Browsing by Subject "Communities of practice"
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Creative catalysts : a narrative investigation of pivotal learning experience through conversation with six contemporary artists(2010-08) Curry, Kendra Wynne; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Mayer, Melinda M.This thesis is a narrative study that examines significant life experiences of six living artists that were pivotal in their decision to pursue careers in the arts. Although the examples found in these conversations are not exhaustive—many factors play into the individuals sense of identity and agency—they serve to give voice to the multiplicity of the learning experience, underscoring that creative education occurs in the home, the community, and among social groups as frequently as it does in the classroom. Through direct, open-ended conversations with artists, research explores the setting of upbringing and education, the pivotal experiences—catalysts—that propelled these individuals into art careers, and impact of their experience on both creative practice and notions of art learning. Interviews encompass artists whose work is located in public spaces, natural landscapes, and urban environments as often as it appears in the traditional exhibition settings, whose work is both collaborative and socially constructed. They comprise Rick Lowe, artist and founder of Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas whose community-centered social sculpture expands on our cultural assumptions about the artist and Anne Wallace, a public artist whose early work as a human right activist and bi-cultural experiences translate into videos about the complexities of the United States/Mexico border. It includes Vincent Valdez, a self-described “hyper-realist” who depicts his home city and composite life experiences of his family through allegorical paintings and drawings; Marie Lorenz, an artist explorer whose interest in urban waterways brings her work into the waters of forgotten canals and rivers; of Robert Pruitt, who critiques ever-changing political landscapes, conceptions of history, and globalism through hybrid drawings and sculptures; and Franco Mondini-Ruiz who fuses aesthetics of high and low in installations and creative economy widely accessible to people both within and outside the confines of the art world. Through narrative conversation, this thesis enriches overlapping theories that encompass our understandings of education and learning—mentorship, experiential learning, the aesthetic experience, place-based learning, communities of practice—through lived example, underscoring learning as a socially constructed phenomenon. Experiences of learning, unique and wholly individualized, contribute to a one’s sense of self and agency; in the case of the six artists featured in this study, creative experiences contribute to their identity as “artist” and motivated their pursuit of lifework and career.Item The curiosities of participation : a community's practice of participatory governance(2013-05) Mudliar, Preeti; Browning, Larry D.This study employs the heuristic of practice to understand a community's experience of participatory governance in India. The purpose of the study was three-fold: 1) understand what the organizing principle of participation means to a community, 2) how participation is enacted in the community, and 2) how participatory sites of governance are conceptualized by the community. The study was based in KMG- a village in western Maharashtra, India where a total of 40-in-depth interviews (n = 40) were conducted. As a part of the Indian constitution, institutions of participatory governance are a part of the process to decentralize governance and devolve power to the people. While the vast body of literature on this topic assesses many different contexts of participatory governance, the literature has not paid adequate attention to what people themselves make of the practice of participation and how it is embedded in the routine of everyday life. The study contributes to the study of governance by identifying how the notion of participation becomes meaningful to people and how it is practiced. Through interviews and field observations, the dissertation constructs a thick ethnographic text that describes the experiences and interactions of the residents of KMG with participation and the governance structures in their village. The data was analyzed using the constant comparative method of grounded theory to identify the different 'acts' of participation that together provide the blueprint for governance in KMG. The three macro themes that came together to inform both the practice and barriers to participating in the KMG's governance were "The Material" -- the built environment of governance, "The Conceptual" -- the imagined nature of governance and the gram panchayat , and "The Personnel" -- the representatives of the governance structure in the village. Together, these themes contribute to the way the residents of KMG spoke about practicing and experiencing participation in their everyday life. Lastly, the study animates and deconstructs the notion of participation through a people-centered interrogation. In the process, it illuminates how the links between existing institutions and organic practices of a community drive the practice of participation and the implications it has for the inclusive governance of a community.Item Daughtering and daughterhood : an explanatory study of the role of adult daughters in relation to mothers(2016-08) Alford, Allison McGuire; Maxwell, Madeline M.; Donovan, Erin; Menchaca, Martha; Vangelisti, AnitaThis study investigated the role of an adult daughter in mid-life, a time in a woman’s life when she has a personal relationship with her mother based upon shared interests more than dependence for care. Using interactional role theory (Turner, 2001), this study explored the understanding a daughter has for her role as an adult daughter in everyday encounters with her mother. Participants in this study described that when