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Remixing Education in the Anthropocene: More-than-Human Process Inquiry with Place

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This dissertation deals with the confluence of neoliberal and dominant Western social pressures in tension with researchers and educators striving toward a more sustainable world in light of the Anthropocene. Although scientists see the Anthropocene as a problem of human activity and environmental degradation, many social scientists and humanities researchers…

This dissertation deals with the confluence of neoliberal and dominant Western social pressures in tension with researchers and educators striving toward a more sustainable world in light of the Anthropocene. Although scientists see the Anthropocene as a problem of human activity and environmental degradation, many social scientists and humanities researchers also see it as a problem with entrenched ways of thought. Current ways of thought complicit in the making of the Anthropocene include centering all thought, control, and agency in the radically individual human, centering science as the only legitimate access to knowledge, and presenting that knowledge as apolitical absolute truth. I engage in research creation activated by the minor gestures of human/nature entanglement in the Anthropocene and the promise of place in environmental and sustainability education. As such, I embark on the invention of a new ecology of practices that takes the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead as their guiding foundation. As part of this invention circumventing normative neoliberal and Western logics, I take Ajo, Arizona and the surrounding Sonoran Desert as a partner in more-than-human process inquiry. I live in Ajo and explore the Sonoran Desert for four months of data generation employing basic techniques of ethnography divorced from their neopositivist founding theories. Bodies generated from my entanglement with Ajo and the desert participate in inventing Remixing Data Experiences (RDE), a novel data engagement technique. Through RDE, my more-than-human partners and I create ideas by engaging in arts-based techniques that form multimedia art-workings. The ideas generated include Oasis, Decline, Celebrate, Precarity, and Directions. I respond to each idea through anarchival written texts in a variety of genres including ethnographic memoir, short fiction, essay, ballad, and talk poem. I put these ideas into conversation with current methodological and education literature to illustrate that aesthetic-based inquiry contributes new ways forward in the Anthropocene. These new ways include rhythms of certainty and uncertainty in knowledge creation, participating in reciprocal affective capabilities of bodies in joyful knowing, developing modest abstractions that frequently engage concrete experience, and inclusion of aesthetic experiences in learning and inquiry.
ContributorsBowers, Nicole (Author) / Carlson, David L (Thesis advisor) / Koro, Mirka (Committee member) / Jordan, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Academic Tracking: Long-term Effects on College and Career Outcomes

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Academic tracking has long been a subject of debate due to its potential impact on educational equity, with students who are tracked highly receiving a higher quality education in comparison to students tracked lowly. These disparities in education quality may be affecting students’ outcomes, as it has been demonstrated that…

Academic tracking has long been a subject of debate due to its potential impact on educational equity, with students who are tracked highly receiving a higher quality education in comparison to students tracked lowly. These disparities in education quality may be affecting students’ outcomes, as it has been demonstrated that the short-term academic outcomes of students, such as their grades, tend to be affected by their academic track positioning. This dissertation builds upon these previous findings by utilizing a subsample of 20,584 students from the High School Longitudinal Study (2009) to examine the relation between academic track positioning and post-secondary education attendance, program length, college major, and expected future job. Additionally, the relation between academic tracking and each of these outcomes was also assessed using mediation, with potential mediators including education aspiration, expectations, and academic self-efficacy. Findings suggest that academic track positioning in math and science are influential in students’ post-secondary and career outcomes, with students who are positioned highly in either subject having greater post-secondary attendance, program length, higher representation in STEM college majors, and expectations for future jobs in STEM fields in comparison to students tracked lowly. Additionally, education aspirations and expectations mediated the relations between math academic track positioning and each of the outcomes, although the effects were small in size. Educators should consider exploring avenues for improving education quality in low academic tracks.
ContributorsWoods, Kenton Bentley (Author) / Hanish, Laura (Thesis advisor) / DeLay, Dawn (Committee member) / Martin, Carol (Committee member) / Jager, Justin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023