Browsing by Subject "Critical pedagogy"
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Item A cultural critique of the use of networked electronic discourse in a liberatory composition pedagogy(Texas Tech University, 1999-05) Jordan, Mark WayneThis dissertation examines the similar goals and characteristics of liberatory pedagogy and networked electronic discourse pedagogy. Liberatory pedagogy is usually dated from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) while network pedagogy, based on textual communication between linked microcomputers, is dated from Trent Batson's pioneering work at Gallaudet University in the mid- 1980s. Both pedagogies attempt to cultivate within students a critical consciousness, though liberatory pedagogy focuses more on societal transformation than network pedagogy generally has done. Interpretive readings of seminal works within each field reveal that both pedagogies share the two fundamental qualities of a formal dialogic communication model and a nascent postmodernity. Dialogogically, both pedagogies demonstrate awareness of the dynamic ambiguity of language, privileging of communal dialogue, encouragement of epistemological knowledge-making, and nurturing of a critical consciousness. Common postmodern qualities are innate skepticism for prescribed values, an awareness of the decentered yet often oppressive nature of contemporary power formulations, and an intrinsic respect for diverse voices and differing subjectivities. Despite such similarities, the literature regarding liberatory pedagogy seems scarcely aware of the parallels between it and network discourse pedagogy. Literature on the latter pedagogy, meanwhile, shows more awareness of liberatory pedagogy but tends to borrow from it in piecemeal fashion, seldom invoking the full liberatory apparatus. Nevertheless, the similar goals and characteristics of both pedagogies suggest that they can be mutually beneficial allies which together can create a more effective learning environment than either can separately. Further, this alliance of similar pedagogies can find a fruitful context for implementation in the community college, the third major element examined. Despite the typical community college focus on preparatory or vocational goals, some features which make the community college fertile ground for the suggested pedagogical alliance are the diversity of student populations, their large percentage of ethnic minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged students, and such colleges' own typical identity as small, locally-rooted, largely independent and thus versatile entities.Item A pedagogy of choice(Texas Tech University, 1999-05) Blumenthal, Jon MichaelThis thesis traces the development of alternative pedagogies to the oppressive model of the traditional, teacher-centered classroom perceived by political theorists, composition instructors, and cultural critics. Chapter 1 outlines the problems with what Paulo Freire terms "the banking concept of education" (53), including deception and strict discipline as constituting a status quo that disenfranchises students. Additionally, Chapter 1 describes institutional constraints helping to reinforce the status quo of oppressive pedagogy.Item An adult ESL curriculum development project : integrating academic effectiveness with a critical orientation(2012-05) Joseph, Amy Elizabeth; Horwitz, Elaine Kolker, 1950-; Martínez, Ramón Antonio; De Lissovoy, NoahThis paper is a curriculum proposal for a mid to high beginner adult English as a Second Language class. It is hoped that this curriculum will prove to meet students’ academic needs, especially in terms of development of literacy, listening skills, and language learning strategies. In addition to this, the lessons include a critical orientation; that is, the class is structured to facilitate student engagement with social issues, namely racism and economic struggles. With these considerations in minds, two units comprising half the semester were developed and relevant extra materials are provided.Item Crucibles of cultural and political change : postmodern figured worlds of Tejana/o Chicana/o activism(2011-08) Campos, Emmet Espinosa; De Lissovoy, Noah, 1968-; Urrieta, Luis; Foley, Doug; Cvetkovich, Ann; Foster, Kevin; Guajardo, MiguelSupervisors: Luis Urrieta and Noah De Lissovoy This qualitative and sociohistorical study examines the lives and experiences of Chicana/o educators in Texas and the ideological and political discourses of equity and social justice that they draw from to shape their practice in three educational sites: the Llano Grande Center (LGC), Red Salmon Arts/Resistencia Bookstore (RSA), and the Advanced Seminar in Chicana/o Research (ASCR). I document their work based on the oral narratives of fifteen educators, site document analysis, and ethnographic work I conducted as observant participant associated with these organizations. This project extends recent scholarship that links critical pedagogy, social and cultural theories of identity formation and new social movement scholarship to understand the multiple cultural, social and political dimensions of activist education. My principal findings indicate new senses of individual and collective identity practice, reframed critical and culturally relevant pedagogies, and a reconceptualization of indigenous discourse and practice. These findings have important implications for activists, educators and