in situations that call for daughtering, they enact the adult daughter role. For this study, adult daughter participants (N = 33) ranging in age from 25-45 years old participated in face-to-face interviews to discuss their role as an adult daughter to their mothers. All participants had a living, healthy mother age 70 or younger. From daughters’ discussions of everyday communication with their mothers, layers of meaning were uncovered which related to the adult daughter role. Using role theory as a guide, thematic analysis revealed six themes of meaning. These findings contribute to an understanding of the social construction of an important role, which daughters learn over a lifetime and which they use to communicate within a family. Discussions of daughtering were challenging to participants due to borrowed vocabulary for describing this role, narrow role awareness, and a low valuation of the work of daughtering. When sorting role influences, daughters noted their mothers and a variety of other sources that inform role expectations. This finding prompted a new manner for evaluating daughters as a daughterhood, or community of role players collectively enacting the same role. Finally, participant responses revealed new ways to conceive of the social construction of the adult daughter role and the practice of daughtering and daughterhood, with outcomes including a variety of comportments for performing daughtering. Implications for future research by communication scholars, as well as for practitioners who work with adult daughter-mother pairs, will be presented with other results from this study.Item Identity and motivation for engagement within a professional distributed community of practice(2009-05) Steele, Haley Kay; Liu, Min, Ed. D.Many learning organizations are using communities of practice as a strategy for knowledge sharing among members. Ensuring those members' participation in the activities of the community remains a problem for instructional designers, particularly in the case of communities that use an electronic environment as a means of communication. Wenger (1998) suggests that developing an "identity of participation" is the basis for an individual's motivation to participate in the practices of a community. In order to better understand the interplay of identity and motivation, this study supplemented Wenger's work with self-determination theory, which focuses on how motivation is produced by an individual's personality developing and functioning in a social setting. This framework was used in a mixed-methods study of a distributed community of practice for instructors from many different universities, in order to better understand the interplay between identity, motivation, and participation in such a community. The study found that age was an identity factor that made a statistically significant difference in motivation in this community, with participants over 60 years of age indicating that their basic needs for motivation were not being met as well as other age groups. It was also found that those who identified themselves as experts within the community did not feel motivated to share their knowledge, but instead saw their role as a passive receiver of information. Contrary to expected outcomes, community members did not report having technical concerns that hampered their motivation to participate, nor did they indicate having issues with the overseeing organization for this community. However, members did feel that the universities that employed them exerted undue control over their participation within this community, particularly in regards to demands on their time.Item Sustaining hope : a teacher's stories of teaching reading for 46 years in one urban school(2012-05) Hampton, Angela Joy; Worthy, Jo; Bomer, Randy; Maloch, Beth; Schallert, Diane; Hoffman, JimThis dissertation examines the life stories of Marsha Ethridge (all names are pseudonyms), a teacher who has taught for 46 years in one urban elementary school. The stories Marsha tells about her life are used as lenses to consider the following: (1) What influences most shaped Marsha’s practices and stories to live by as a teacher? (2) What has it been like for Marsha teaching reading in an urban elementary school for 46 years? and (3) What is the nature of caring in Marsha’s stories? The study draws on life story and portraiture methods. Data were collected over a period of three years and includes life story interviews, one focus group interview, observations, and artifacts. Through the process of constant comparative method, three themes emerged: literacy and accountability, teacher development and identity, and caring and connecting. The most salient theme was caring and connecting throughout Marsha’s stories, and it served as a unifying thread to pull her stories together. This study found that in Marsha’s first years of teaching there were few forms of accountability. She felt that this was the primary reason many of her sixth graders had made it through school without learning to read. In the following years she used a variety of measures for accountability, including high-stakes accountability, which caused her to experience increasing professional dissonance. The form of accountability she believed improved her teaching practices the most was accountability situated in the context of caring relationships and it led to hope for future success. Marsha experienced this face-to-face accountability in the teacher-initiated group she had been meeting with for 27 years. Research implications from this study include the need to further explore discourse in teacher-initiated groups over time and in different contexts, as well as consider how the relational dynamics and accountability within collaborative teacher groups contribute to teacher growth. Additionally, the analysis of Marsha’s life stories indicate a need for teachers, parents, researchers, and policy makers to lay aside discourse of blaming and shaming to create opportunities for extended conversations about alternatives to high-stakes accountability.