Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2021, English

In this project, I set out to understand the impact that writing-related faculty development programs can have on institutional cultures of writing, teaching, and learning. Scholarship in writing across the curriculum (WAC) has historically illustrated pedagogical and curricular changes that support student writers in higher education. Cultural change is necessary to do this work because institutional cultures are often influenced by persistent misconceptions of writing as a general, transferable skill that can be taught in one course and applied in another. In the 1960s and 1970s, the birth of WAC as both an institutional practice and as a disciplinary movement offered opportunities for individuals to share these ideas with higher education faculty from diverse fields. While many WAC leaders want to change institutional cultures of writing, little research illustrates how this transformation can occur or what role writing-related faculty development might play. Drawing on scholarship in writing studies, higher education change, and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this dissertation begins to address this gap. I argue for using a local|disciplinary methodology to understand what writing-related faculty development programs do and what changes result as faculty adopt principles and conceptions from these programs. Through my multi-institutional study, I found that changing faculty conceptions of writing is a key goal of writing-related faculty development work, but this goal is not always made explicit in program practices. Research at three case institutions illustrates how institutional history and location can influence program goals, practices, and leadership. In Chapter 1, I overview the cultural-historical prevalence of misconceptions of writing. In Chapter 2, I outline the local|disciplinary methodology that informs this research. Chapter 3 provides results from a national study that illustrates writing-related faculty development programs aim t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Wardle (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Hutton (Committee Member); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Thomas Poetter (Committee Member); John Tassoni (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

Although a focus on writing pedagogy is on the rise in English education programs, early-career teachers still often struggle with writing instruction. Writing is notoriously difficult to teach—even for seasoned instructors—and previous studies have indicated that novice English teachers tend to base their writing instruction more on influences from their permanent schools than on coursework from the university. What is less clear, though, is how the influence at the school level works. This dissertation research examines the influences on writing pedagogy of an early-career high school English Language Arts (ELA) teacher, focusing on how the institutional social influences at the school shape his instructional practices in teaching writing. To examine how the influences of the school affect teaching practices, this study begins with an institutional ethnography, interrogating the influences of and on professional learning communities in a high-school English department. Using findings from the institutional ethnography as a framework, the research then turns to a case study examining the classroom practices and instructional understandings of an individual early-career English teacher. Considering these two studies in conversation, the study concludes that classroom documents shared in professional learning communities serve as a vehicle through which institutional influence operates. In addition, both the institutional ethnography and the case study indicate that skillful use of questions in the classroom are common among the teachers studied, perhaps as a result of thoughtful professional development at the school level. The findings also indicate that teacher standpoints are heavily influenced by professional learning communities, indicating that understandings of students, colleagues, policies, and instruction are often shared within communities: these shared standpoints also influence approaches to instruction. For preparation progr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lee Nickoson PhD (Advisor); Neil Baird PhD (Committee Member); Timothy Murnen PhD (Committee Member); Beth Sanders PhD (Other) Subjects: Composition; Education; Teacher Education; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

Building on the suggestion that "threshold concepts might prove a productive frame through which to consider questions related to writing and transfer;" and the idea that "composition theory has borrowed from feminist pedagogy in such significant ways that it seems imperative to see contemporary composition pedagogy as feminist pedagogy," this research places threshold concepts in writing studies and feminist pedagogy into conversation through a mixed-methods study (Adler-Kassner, Majewski, and Koshnick; Siebler 37). This study employed surveys, interviews, classroom observation, and artifact collection from instructors and included surveys from students enrolled in first year writing at BGSU. An overview of data revealed themes of transfer-focused feminist pedagogy: (1) confronting power and authority; (2) making connections to genre and community; (3) engaging as students and instructors in reflection and metacognition and (4) considering alternate definitions of successful transfer. In addition to the four themes of transfer-focused feminist pedagogy, student and instructor survey data and the instructor case-studies suggest perceptions of engagement with both threshold concepts and feminist pedagogy but lack meaningful adaptation of prior knowledge, where students see value in their first year writing class, but ultimately view transfer and future writing in terms of simplistic metaphors of application rather than adaptation. I further examined these four themes by focusing on two instructor-case studies using an institutional ethnography methodology which allowed me to examine the lived realties and experiences of ways instructors practice transfer-focused feminist pedagogies in the first year writing classroom. Ultimately, this research suggests that instructors, students, and transfer scholars should consider the role of power dynamics within the first year writing classroom and that teaching students to confront issues of power and authority to engage in (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Neil Baird PhD (Advisor); Irina Stakhanova PhD (Other); Sue Carter Wood PhD (Committee Member); Lee Nickoson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2015, Management

