Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item MAINTENANCE ART FOR OTHER POSSIBLE WORLDS: Rehearsing a Pedagogy of Care(2023) Peskin, Eva; Lothian, Alexis; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)MAINTENANCE ART FOR OTHER POSSIBLE WORLDS: Rehearsing a Pedagogy of Care brings together stories, moves and activations for approaching access and difference as preconditions for belonging. Both a text and an enactment, the project offers a framework for interdependent creative practice and care-oriented collaboration, doing multiple things at once: it demonstrates an ethic and technique of play-based learning, offers a story about maintenance as the work it takes to keep caring together, and embraces lunacy as a method for creative resistance. Drawing on Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ premise that attention to maintenance can pause the perpetual motion machine of capitalist consumption/production and Ruth Wilson Gilmore's insistence that freedom is a place we make together in the present, the dissertation stages a confrontation of the multiple trainings that have formed my ethical, aesthetic, and relational processes of learning – both within and beyond the academy, both amateurish and professional – in order to lean into the fissures and ruptures one might ignore that the other can see. This inquiry takes shape in a spiral geography of four repeating moves, a conceptual fractal which gives rise to the action of the work: Unsettling, Dwell, Meanwhile, Sensuousness. The project rehearses this repertoire of moves as a means to center consent, access, self-determination, deep listening, and joy – necessities for the creativity required to undo/step away from/dismantle the many intersecting projects of empire which conspire unendingly against life itself, and to collectively transform into a culture of care.Item MI LUGAR ES AQUÍ (MY PLACE IS HERE): LATINO MALE VOICES AND THE FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THEIR SUCCESS IN COLLEGE(2015) Rivera, Jason; MacDonald, Victoria M.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this collective case study, the voices of 10 academically successful Latino males were privileged to uncover the factors they believe contribute to their success in college. The participants in this study range in age from 18 to 24 and are from diverse Latino backgrounds including Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. Each Latino male participant maintained a grade point average of 3.0 or greater and began his higher education experience at the local community college. Using extant literature on various forms of capital, care, and patterns of transition, a conceptual model created to explore how participants' describe and understand academic achievement. Through individual interviews, focus groups, a survey, and participant selected artifacts, the power of care and the importance of social capital and community cultural wealth emerge as salient factors in academically successful Latino male experiences. In this study, care was redefined by drawing on the scholarship of Noddings (2005), Gay, (2010), and scholars who articulate critical conceptions of care. Other salient factors that contributed to participants' collegiate academic achievement included Latino cultural traditions (i.e., familismo, consejos, and bien educado), caring teachers and professors, coaches and mentors, and the role of the community college and community-based organizations. This study also found that because of care, and the values inhered in caring relationships (i.e., trust, support, and care), participants were able to gain access to a variety of capital as well as other important resources (i.e., transition strategies such as code switching and discerning expectations) that they were able to leverage toward their academic achievement in college. Implications for theory, research, and practice are presented with an emphasis placed on creating caring spaces that cultivate and nurture the academic achievement of Latino males in higher education environments.Item THE ROLE OF TRUST AND CARE IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVIST CURRICULUM IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION(2009) Tolley, Christina Ballard; Ennis, Catherine D; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social constructivism centers on the belief that social interaction is paramount to effective and meaningful learning. This study examined how trusting and caring teacher-student and student-student relationships influenced students' willingness and ability to learn in a social constructivist physical education curriculum. Data were collected through student interviews and focus groups, observations (teacher log), student member checks, and independent observations. Data were analyzed using open, axial, and selective coding consistent with the ethnographic research design. The findings suggested that students' willingness and ability to learn were positively influenced through the implementation of the social constructivist curriculum Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). Specifically, this was achieved through the classroom environment that facilitated students' perceptions of a trusting and caring teacher, contributing to more open and honest student relationships. These factors could be interpreted as an integrated spiral that contributed to teacher and student trust and care.