Browsing by Subject "Symbolic interactionism"
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Item An ethnomethodological account of Catholic members' identity(2011-08) Martinez, Heidi A.; Carter, Narissra M.; Roach, Kenneth D.; Scholl, Juliann C.The Catholic Church is a complex and broad organization where many different types of communication occur. This setting allowed for the study to take off in any direction that was developed by the participants and researcher. For the most reliable data possible from the participants’ observation and interviews were conducted. This allowed participants to tie into their comfort zone and dive into important aspects of communication (within the church) that relates to their identity An ethnomethodological approach was used along with symbolic interactionism to evaluate the participants’ information. This study included 11 female participants that were able to relate their experiences as Catholic members’ to their identity. This study focused on symbols and the framework of mass. Specifically, the study focused on the following questions 1) how do symbols influence your identity as a Catholic person? 2) how does the framework (procedures) of mass influence your identity as a Catholic person? Participants for this study were from a Catholic Church in the west Texas area. Data was analyzed using Mead’s Philosophy of the Act. There were several symbols and parts of the framework that was similar with the participants. Findings and implications are discussed.Item Educational expectations: a consequence of interpretation or conditioning?(Texas Tech University, 1980-12) Boye, Judy GoldenThe purpose of this study is to determine whether parents influence their son's educational expectations by way of a symbolic (cognitive) or by a behavioral process. The parents will be interviewed first, then the sons. My hypothesis is that the symbolic perspective will explain much more of the variance than the behavioral perspective.Item Gender disparity in debate: An analysis of dominant discourses in national parliamentary debate using symbolic interactionism(2013-08) Fiebrantz, A J.; Langford, Catherine L.; Castle-Bell, Gina; Heuman, Amy N.This paper provides an initial snapshot at the collegiate parliamentary debate community’s identification and development of gender identities in the debate community. Using Symbolic Interactionism and a Critical Gender lens this paper employs narrative interviews to examine the parliamentary debate community. I interviewed women and men debaters to explain the current gender disparity in the debate community. This community is unique because it is supposed to be tabula rasa anyone can win as long as their arguments are developed well. However, research indicates that more men than women are in competitive out rounds. This paper identifies various themes associated with gender identity that the community uses as a precursor to their treatment of various individuals in the debate community.Item Minding the verge: moderating webcasts+chat in a multi-section online undergraduate course(2009-08) Hamerly, Donald Wade; Immroth, Barbara FrolingCoincidental increases in online instruction at institutions of higher education and in online social networking generally in the U.S. have created opportunities for research into how digital interpersonal connectivity affects online learning. This study examined interactive webcasts, or webcasts plus chat, that were part of an online undergraduate course covering Internet knowledge and skills at a large public university. Symbolic interactionism served as the theoretical framework for explicating interactive webcasts as useful online learning environments by exploring the complex processes that instructional staff employed to manage their actions and interactions as moderators in the webcasts and chats. A constructivist grounded theory approach guided the collection and analysis of empirical data in the form of webcast media and transcripts, chat logs, students‘ reflective writing, and semi-structured, intensive interviews with instructional staff. From the study emerged theoretical categories in three tiers related to a generalized moderator process called minding the verge: moderators minded the verge in three conditions of interaction– converging, attending, and diverging; in three loci of interaction – webcasts, chats, and webcasts+chat; and through six actions of moderating – bonding, orientating, guiding, tending, validating, and branching. The results of this study provide moderators for the course with insights into their actions in the interactive webcasts and with concepts moderators can use to explore how to manage interactive webcasts more effectively. Beyond effecting substantive changes to interactive webcasts for the course, the study may guide others who wish to pursue further studies of webcasts+chat as they occur in the course or elsewhere, or of other mixed-media environments, or who wish to adopt mixed-media environments for instruction. Other potential areas for research that emerged from this study include the affective states of participants in the webcasts+chat and the use of affective devices, such as emoticons and abbreviations, for showing affective states; the effect that format has on the efficacy of webcasts+chat used for computer-mediated instruction; and the processes students employ to manage actions and interactions in the webcasts and chats.