researchers by rearticulating scholar activist work in new more emancipatory ways that considers place-based models of critical and cultural relevant teaching and learning and more radically democratic research practices.Item An educational formula : critical border education that transcends social and linguistic barriers(2012-08) Villarreal, Elizabeth; Valenzuela, Angela; Urrieta, Luis; Zamora, Emilio; Franquiz, Maria; Salinas, Cynthia S.Student academic achievement is a collective effort of family, community, and school experience (Sloat, Makkonen, & Koehler, 2007). However the biggest burden is placed on teachers who are assumed and expected to possess the skills, knowledge, caring, and commitment to students often without the appropriate support, resources and professional development. With a focus on teacher development this work will listen to the voices of eight veteran educators from the Texas-Mexico border region and trace the steps in their formation and critical understandings of themselves and their professions to better diagnose students’ academic needs. The site of my study is in the southern-most part of the U.S.-Mexico border known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (RGV). This dynamic region of our country was occupied by immigrant settlers in the middle 1700s and has seen much socio-political and cultural change throughout the years. Nucleus to the “browning of America” (Rodriguez, 2002), the demographic shift toward more ethnic/racial diversity, and in particular the ascent of Latinos as the largest minority in the country, the Border and its teachers provide key insights regarding effective ways to educate Latino children because they have served this community the longest. This study is a synthesis of historical sociology and cultural anthropology inquiries based on applied research method of interviews with Border educators. It includes: ethnographic and historical data, and testimonios, or critically documented histories, that address views on educational reform intended to foster academic success among Latino students. Latinos have become the nation’s largest majority at 16.3% of the population. The growth trend is also evident in Texas with a 37.6% and 90.4% for the RGV (Census, 2010). The correlation between poverty and educational attainment places this population at a significant disadvantage in the nation as well as in the RGV. Some observers have expressed concern that Latinos will represent the majority of the population by 2040 as the “poorer, less educated, and productive” (Jillson, 2012, p. xiii). My work challenges this conceptual relationship between poverty and school failure by focusing on a region where the student body has historically been predominantly Latino and economically disadvantaged with a 32.6% poverty rate compared to a national figure of 11.3% (Census, 2010). My findings on the epistemic value of identity demonstrated through my Spotlight Identity (SI) framework, support the notion that aligning students with teachers of similar experiential and cultural backgrounds positively impacts academic achievement and that, generally speaking, these affinities improve relations with families and allow for teachers to better understand the academic and personal challenges that the students are facing. My constructivist analysis suggests that academic success can be achieved, regardless of economic impediments when communities, schools, educators, and families work collaboratively with a child-centered approach. For participants in the study, barriers such as low socioeconomic (SES) were not seen as germane to student academic success when all the elements in their “educational equation” were in place. Academic success—construed by participants as significant student yearly progress, meeting grade level requirements, and high school completion—can be achieved, regardless of social and economic factors, when communities, schools, educators, and families work together through child-centered efforts and mediated through “critical bicultural education” (Darder, 1991).Item Enacting critical historical thinking : decision making among novice secondary social studies teachers(2011-05) Blevins, Brooke Erin; Salinas, Cinthia; Adler, Susan; Obenchain, Kathryn; Field, Sherry; Brown, Anthony; De Lissovoy, NoahThis qualitative multiple case study conducted from an interpretive epistemological stance, focused on three novice social studies teachers decision making practices in regards to the use critical historical thinking. In seeking to understand teacher’s decision making practices, this research explored the bodies of knowledge that influence social studies teachers’ use of historical thinking in more critical ways. The theoretical framework guiding this research centered around three major frames: (1) the roots of teacher knowledge, including such things as teacher beliefs, teacher education experiences, and teacher content knowledge, (2) the bodies of teacher knowledge informed by these roots including official knowledge, and emancipatory or counter knowledge, and (3) how these bodies of knowledge lead to curricular enactment of critical historical thinking. Data analysis revealed four results that shaped teachers’ decisions and ability to use critical historical thinking in their classroom. The first three results highlight the bodies of knowledge teachers’ utilized in their decision-making practices, including their experiential