UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item ACTIVATING TECHNOCAPITAL: A CASE STUDY OF MARGINALIZED MIDDLE SCHOOL YOUTHS’ EXPERIENCES WITH INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY.(2023) Crenshaw, Kenyatta Lynn; Elby, Andrew; Croninger, Robert; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This case study explores ways that socio-cultural and environmental factors influence the technological experiences of marginalized, underrepresented youth at an urban summer learning program, which supports Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and environmental sustainability education. The study specifically explores the socio-cultural and environmental aspects of students’ experience with digital literacy/ information communication technology (computer based and mobile technologies), and the pedagogical practices applied by educators (teachers, family members, and peers) that influence the students’ experiences with digital learning over the period of eight weeks. The principal focus is on eight middle school students ranging from nine to twelve years of age who reside in an urban environment with their parents/caregivers. In efforts to better understand the experiences of the students, the focus is shared (but not centered) on the parents/caregivers, educators, and volunteer community members who contribute to the students’ perception and use of technology. A major finding of the study is that community-embedded resources, what have been referred to in the literature as funds of knowledge or community cultural wealth, can play a positive role in shaping students’ experiences with technology, especially when students, parents, and educators use those resources to create culturally relevant learning experiences that contribute to building technocapital. In general, the findings address beliefs and contextual ecological factors that contribute to the appearance and activation of social and cultural capital in the technological practices of marginalized youth. The accounts of youth and parent perspectives uniquely display the ways the funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth act as social and cultural capital. The participant stories present how the networks of the participants’ parents and community contribute to social connectivity and the awareness of civic participation in both the exosystem and mesosystem of their lives. Overall, the findings present an evidence-based contribution to further support the need to understand and advocate for funding and the development of policy to address: 1) racial/ethnic and socioeconomic differences in education; 2) the positive processes by which cultural resources in the communities of marginalized youth are converted into social and educational advantages; and 3) increasing knowledge and utility of the various forms of capital embedded in moderate-to-low income, non-majority communities that play a positive role in youths’ motivation to utilize ICT and develop digital literacy skills that increase productivity and achievement. Keywords: underrepresented youth, supplemental learning program, information communication technology, digital learning, social capital, cultural capital, funds of knowledge, community cultural wealth.Item Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare: A Study of the Postmodern Hipster, the New York Shakespeare Exchange, and the Creation of Cultural Capital in the Twenty-First Century(2018) Thompson, Sara; Kim Lee, Esther; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The twentieth century saw the development of numerous subcultures which shaped the mainstream culture around them through the diffusion of subcultural fashions, music, and literature into the establishment. In the twenty-first century, the postmodern hipster has emerged as a new subculture with distinctive tastes that have shaped dominant Western consumption choices. This dissertation takes a look at some of the twentieth century subcultures that created the foundations for this most recent group before exploring the position of the postmodern hipster in 2018. Building on the work of both scholarly social scientists and popular culture writers who have studied the hipster, I point out some of their key characteristics, such as cultural omnivorism, irony, and bricolage, as elements that make them prime audience members for what I call Alternative Shakespeare companies. The second half of the dissertation offers a case study of one such Alternative Shakespeare company, the New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYSX), who have built a donor base largely made up of individuals between the ages of 25 and 50. By examining NYSX’s mainstage production history, I establish their approach to Shakespeare and mixture of reverence for the text with irreverence for traditional performance methods. Then, their auxiliary performances—the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, The Sonnet Project, and the Intersections program—are analyzed as further examples of how Shakespeare’s works can be produced in ways that are attractive to the postmodern hipster. By transforming the established, high cultural position of Shakespeare’s works and transgressing against traditional methods of their production, NYSX creates a new kind of cultural capital for the plays that aligns with the kind of entertainments that the postmodern hipster seeks out. Such a model of subversion, while still respecting the integrity of the language, could be employed by other Shakespeare companies to appeal to the hipster, creating future donors and supporters by keeping Shakespeare hip.Item Dissembling Diversities: On "Middled" Asian Pacific American Activism and the Racialization of Sophistication(2014) Ishii, Douglas S.; Hanhardt, Christina B; Wong, Janelle; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Dissembling Diversities: On Asian Pacific American Arts Activism and the Racialization of Sophistication interrogates how contemporary Asian Pacific American (APA) arts activism and representation has been shaped by the bureaucratic administration of "diversity" after 9/11/2001. Through close readings of texts, it specifically examines Asian American representation within scripted network television programming, graphic novels and comic strips, and indie rock as iterations of panethnic activism in media advocacy, graphical storytelling, and the independent media arts. It understands these cultural forms and diversity itself through the framework of middlebrow culture, which is constituted of texts disseminated through popular culture that normalize the accumulation of cultural capital - or non-financial embodiments of class status such as education and literacy - as cultural citizenship. Dissembling Diversities makes evident how the elevation of these texts through discourses of "Art" and "diversity" relies on the association of cultural capital with whiteness, particularly through the racial exclusivity of their representations and through how the forms' history of class elevation expresses a white/anti-Black divide. Because of its dependence on cultural capital, the visibility for issues facing Asian American communities as expressed through the creation of art participates in the racialization of sophistication. In other words, deployments by APA artists and activists of traits associated with cultural sophistication - such as artistry, learnedness, worldliness, and status - can both illustrate Asian Americans' contributions to a culture of diversity, while reinforcing other racial, sexual, and gender exclusions through class hierarchy and respectability. However, APA activisms that contest the exclusivity of cultural capital can challenge these white/anti-Black class schemes. As such, Dissembling Diversities not only critiques APA arts activism's complicities with the racialization of sophistication, but also examines how it can turn sophistication against itself in imagining past "diversity."Item Mexican American First-Generation Students' Perceptions of Siblings and Additional Factors Influencing their College Choice Process(2012) Elias McAllister, Dora; Fries-Britt, Sharon L.; Cabrera, Alberto F.