Today, in a world context defined by increasing complexity, deepening disparities and rising uncertainty, the imperative of connecting knowledge with action to create systemic social change and achieve more equitable futures for all human beings is greater than ever. The task is ongoing and necessitates both the adaptation of known solutions and the discovery of new possibilities. This dissertation investigates the subject matter of design as a deeply humanistic knowledge domain that is drawing mounting attention and praise for its ability to open up new possibilities for action oriented toward social innovation and human progress. Paradoxically, despite unequivocal signs of such forms of design gaining prominence in our institutions and organizations, the unique value that professional designers impart to the class of systemic challenges and innovation opportunities at stake is an understudied pursuit that lacks articulation and merits elucidation. This dissertation contributes to filling that critical gap. Integrating theories of social innovation, organizational culture, institutional logics and design, and building on the construct of “design attitude” (a set of unique capabilities, abilities and dispositions espoused by professional designers and that are related to organizational learning and innovation), the dissertation relies on the interpretation and analyses of three independent field studies organized in a multiphase mixed methods exploratory design sequence. The dissertation is organized in a dialectical progression that presents the following overarching research question: How might we elucidate the value designers bring to the field of social innovation? The first study combines a grounded theory approach with a comparative semantic analysis of four case studies of design for social innovation projects (conducted with design teams from IDEO.org, Frog Design, Mind Lab and the former Helsinki Design Lab). The insights culled from semi-struct (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Buchanan PhD (Committee Chair); Richard Boland Jr. PhD (Committee Member); Kalle Lyytinen PhD (Committee Member); John Paul Stephens PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Design; Entrepreneurship; Management

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2008, Social Welfare

The disproportionality of African American children in stranger foster care is of ongoing concern. Systemic factors contribute to this disproportionality, but the lack of cultural fit for some service interventions may explain some of the problems. Even though, program initiatives such as family preservation and kinship care are designed to preclude the need for stranger foster care, there is still an overrepresentation of African American children in this type of placement. Perhaps an Africentric approach to service delivery would improve the likelihood of achieving the child welfare goals of safety, permanence and well-being within the child's own family system. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to expand the understanding of Africentric practice. It offers a portrait of Africentric practice and describes an implementation process for this values and principles-based service approach. The second purpose of this study is to discern the meaning that is attached to receipt of these services by those who receive the service. The research study used a qualitative case study approach using methods in institutional ethnography and an analytic framework based on symbolic interaction theory. The family preservation and kinship care programs of an agency that presents itself as an Africentric agency were studied in depth. Participant observation, document review and semi-structured interviews of organizational leaders, direct service providers, and family members were the sources of data. The findings identified strategies designed to create an Africentric organizational culture from which Africentric practice was launched and nurtured. This approach acknowledged the need to help the workforce address the influence of oppression and the role of Eurocentric values and principles in their own lives and in their approach to service provision. The success of these strategies was tempered by the external challenges imposed on the agency by the larger Eurocentric soc (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sharon Milligan (Advisor) Subjects: Social Work

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Communication Studies

While the social production of identity is widely accepted, what constitutes “social” is often vague. In many discussions of identity production, media representations and discursive production are taken as all there is for a “social” production process of identity. This dissertation follows the constructive perspective that class identity is produced. It examines the identity formation of Chinese peasant workers through the industrial manufacturing processes using an electronics parts production factory in Shenzhen, China as a case study. It argues that materiality constitutes a crucial element of the social construction process of class identity. Specifically, I explore how social and physical spaces, as material forms of social production, participated into China's internal trans-local labor force formations and served to universalize the ruling class' desires through economic production activities and the connected everyday social reproduction activities. This study uses a synthetic theoretical framework that integrates Marxism materialist perspective and Marxian political economy with the importance of material and social spaces developed in geography. Such a synthetic theoretical framework forms an opportune vantage point for examining labor forces' everyday working and living activities within their social and material spatial contexts. In accordance with the theoretical framework, I use a spatialized Institutional Ethnography as the method to achieve the emphasis on the roles of materiality in the formation of class identity. The combination of the theoretical framework and method makes it possible to examine Chinese peasant workers' class identity formation through their daily spatially-mediated activities. With the theoretical framework and method above, my dissertation examined the wage formation process and the dormitory living of Chinese peasant workers to show how class identity is produced and how spaces, both material and social, are produced to par (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Clayton Rosati F. (Committee Co-Chair); Radhika Gajjala (Committee Co-Chair); Joseph Boyd-Barrett O. (Committee Member); Frank Goza (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2013, EDU Policy and Leadership

Policy makers have increasingly turned to school choice and, particularly, charter schools, in an effort to increase educational quality and equity for elementary and high school students. Many school choice policies work under the assumption that parents, acting as rational agents, will choose the best possible school for their child when given the opportunity and, collectively, these choices will increase the aggregate quality of K-12 education. Parent rationality is an important component to this market-based model which is one aspect of a larger set of neoliberal reforms that reach far beyond education. This study draws on twelve interviews with fourteen parents and six observations of charter school informational meetings at two schools to argue that parents are not purely rational and thorough in their choice process. I argue that parents use heuristic devices, mental approaches to select and analyze information surrounding a complicated decision, that rely on experiences and memories of place-based geographical aspects of the schools in their choice sets. Parents came to understand the schools as geographical places through their experiences of certain aspects of the schools such as the student body, the physical building, the surrounding community, and their sense of belonging or familiarity with the school. Parents did not make their school choice decisions in a careful, measured, and rational manner. Instead they relied on visceral memories, first impressions and experiences of the geographical aspects the schools they considered. This study adds to existing research that problematizes the notion that parents will rationally choose the best schools for their children. It also highlights several key issues that policy makers and school leaders can address in order to help parents in their choice process.

Committee: Bruce Kimball Dr. (Advisor); Jan Nespor Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education Policy; Geography; Political Science; Psychology; Public Policy; Social Research; Sociology