knowledge, such as their familial and K-16 schooling experiences, content knowledge, both their knowledge of official and subjugated narratives, and pedagogical content knowledge. The final result explores how these bodies of knowledge interact with teachers’ schooling contexts. Findings suggest that historical positionality shapes not only the learning process, but the teaching process as well. A teachers’ historical positionality influences the way they are able to engage students in more critical renditions of the past. Teachers’ personal experiences inform their historical positionality, including their rationale and commitment to choose particular curriculum and pedagogical practices that address issues of race, class, and gender. Additionally, teachers’ critical content consciousness or the degree to which they are able negotiate the distance between their academic content knowledge and their beliefs about the past also shape their decisions to use critical historical thinking as a regular pedagogical practice. Finally, the last finding highlights the complex process teachers’ engage in as they navigate the external factors that press in on their daily teaching practice in ways that are critically ambitious. As such, the findings from this study have implications for both preservice and inservice teacher preparation.Item An epistemic compass towards home : students’ stories of comunalidad, educación, dialogues, and responsabilidad within Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA(2016-05) Velasquez, Yesenia; Urrieta, Luis; De Lissovoy, NoahThis thesis examined the stories of Perla, Ingrid, Dan, Estefanía, Paloma, Kassie, Paco, Daniela, Marina, Elena, Mia, and Valencia within Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA. Critical Race Theory, Freirean Theory, and nepantla guided this study’s theoretical framework. These grounded theories spoke to what is silenced by dominant narratives, as well as possibilities for knowledge construction and served as a foundation for the findings. This study centered on the construction and meaning of knowledge, and brought to the forefront ontological concerns such as who has the possibility and ability to teach, to learn, and to question. Through narrative analysis, this study also focused on the epistemic significance of identities. The program participants’ voices and experiences underscored themes of educating through comunalidad, languages de educación, fostering comunidad through dialogue, and consciousness through responsabilidad. Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA provided a space for how program participants situated themselves within UCLA and Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA, as well as how the education they gained in Proyecto and UCLA nourished each other. Unifying their UCLA and Proyecto educational experiences helped deconstruct the binary between formal and informal education. Additionally, at the center of Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA was a commitment for community service; however, community service found in Proyecto rested on a sense of collective “we.” “An Epistemic Compass Towards Home: Students’ stories of Comunalidad, Educación, Dialogues, Responsabilidad within Proyecto de Jornaleros at UCLA” expressed that home embodied an epistemic and agentic significance of “going home.” Home entailed an active resistance that simultaneously deconstructed the binaries between school/home and the institution of education/educación, Educación spoke to the education gained through the institution of education and to the education we develop from our community that provides insight, morals, and values.Item Knowledge and skills essential for secondary campus-based administrators to appropriately serve students with special needs(2014-08) Bineham, Susan Cadle; Pazey, Barbara Lynn, 1951-To explore the reported knowledge and skills held by secondary campus-based administrators pertaining to the instructional and programmatic needs of students with disabilities, a mixed-methods nationwide study of administrators was conducted. Data were collected through an internet survey delivered via email, yielding a total of 159 secondary campus-based administrators. The theoretical framework of Critical Pedagogy served as an analytical tool for investigating whether the lack of knowledge and skills of special education policy and procedures on the part of participating secondary campus-based administrators may contribute to the use of oppressive practices when serving the needs of students with disabilities. Additionally, using the lens of Critical Pedagogy, three national sets of leadership standards (CEC, 2008; ISLLC, 2008; and ELCC, 2011) for general and special education administrators were compared. The analysis of national leadership standards revealed a gradual yet limited progression toward a moral imperative (Burrello, Wayne-Sailor, & Kleinhammer-Tramill, 2012) to include more stakeholders in the education process and development of individual education programs at the secondary level for students with disabilities. Quantitative data obtained from the internet-based survey were analyzed using a frequency distribution. Using naturalistic inquiry without a predetermined focus or preordinate categories of analysis (Patton, 2002), qualitative responses to open-ended survey questions were investigated to discover and identify emergent themes. Findings