya. This thesis examines the context of deaf education in Kenya, currently and historically, through a critical and theoretical examination of research, monitoring use of a resource-based website, and receiving feedback from local topic experts.
ContributorsLangerud, Courtney (Author) / Swadener, Beth Blue (Thesis advisor) / Oliverio, Annamaria (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The purpose of this study is to explore how internationalization is formed and operationalized in the Intensive English Programs (IEPs) at three Michigan higher education institutions. Drawing from Latour’s (2005) actor-network theory, this study examined the human and non-human actors involved in constructions of internationalization, which was defined as relational processes (programs and policies) that define and deliver international, intercultural, or global elements into the purpose, function and delivery of postsecondary education (Altbach, 2007; Knight, 2003). As an entry point into the study, I focused on the director of the programs and their mission statements, a written articulation of beliefs, as suggested by Childress (2007; 2009).
To explore these potential networks, I utilized Comparative Case Study (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2016), which allowed for more unbounded cases; Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 1999; Latour, 2005) which allowed for agency among non-human actors that also coexist, transform, translate or modify meaning; and relational network analysis methods (Herz et al. 2014; Heath et al. 2009; Clarke 2005), which helped to explore and make sense of complex relational data. This was in the effort to construct an understanding of the “processual, built activities, performed by the actants out of which they are composed” (Crawford, 2004, p. 1). I mapped actors within each site who were performing their local and contingent processes of internationalization.
The results indicate the formation of complex and far reaching webs of actors and activities that accomplish a form of internationalization that is highly localized. While each program under investigation responded to similar pressures, such as funding shortfalls via student enrollment declines, the responses and networks that were created from these constraints were wildly different. Indeed, the study found these programs engaged in international activities that enrolled various external actors, from campus departments to local community groups. In engaging in relational connections that moved beyond their primary instructional purpose, English language instruction and cultural acclimatization, the IEPs in this study were able to 1) contribute to the internationalization of university departmental curricula, 2) serve their communities in dynamic and impactful ways and 3) develop their own sense of internationalization in a university setting.
To explore these potential networks, I utilized Comparative Case Study (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2016), which allowed for more unbounded cases; Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 1999; Latour, 2005) which allowed for agency among non-human actors that also coexist, transform, translate or modify meaning; and relational network analysis methods (Herz et al. 2014; Heath et al. 2009; Clarke 2005), which helped to explore and make sense of complex relational data. This was in the effort to construct an understanding of the “processual, built activities, performed by the actants out of which they are composed” (Crawford, 2004, p. 1). I mapped actors within each site who were performing their local and contingent processes of internationalization.
The results indicate the formation of complex and far reaching webs of actors and activities that accomplish a form of internationalization that is highly localized. While each program under investigation responded to similar pressures, such as funding shortfalls via student enrollment declines, the responses and networks that were created from these constraints were wildly different. Indeed, the study found these programs engaged in international activities that enrolled various external actors, from campus departments to local community groups. In engaging in relational connections that moved beyond their primary instructional purpose, English language instruction and cultural acclimatization, the IEPs in this study were able to 1) contribute to the internationalization of university departmental curricula, 2) serve their communities in dynamic and impactful ways and 3) develop their own sense of internationalization in a university setting.
ContributorsClark, Adam Thomas (Author) / Koro, Mirka (Thesis advisor) / Kim, Jeongeun (Committee member) / Carlson, David L. (Committee member) / Okhremtchouk, Irina S (Committee member) / Vellenga, Heidi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Inclusive education has been impeded by deficit-oriented policies and practices that promote standardization and lead to student segregation by ability/disability labels. Deficit perspectives are maintained across separate programs (i.e., general, special, gifted) through distinct sets of practices and extend into higher education and academia. In response to this issue, this dissertation used strengths-based strategies for collaboratively rethinking and reimagining educational practices, perspectives, and interactions towards inclusivity. The purpose of this research was to study unexpected moments in learning events (i.e., micromoments), explore educators’ responses to these events, and develop strategies for inclusive education professional learning (PL). Diverse educators and neurodivergent adults responded to task invitations based on the research questions: How might micromoments move in/with/through emergent learning events? And, how might attunement to micromoment assemblages be developed? Additional questions explored how conceptualizations of micromoment movement and attunement might transform inclusive education PL and qualitative inquiry.