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to understand the factors influencing the college choice process of Mexican American first-generation students who had an older sibling with college experience. While a considerable amount of research exists on factors influencing the college choice process of first-generation college students, and a few studies report on the process for Mexican American first-generation college students specifically, far less attention has been devoted to the college choice process of first-generation college students who come from families where an older sibling has already experienced the college choice process. The major research question and sub-question guiding this study were: How do Mexican American first-generation students who have an older sibling with college experience describe their college choice process? What are some of the familial, social, and academic factors that Mexican American students identify as influences on their college choice process? This study was based on a qualitative, descriptive, multiple case study design. The cases were 17 Mexican American first-generation students attending Arizona State University (ASU). Participants completed a questionnaire and participated in two individual interviews. Participants were first-time freshmen, Arizona residents, spring 2010 high school graduates, and enrolled at ASU in fall 2010 with continued enrollment in spring 2011. In addition, five participants had an older sibling with a bachelor's degree; three participants had an older sibling with an associate degree; eight participants had an older sibling enrolled at a university; and one participant had an older sibling who had completed some coursework at ASU but left before obtaining a degree. The most important conclusions from this study were: (1) Parents and older siblings have the greatest influence on the predisposition stage; (2) during the search stage, students sought information and assistance from teachers, followed by older siblings and counselors; (3) the institutions that students considered for application and attendance were heavily influenced by older siblings; (4) an institution's distance from home had a great influence on where students applied and enrolled; (5) institutional type had a great influence on where students applied; and (6) cost and financial aid had a great impact on students' choice of college.Item An Examination of the Factors that Contribute to Undergraduate Persistence and Graduate Degree Aspirations for First-Generation College Students Attending Elite Universities(2012) McCarron, Grazziella Pagliarulo; Inkelas, Karen K.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)First&ndasgeneration college students' paths to and through higher education may be quite different from those of their non&ndasfirst peers. Given some of first&ndasgeneration students' background characteristics (e.g., race, income, educational aspirations, cultural capital) and the complexities of their home and college environments, the factors that may challenge these courageous students in achieving their educational objectives and aspirations may be abundant (Davis, 2010; Inman & Mayes, 1999; McConnell, 2000; Warburton, Bugarin, & Nuñez, 2001). As such, the purpose of this study was to examine the factors that contribute to the undergraduate persistence (i.e., college attainment) and graduate educational aspirations of 103 first&ndasgeneration college students using a college impact lens. This study was based on data collected via the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF) from students attending 28 elite U.S. institutions and was guided by a number of research questions exploring the roles of student background characteristics and on&ndash and off&ndash campus environments in student outcomes. The original research design for this study was grounded in multivariate methods, however, statistical vulnerabilities in the data prompted the use of bi&ndashvariate, non&ndasparametric methods instead. Thus, while this study's revised research design could not offer predictive evidence with regard to the student backgrounds and environments studied, noteworthy findings did emerge. Specifically, data analysis revealed significant relationships between first&ndasgeneration college students' involvements, such as interactions with peers and interactions with faculty, and the study outcome of undergraduate persistence. Further, significant associations were discovered between students' pre&ndascollege educational aspirations and undergraduate persistence and between the importance of family support and undergraduate persistence. Additionally, the bi&ndasvariate approach yielded a number of findings with regard to salient differences in first&ndasgeneration student involvements given background variables. This study's findings offered context for understanding the factors, both internal and external to the college environment, that potentially relate to first&ndasgeneration college students' outcomes. Further, this study's results have implications for how practitioners, faculty, administrators, university leadership, and policymakers conceptualize and action interventions that serve to support and bolster first&ndasgeneration college students and shepherd them toward college completion and beyond.Item Baltimore Center for Making: A Public Interface for Creative Culture(2010) Canon, Kira; Williams, Isaac S; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Our modern society depends on consumerism in order to match products and services with the people who need them; however, in its current form this process often comes at great expense to the finite resources of the environment. In addition, the global economy has created work places where workers are physically very distant from their peers, causing the individual to lose the empathetic face-to-face connections that are necessary for emotional fulfillment. Moreover, the work products of this information age are often ethereal, depriving workers of the satisfaction inherent in seeing the physical result of their hours of labor. This thesis imagines a civic institution that encourages different groups of people to share resources and empowers them to use their hands to make things in the material world. Hybrid site and program conditions create a palimpsest architectural proposal that seeks to galvanize the community of Baltimore around design and making.Item A Case Study of the Influence of Family on First-Generation College Students' Educational Aspirations Post High School(2007-11-26) Acker-Ball, Shawna Lynn; Fries-Britt, Sharon; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study is to examine how factors in the home environment (hereby referred to as habitus) (Bourdieu, 1977) impact the educational aspirations of first-generation college students who are participants in an academic achievement program designed to meet the needs of first-generation and underrepresented students (Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program). This study examined family characteristics such as educational and cultural practices, academic awareness, social class position and parental expectations to determine if they have an impact on student aspirations. The primary research question to guide this study is, "What is the influence of family on first-generation college students' educational aspirations post high school?" This study sought to determine how families that were from traditionally underrepresented populations (low SES, ethnic minorities, single parent home, etc.) in post-secondary education were able to influence the aspirations of their children to attendcollege. Put differently, the study sought to understand the amount of exposure that each student had to the collegiate experience, the arts, financial information, and other cultural and social events. This study focused on what happened in the homes of the participants that provided the requisite skills, attitudes and behaviors that would serve as a source of motivation to aspire to college.