indicate a breakdown in communication between administrators and students with disabilities and their families has occurred. Secondary campus-based administrators need and want more training in all areas of special education policy and procedures. Specifically they would like more coursework and professional development concerning special education law, information concerning specific disabilities, accommodations or modifications appropriate for said disabilities, RTI and Identification, discipline, understanding the IEP/BIP process, and how to work with teachers concerning special education requirements. Critical Pedagogy is advanced as a useful tool to be used by program directors for leadership preparation and professional development to assist them in determining the most appropriate and beneficial type(s) of leadership preparation, mentoring, and follow-up training to facilitate the transformation of secondary campus-based administrators' leadership practices on behalf of students with disabilities and their families.Item Literature circles : Latina/o students' daily experiences as part of the classroom curriculum(2013-12) Martínez, Manuel, active 2013; Urrieta, LuisAfter the Mexican-American war, the educational experience of Mexican and Mexican -American students was one of segregation, discrimination, and inequalities. Latina/o histories and funds of knowledge have not been historically part of the classroom curriculum. Although scholars, educators, and social movements have challenged such inequalities, they still persist. Students became objects of the educational process. New theories and educational practices, such as critical pedagogy, have helped empowered students to become aware of their situation and encouraged students to become social agents of change. Literature circles, an educational practice of critical pedagogy, enable educators to provide students with an educational experience where they become the Subjects of their own learning; thus, transforming their educational experiences.Item Pedagogical implications of gender issues in a composition classroom(Texas Tech University, 1999-08) Jones, Lori AnneAs our classrooms have become increasingly diverse as far as gender, racial, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds, our pedagogy should become increasingly diverse if we want to provide all students with the best possible education (Stewart 17). This diversity in the classroom causes difficulties for new teachers and present teachers that were not trained in process composition theory. Although research in gender issues within the university level has been increasing over the last two decades, more research is needed within the public schools in order to allow more students to gain access to a more diverse education in which they are participants.Item Perspectives through play : playbuilding as participatory action research in arts-based professional development(2013-05) Martin, Noah James; Dawson, KathrynThis thesis document presents a case study of a professional development playbuilding process at a public elementary school located in Austin, Texas. The study argues that playbuilding is a form of participatory action arts-based research particularly when positioned within the professional development setting. This qualitative study uses a narrative thematic analysis of the playbuilding process and workshop performance to examine how reflective and reflexive practice is situated within playbuilding as professional development. The document concludes with a discussion of the limitations and transformative potential of playbuilding and argues for the creation of critical pedagogical professional learning communities for teachers in school settings.Item (Re)building grandmother's house: the work of queer youth theatre facilitators, their goals, methods, and practice(2016-05) Blake, Samuel Nelson Williamson; Bonin-Rodriguez, Paul; Alrutz, Megan; Hogan, KristenThis qualitative study explores the work queer youth theatre facilitators through an assessment of the goals they hold for their work, the methods they employ, and the practice that results. Beginning with the premise that queer youth theatre (QYT) is an applied theatre practice which seeks to empower queer youth by engaging them in performance, this study investigates the role of adult facilitators in this work. Through conducting and analyzing a qualitative survey of thirteen QYT facilitators and interviews of a further four facilitators, I identify four foundational goals and five common methods QYT facilitators employ in their work. I then consider these goals and methods through an example of practice by engaging in a descriptive analysis of a QYT performance. Throughout this thesis, I employ theories from performance and queer studies, applied theatre, and critical pedagogy as a frame for my assessment of QYT facilitators’ work. This helps situate the work of QYT within and between these disciplines demonstrating how QYT is informed, and thus informs, understandings of all three. Using José Muñoz’s theorization of queer performatives as potential sites of utopian imminence, I argue that QYT provides queer youth with the space and tools of performance through which they imagine futures for themselves and by enacting those futures create them in the present.Item Schooling in times of dystopia : empowering education for Juárez women(2011-05) Cervantes Soon, Claudia Garbiela; Foley, Douglas