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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Subject: search.filters.subject.action research

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    A Portrait of a First Grade Teacher Committed to the Literacy Classroom as a Community: A Teacher Educator's Action Research Collaboration
    (2012) Clark, Summer Ray; Afflerbach, Peter; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this study I examined the vision and practices of a beginning first grade literacy teacher in an urban school district. I used action research methods to collaborate with the teacher in her classroom based on her needs and take action with her in response to themes we generated together. As the teacher used and reflected upon literacy instruction while I worked within her classroom, we both explored how the lessons from her work and our collaboration might inform literacy pedagogy as well as teacher education. My first research question examined how my participant conceptualized and acted upon her conceptualizations of sociocultural models of literacy. My second question explored the action implications of this collaborative inquiry, as it applied to both her classroom and my teacher education work. My research also drew from the tradition of participatory action research (PAR), which involved the teacher's "praxis" (Freire, 1970), reflection and action to affect change. In PAR tradition, together the teacher and I used the data we collected to address issues of relevance to her, through the action components of classroom teaching as well as professional co-presentations for preservice teachers on literacy instruction in urban schools. The overall emerging construct was the concept of literacy teaching as the facilitation of classroom community. The following categories arose beneath this overall construct: community as teacher vision, community as teacher strategy, community as love, and community as challenge. Finally, I used these emerging themes to theorize tentatively on implications for teacher education; I suggested that teacher education should prioritize promoting love and vision as the backbone to support teachers' development strategies and challenges. Overall, my analysis suggested the constructs of literacy pedagogy as "community" and teacher education as "professional accountability."
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    Constructing a Model of ESOL Content-Based Instruction with Native Language Support: Self-Reflective Action Research Grounded in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory
    (2010) Walstein, Irina M.; Oxford, Rebecca; Martin-Beltran, Melinda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
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    USING HUMANIZING PEDAGOGY TO RE-VISE THE POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP: AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY ABOUT EXPLORATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF SELF
    (2005-12-01) daniel, omari; Jeremy, Price; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: USING HUMANIZING PEDAGOGY TO RE-VISE THE POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP: AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY ABOUT EXPLORATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF SELF Omari Colley Daniel Dissertation directed by: Doctor Jeremy Price Department of Curriculum and Instruction This study explores my engagement with a humanizing pedagogy in a culturally diverse high school poetry classroom. Students' ideas, thoughts, feelings, and need for self expression have been marginalized or silenced, and depending on their access to race, class, and gender privilege the marginalization becomes more or less intense. Given that problem, studying students' experiences of poetry in my classroom through an action research study became my theoretical, pedagogical and methodological focus for my dissertation. I used action research as a methodological tool to study my teaching and develop richer understandings of students' lives and experiences. In researching my own poetry classroom, I was able to transform my teaching. I found out that poetry taught in humanizing ways had the potential to engage students in critical reflection about their own lives. I learned that students could carve out self-images that they found empowering and begin to recognize their agency in their lives. My students established human connections with each other and with, which allowed a loving, critical dialogue to take place. My classroom became a place where students could empower themselves through lived classroom experiences. In this study, I documented and examined the journey toward self expression, self love, critical literacy, and transformation that my students embarked. This study provides an insider view of poetry instruction, in terms of curriculum design, pedagogy, poem selection, and teacher-student relationships. This study offers insight, not only for poetry teachers and action researchers, but also for educational policy makers, who need to revise curriculum in order to alienate fewer students.