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.
Browse
12 results
Search Results
Item “DOING RESEARCH HELPS!”: NEWCOMER LATINX HIGH SCHOOLERS’ RESEARCH & WRITING CONCEPTIONS(2020) Montoya-Ávila, Angélica; Martin-Beltrán, Melinda; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Drawing on critical pedagogy and sociocultural theories (SCT) of learning and literacy, this dissertation explored the relationship between recently arrived (or newcomer) Latinx immigrant students’ writing conceptions and their involvement in an afterschool program based on participatory action research (PAR). The study had a “two-tiered design” (Brown, 2010). In the first tier, a group of immigrant high schoolers (n = 15) and I worked together, as coresearchers, in PAR projects focused on students’ and teachers’ experiences at a newcomer school. Simultaneously, I conducted a qualitative critical inquiry on the writing conceptions and PAR experiences of four focal, Latinx, newcomer, youth coresearchers. The critical inquiry constituted the second study tier and the primary focus of my dissertation. For my dissertation study, I collected data from participant observation of the program sessions, literacy artifacts, and two rounds of semi-structured interviews with the focal newcomer Latinx high schoolers (NLHSs) and with two teachers who were familiar with the focal students’ writing. I analyzed the collected data inductively and deductively (Creswell, 2014). The study resulted in three main findings. First, the focal youth perceived PAR as an opportunity for conscientization and for challenging dialogue. Second, through the PAR process, the focal youth shifted from conceiving writing as a reproductive activity to view it as a tool for personal and social transformation. Third, the PAR process influenced the youth’s writing conceptions by being youth-centered, offering novel writing opportunities, and promoting dialogic talks. My research findings indicate that NLHSs’ conceptions of writing and research are tied to their learning experiences in their home countries and in the US. Their conceptions are therefore different from those of non-immigrant students. My investigation makes important contributions to educational theory, research, and practice. It demonstrates the effectiveness of employing both SCT and critical pedagogy (as a composite theoretical lens) to examine students’ conceptions of writing and research. It highlights the importance of studying NLHSs’ unique learning experiences and perspectives. It details research-based practices that help immigrant students develop their writing and facilitate their adaptation to a new country.Item Employment Writing in Group Outplacement Training Programs(2017) Brearey, Oliver James; Wible, Scott A; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation provides an empirical account of rhetorical and writing practices in outplacement, which comprises a collection of for-profit and governmental organizations that offer consulting and counseling services to aid displaced professional workers—who are usually highly experienced in their fields—in finding new employment. Outplacement organizations offer training and support in job application letter, résumé, and networking script writing; capabilities assessment; job-finding strategies; networking and interview preparation; and ongoing opportunities for out-of-work people to provide each other with mutual support. Neither job-placement agencies nor recruiters, outplacement training programs are sites of teaching and learning that prepare experienced professionals to find new employment independently. In outplacement, out-of-work people learn to apply their professional capabilities to the task of finding new employment. Through participant observation in group outplacement training programs, interviews with outplacement practitioners and participants, and analyses of published outplacement training manuals and other textual artifacts produced by outplacement organizations, I discern three distinct ways in which outplacement consultants, the providers of the service, help outplacement candidates, the service’s recipients, to engage in rhetorical and writing-based job-finding practices. First, as they compose in practical job-finding genres by writing résumés, job application letters, and networking scripts, outplacement candidates learn to both identify their professional capabilities and connect them to new workplace opportunities. Second, as they compose in reflective genres, including those of life writing, outplacement candidates learn to negotiate tensions between their personal goals and the contemporary realities of professional employment. Third, as they learn job-search strategies that include tasks such as composing audio-visual job-finding texts and participating in both traditional and distance-mediated, multimodal employment interviews, outplacement candidates become familiar with technological innovations in personnel recruitment and learn how to adapt, throughout their careers, to the continually changing contexts of professional hiring practices. My dissertation makes a unique contribution to rhetoric and writing studies by focusing on the rhetorical and writing work that out-of-work people do at key moments of transition in their professional lives as they move from workforce displacement, through unemployment and outplacement, and toward reemployment.Item Beyond Words: A Post-Process Business Writing Pedagogy(2016) Lloyd, Adam M.; Wible, Scott A; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goals of this dissertation are twofold: to identify shortcomings in contemporary business writing pedagogies that result in students being insufficiently prepared for the writing challenges of their post-college careers and, to develop an alternative pedagogy that addresses these problems. To achieve these ends I review the recent history of business writing