E.; Valenzuela, Angela; Brown, Keffrelyn; Balli, Cecilia; Luykx, AurolynYoung women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico are coming of age in an era of feminicides, drug wars, impunity, and fear. This ethnographic study examines the ways in which Preparatoria Altavista, a public high school, in one of the most marginalized areas of Juárez, attempts to empower subaltern young women through its critical and social justice philosophy of education. The study draws from critical pedagogy, socio-cultural theory, and feminist scholarship to offer a unique analysis of how hegemonic ideas are resisted and/or inscribed pedagogically, politically, and institutionally at Altavista. Secondly, the study examines how the school’s constructions of democratic and social justice education interact with the current dystopic context of Juárez and discourses about Juárez women to provide a framework with which a group of young women author their identities and practice forms of resistance. The ethnographic fieldwork took place in the 2009-2010 academic year. The methods included unstructured ethnographic interviews with teachers, administrators, and numerous students, as well as semi-structured interviews and an auto-photography technique with nine girls. The study identifies three interrelated aspects that characterize the transformative pedagogy of Preparatoria Altavista: freedom and autonomy, authentic caring relationships, and the cultivation of critical discourse and activism. Together, these core values promote the school’s ultimate goal for its students – autogestión, or the ability to self-author empowered identities; read their world; and initiate and develop socially transformative projects. Considering the school’s context, as well as the many challenges inherent in the dystopic Juárez of today, the study also identifies a typology of four different paths to the girls’ identity and agency development: the Redirectors, the Reinventors, the Redefiners, and the Refugees. This typology is based on various ways and degrees to which the young women in this study authored the self as they negotiated the messages from the multiple figured worlds that they inhabit. The study seeks to counter sensationalist, criminalizing, and dooming narratives about Juárez youth, as well as stereotypical and objectifying depictions of Juárez women by offering a nuanced analysis of their experiences, perspectives, identities, and forms of agency. The study also seeks to offer a language of possibility and hope for urban schools and contexts of civil unrest through critical pedagogy.Item "Se hace puentes al andar" : PODER and the Young Scholars for Justice(2011-05) Villalobos, Rocío Del Rosario; De Lissovoy, Noah, 1968-; Foley, Douglas E.Youth of color are routinely dehumanized and treated as objects both in schools and in society. The “banking method” approach to teaching and stringent zero tolerance policies that are prevalent in low-income schools predominantly populated by youth of color serve to push youth out of school and pull them into the school-to-prison pipeline. When students do not meet their school’s standards, the institutional gaze is fixed disapprovingly on the child and the family. The history of segregation and institutionalized oppression that led to a legacy of inadequate and culturally irrelevant schooling and a poor quality of life for communities of color is erased. For the children who grow up in such environments, a historical silence makes it difficult if not impossible to make sense of their present-day conditions and the changes they are witnessing in their communities. People Organized in the Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER) is an organization that focuses on issues of environmental, economic, and social justice, and strives to facilitate youth empowerment through their Young Scholars for Justice (YSJ) summer program. The youth of color in the program are positioned as knowledgeable researchers and historical actors in their community. The Chicana feminist epistemology of PODER’s staff members creates a nurturing and family-like environment for the youth, which has a significant impact on the females, and enables youth to utilize personal experiences to develop a structural analysis of oppression. As youth acquire a historical conocimiento of East Austin, they also learn about organized resistance to oppression vis-à-vis environmental justice campaigns. In doing so, a spiritual activism blossoms in the youth that is born from their wounds of oppression and rooted in a cultural and historical awareness of their community. The youth engage in a cycle of praxis as their spiritual activism mobilizes them against injustices and ushers in their transformation into subjects. Through participant observation and interviews, I weave together a critical case study of the YSJ program that is informed by the metamorphosis I experienced after participating in the program.Item Sembrando consciencia : the student/farmworker alliance and the growth of critical consciousness(2011-05) Vallejo, Kandace Eloisa 1983-; Foley, Douglas E.; Delissovoy, NoahThe Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA) is a national network of students and youth that is based in Immokalee, Florida, formed to support the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (SFA), a migrant farmworker-led human rights organization that seeks an end to the poverty wages