The neurodiversity paradigm, activist philosophy, post-oppositional transformation theory, and creative learning concepts supported an embodied, multiple, emergent, and inter-relational study of the micromoment. Methodological-poly-experiments formulated as invitations to tasks were used as initial enabling constraints for this research-creation. Documentation from several small Zoom group meetings was used in data-weaving, which included collective speculative fabulations (i.e., storying), post-qualitative cartography in the forms of fiber art sculpture mappings, and a moving content analysis.
The neurodiversity-inspired educational perspective developed in this study supported a PL shift away from student labels toward the study and design of learning events. Attunement to micromoment movement in learning events was practiced by following micromoment dimensions, elements, and flows. This led to the development of a framework for the study of micromoments for educator PL.
This study merged creativity studies, disability studies in education, and educational research. Furthermore, this project extended post-qualitative and research-creation methodologies, offered suggestions for redefining various methodological concepts and neurotypical expectations, and introduced several new concepts for qualitative inquiry.
In conclusion, creative professional learning/unlearning strategies, including reflection on underlying educational perspectives and learning event interactions, were part of a meaningful process in cultivating inclusive education for neurodiverse teachers, students, and research participants.
ContributorsVasquez, Anani Maria (Author) / Koro, Mirka (Thesis advisor) / Beghetto, Ronald (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, David L. (Committee member) / Mathur, Sarup (Committee member) / McAvoy, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The passing of anti-immigrant legislation in the state of Arizona over the last decade has exacerbated an already oppressive system perpetuated by globalization and its byproducts, neoliberalism and neoconservativism. The social justice activist educators who live and work with the children and families most affected by these laws and policies must learn to navigate these controls if they hope to sustain their work. I have drawn from Freire's work surrounding the theories of praxis and conscientization to explain the motivation of these teachers, and the sociological theory of Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; & Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002), to explain how the group, Arizona Teachers for Justice serves as a space of learning and support for these educators. This dissertation is a multiple case study and has employed semi-structured interviews with four social justice activist educators to understand how social justice activist educators in Arizona cope and sustain their teaching and activism, particularly through their membership in groups such as Arizona Teachers for Justice. The teachers in this study are each at different stages in their careers and each teaches in a different setting and/or grade level. This cross section provides multiple perspectives and varied lenses through which to view the struggles and triumphs of social justice activist educators in the state of Arizona. The teachers in this study share their experiences of being singled out for their activism and explain the ways they cope with such attacks. They explain how they manage to fulfill their dedication to equity by integrating critical materials while adhering to common core standards. They express the anger that keeps them fighting in the streets and the fears that keep them from openly rejecting unjust policies. The findings of this study contribute to the discussion of how to not only prepare social justice activist educators, but ways of supporting and sustaining their very crucial work. Neoliberal and neoconservative attacks on education are pervasive and it is critical that we prepare teachers to face these structural pressures if we hope to ever change the dehumanizing agenda of these global powers.