pedagogy, examine 105 business communication syllabi from U.S. colleges, and perform a close textual analysis of the five textbooks most commonly used in these courses. I then perform a communication audit of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network as an exemplar of how communication functions in a workplace setting. Armed with this data I assert that contemporary pedagogical models do not adequately account for the atomistic complexity and fluidity of actual workplace discourse: the historical and organizational factors that affect every discursive interaction, the personal preferences and individual relationships that determine success with each new dialogic engagement, the very nature of communication as uncodifiable and paralogical, or the generative, living genres that allow these activity systems to function. “Beyond Words” presents a new pedagogy that accomplishes several objectives: first, it accounts for the weaknesses of current business writing pedagogies. Second, it addresses the challenges of contemporary workplace communication, in which writing expectations are constantly evolving and progressively intricate. Third, it incorporates the principles of post-process theory—that writing is public, interpretive, and situated—and draws on aspects of activity theory and ethnographic analysis that remain consistent with a post-process framework but add depth to the holistic conception of discourse practices. Fourth, rather than trying to teach students how to write—which post-process theory argues is impossible—it focuses on helping students to “read” the situated contexts of what are commonly considered discourse communities as evidence of prior communicative theories so as to better triangulate the passing hermeneutic strategies of each of their interlocutors. Most importantly, this pedagogy prepares students for the increasingly complex, unstable, diverse writing conditions of the contemporary workplace and empowers them to better analyze and adapt to whatever communications challenges they face throughout their professional careers.Item Electracy in Praxis: Pedagogical Relays for an Undergraduate Writing Curriculum(2016) Geary, Thomas Michael; Logan, Shirley W.; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The paradigm shift from traditional print literacy to the postmodern fragmentation, nonlinearity, and multimodality of writing for the Internet is realized in Gregory L. Ulmer’s electracy theory. Ulmer’s open invitation to continually invent the theory has resulted in the proliferation of relays, or weak models, by electracy advocates for understanding and applying the theory. Most relays, however, remain theoretical rather than practical for the writing classroom, and electracy instruction remains rare, potentially hindering the theory’s development. In this dissertation, I address the gap in electracy praxis by adapting, developing, and remixing relays for a functional electracy curriculum with first-year writing students in the Virginia Community College System as the target audience. I review existing electracy relays, pedagogical applications, and assessment practices – Ulmer’s and those of electracy advocates – before introducing my own relays, which take the form of modules. My proposed relay modules are designed for adaptability with the goals of introducing digital natives to the logic of new media and guiding instructors to possible implementations of electracy. Each module contains a justification, core competencies and learning outcomes, optional readings, an assignment with supplemental exercises, and assessment criteria. My Playlist, Transduction, and (Sim)ulation relays follow sound backward curricular design principles and emphasize core hallmarks of electracy as juxtaposed alongside literacy. This dissertation encourages the instruction of new media in Ulmer’s postmodern apparatus in which student invention via the articulation of fragments from various semiotic modes stems from and results in new methodologies for and understandings of digital communication.Item Going to the Source: A Case Study of Four Faculty and Their Approaches to Writing Instruction(2015) Callow, Megan; O'Flahavan, John; Malen, Betty; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines four college professors’ approaches to writing instruction in the disciplines of history and engineering. An investigation of writing instruction in two disparate disciplinary contexts contributes to our understanding of how instructors approach writing instruction in the disciplines, and which factors encourage and inhibit writing instruction. This study proposes and assesses the validity of a guiding conceptual framework, which posits that the primary factors influencing faculty’s approaches to writing instruction are academic biography, disciplinary identity, and educational ideology. The study employs a qualitative case study methodology, and data sources include in-depth interviews, field observations, and analysis of documents such as syllabi and writing prompts. This dissertation is founded on a premise that the instructor is an under-studied but essential player in the Writing in the Disciplines movement. The study reveals more about the nature of discipline-based writing instruction, and proposes a conceptual framework for future research on instructional approaches to disciplinary writing.Item Common Ground(2015) Allen, Amanda Marie; Plumly, Stanley; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This collection explores the different ways silence acts as a form of communication, recognizing both the power and failure of the unspoken. At once critical and empathetic, the speaker of these poems finds connection between the self and a self-destructive father whose influence carries into future relationships. The poems navigate moments of anger, forgiveness and guilt, ultimately allowing each to happen simultaneously.Item Third Grade