and human rights abuses that are faced by workers in the US agricultural industry. Since the 2001 inception of the Campaign for Fair Food (CFF), an ongoing partnership between the two organizations that seeks to bring major corporations to the table to ensure better wages and basic rights while on the job, the joint network has been able to secure agreements with ten major corporations, in addition to aiding the US Department of Justice in prosecuting eight cases of modern day slavery in the agricultural industry. Throughout the course of the CFF, thousands of young people across the US have participated in the political actions and educational spaced organized by these organizations, and hundreds has visited Immokalee as part of annual strategy retreats and conferences put on by the SFA, and it is a commonly-shared belief amongst members of both organizations that these monumental gains would not have been possible without the participation of the student allies that form part of SFA. The questions guiding this research include: How do people become politicized? How do student allies in the Student/Farmworker Alliance develop a politicized, critical consciousness, and how is this related to their sense of their own identities? It is these questions, for me, which will help to understand better the ways in which educators in both political and traditional educational spaces can educate for critical consciousness, which I will argue is a crucial piece of the educational work which must happen in order to live in a robust, participatory democratic society.Item Teacher empowerment through authentic authorship(2013-05) Flores, Rubi Patricia; Fránquiz, María E.This transformative participatory study was designed to address the issue of limited culturally relevant Spanish or bilingual mentor texts for use in writing workshop. The researcher references critical pedagogy theory, writing instruction theory and transformative education theory to set a theoretical framework. In the study 2 Dual Language teachers currently implementing a Two-Way Dual Language program engaged in a six session book study and article discussion using Alma Flor Ada’s and Isabel Campoy’s book Authors in the classroom: A transformative Education Process (2004). Sessions were audiotaped, reflections were collected, and a pre and post questionnaire was used to gather data. Using grounded theory the data was coded and findings are included in this report.Item The phenomenon of combinning service learning and study abroad: A qualitative inquiry(2012-05) Klein, Charles H.; Lawver, David; Meyers, Courtney; Ulmer, Jonathan; Laverie, DebbieService-learning is a form of experiential learning that incorporates rigorous academic curricula, valuable community serve, and critical reflection in order to enhance the learning process and promote civic engagement among college students. Study abroad is also a form of experiential learning that, through immersion in a foreign country, can help students to grow personally and academically as well as develop greater cultural awareness in preparation for becoming global citizens. Incorporating service-learning with study abroad results in a phenomenon that enhances and intensifies the experience for students, especially in increasingly popular short-term study abroad programs. This qualitative inquiry looks at six landscape architecture summer study abroad programs to Yucatán, Mexico from 2005 through 2010. The course topic was Community-Based Ecotourism and included design studios where students worked with rural Maya communities who wanted to develop low impact tourism projects. Qualitative data analysis included two sets of data; the students’ journals with their responses to Pre- and Post-Flection essay prompts, and transcripts of interviews with individuals seven years after their participation in the first program in 2005. Results indicate that students’ journaling after the trip shifted toward the higher level of Krathwohl’s affective domain. Indications are that the service-learning component played an important role in the shift. There were also indications that students valued community engagement as an important aspect of the programItem Theory and practice : preservice teachers negotiating critical literacy(2016-12) Wiebe, Molly Trinh; Worthy, Jo; Wetzel, Melissa; De Lissovoy, Noah; Martínez, Ramón A; Keating, Elizabeth LIn this qualitative research study, I examined how preservice teachers learned to implement critical literacy. I looked at four preservice teachers’ critical literacy teaching and learning experiences across contexts, from early schooling experiences to program coursework into student teaching experience. Ethnographic methods were used to collect data across one academic school year. The data corpus included observations in multiple contexts, field notes, interviews, and documents. Critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996; Freire & Macedo, 1978) and critical literacy theory (Lewison et al., 2002) provided the theoretical underpinnings for this study. The research findings revealed that student teaching in a public school with a rigid schedule is a challenging place to learn to do critical literacy. The findings also point to the importance of developing mentorship models with an emphasis on cooperating teacher-preservice teacher reflections. Implications for practitioners, teacher educators and researchers, and policy are discussed.