ContributorsEversman, Kimberly A (Author) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This is a genealogical study of the taken-for-granted ‘free’ or ‘self-governed’ play practice at the free schools. The study places play practice within a historical trajectory. The study compares and analyzes the current (1960s to present) discursive formations of play practice as they emerge in various archival texts such as on free schools, and juvenile delinquency and youth crime, to the discursive formations of the 1890s to 1929s as they emerge in various archival texts such as on physical education, public bath, city problems, playground, outdoor recreation legislation, and recreation areas and juvenile delinquency. The study demonstrates how various “subjugated knowledges” appeared during these time periods around play practice. Foucauldian genealogy is crafted for the study through Foucault’s lectures, interviews, essays, and how other scholars wrote about Foucauldian genealogy and conducted genealogical work themselves. The study is to challenge what it seems to be the grand narrative of this play practice in free schools. Instead of being the form of learning that allows students to seek their truest capacity and interest, learning, and eventually growth and happiness, this practice does so at a great cost, and therefore it is a dangerous practice, opens up various power/knowledge such as play is used as a systematic and accurate technology to shape, mold, and organize the schooled children body, a means to interrupt and intervene with the children growth, as the technology of school hygiene, and as a governing tool to help the state, nation, family, and school, produce ‘good’ citizens, who will not commit to idleness, delinquency, gang-spirit, and similar others.
ContributorsAletheiani, Dinny Risri (Author) / Carlson, David L. (Thesis advisor) / Sandlin, Jennifer A. (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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 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
Description
The pace of segregation of races continues to increase as the gap between wealthy people, and the rest of the human race, increases. Technological advances in human communication ironically decrease human communication as people choose news and social media sites that feed their ideological frames. Bridging the sociopolitical gap is increasingly difficult. Further, privileged hegemonic forces exert pressure to maintain the status quo at the expense of greater humanity. Despite this grave account, some members of the privileged hegemony have moved away from their previous adherence to it and emerged as activists for marginalized populations.
Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Pedagogy for the Privileged, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Transformative Learning Theory and Critical White Studies, this study asks the question: what factors lead to an ideological shift?
Fifteen participants agreed to an in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interview. There were four main themes that emerged. Most participants experienced significant childhood challenges as well as segregated environments. Additionally, they possessed personality traits of curiosity and critical thinking which left them at odds with their family members; and finally, each experienced exposure to new environments and new people. Most notably, in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity and to remedy the disconnect between the imposed family values and their own internal inclinations, most actively sought out disorienting dilemmas that would facilitate an ideological shift. This journey typically included copious reading, critically analyzing information and, mostly importantly, immersion in new environments.
The goal of this study was to understand which factors precipitate an ideological shift in the hope of using the data to create effective interventions that bridge ideological gaps. It was revealed that some of the initiative for this shift is innate, and therefore unreachable. However, exposure to disorienting dilemmas successfully caused an ideological shift. Critically, this research revealed that it is important to identify those individuals who possess this innate characteristic of curiosity and dissatisfaction with the status quo and create opportunities for them to be exposed to new people, information and environments. This will likely lead to a shift from White hegemonic adherent to an emerging advocate for social justice.
Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Pedagogy for the Privileged, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Transformative Learning Theory and Critical White Studies, this study asks the question: what factors lead to an ideological shift?
Fifteen participants agreed to an in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interview. There were four main themes that emerged. Most participants experienced significant childhood challenges as well as segregated environments. Additionally, they possessed personality traits of curiosity and critical thinking which left them at odds with their family members; and finally, each experienced exposure to new environments and new people. Most notably, in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity and to remedy the disconnect between the imposed family values and their own internal inclinations, most actively sought out disorienting dilemmas that would facilitate an ideological shift. This journey typically included copious reading, critically analyzing information and, mostly importantly, immersion in new environments.
The goal of this study was to understand which factors precipitate an ideological shift in the hope of using the data to create effective interventions that bridge ideological gaps. It was revealed that some of the initiative for this shift is innate, and therefore unreachable. However, exposure to disorienting dilemmas successfully caused an ideological shift. Critically, this research revealed that it is important to identify those individuals who possess this innate characteristic of curiosity and dissatisfaction with the status quo and create opportunities for them to be exposed to new people, information and environments. This will likely lead to a shift from White hegemonic adherent to an emerging advocate for social justice.
ContributorsKolomyjec, Wanda (Author) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Lee, Charles (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Rohd, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020