Students' Writing Attitudes, Self-Efficacy Beliefs, and Achievement(2012) Williams, Heather Michelle; Wigfield, Allan; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In order to become successful members of society in the United States, students must be able to write effectively. However, many students are unwilling or unable to write by the time they leave high school. Two major factors linked to writing performance include writing attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs. The first objective of this research is an investigation of the effectiveness of an intervention designed to improve writing attitudes, self-efficacy beliefs, and achievement. The second objective is an examination of the relation between those constructs. Participants were given the Writing Attitude Survey, a writing skills self-efficacy scale, and a short writing assessment. Further, 50% of the participants participated in an intervention designed to increase positive writing attitudes, self-efficacy beliefs, and achievement. The study found a significant positive relation between writing self-efficacy and attitudes. The intervention was found to have no effect on the self-efficacy, attitudes, or performance of participants.Item AN INVESTIGATION OF STUDENTS' EXPERIENCES WITH A WEB-BASED, DATA-DRIVEN WRITING ASSISTANCE ENVIRONMENT FOR IMPROVING KOREAN EFL WRITERS' ACCURACY WITH ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY(2010) Lim, Mi-Sun; Oxford, Rebecca L.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has played an increasingly important role in writing instruction and research. While research has been conducted on English as a second language (ESL) learners and the benefits of using web-based writing assistance programs in writing instruction, insufficient research has been done on English as a foreign language (EFL) students. This study is an empirical investigation of students' experiences with a web-based, data-driven writing assistance environment (e4writing) designed by the researcher to help Korean EFL writers with their grammar and vocabulary. This study investigated Korean university students' perceived difficulties with English grammar and vocabulary as they wrote in English. It also explored their perceptions of e4writing as used in a writing course to enhance English grammar and vocabulary. This study investigated 12 participants' perceptions and "academic profiles" (learning styles, confidence, motivation, and other factors) when they were enrolled in a 16-week course called Teaching Methods for English Composition. To gain a more specific and personal view, the study also included detailed case studies of four of the study participants. The major sources of data for the analyses include interviews, reflective journals, questionnaires, samples of the students' writing before and after their use of e4writing and the researcher's reflective notes. The study revealed that most of the students had difficulty with grammar and vocabulary in English writing. They positively perceived e4writing, as it provided individualized help on their problems with grammar and lexis. Overall, the students showed improvement in accuracy from the pretest to the posttest, and observations suggested that e4writing was probably related to this improvement; however, strong claims about e4writing as a cause of improvement cannot be made without a control group. The students felt e4writing was more beneficial for improving grammatical accuracy than for vocabulary accuracy. The students recommended that some features of e4writing be written in Korean to help students understand grammar and vocabulary explanations.Item A grounded theory of deaf middle school students' revision of their own writing(2010) Yuknis, Christina; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study used a grounded theory methodology to examine the experiences of deaf middle school students attending a program for deaf children in a public school to answer the following question: How do deaf children in middle school construct meaningful texts? The students were in one of two self-contained classes taught by a teacher of the deaf. The eight students and two teachers were each interviewed at least once. Classroom observations of the students engaged in writing an essay were conducted, and writing samples from each student were provided by the teachers. All of the data were analyzed, and a grounded theory that describes the experiences of the deaf students emerged. The theory consists of one core category and four key categories, which encompass three parts of writing: Knowing, Experiencing, and Doing. The core category, which captures the essence of what revision is to the students, is Living in Language and is the sole category in Knowing. Three key categories fall under the Experiencing heading: Interacting with the Text, Interacting with Instruction, and Interacting with Self as Reviser. The final key category is the sole category in Doing: Fixing Wrongs. This research contributes to the literature by illustrating how deaf students who are in one middle school understand, experience, and approach revision tasks. A significant understanding is that the students in this study are not given many opportunities to construct meaningful texts independently in their classes. Despite the lack of control over their own texts, the students have developed strategies to successfully “play the game” of writing in school. In addition, recommendations for future research and ways to improve instruction are offered. The greatest implication for instruction is that teachers need to step back and consider how instruction impacts the students. Students especially need to be empowered to control their own writing and develop metacognition of their own work. Future research can be done to test the theory using a broader scope of participants in other settings. It could also examine the writing process from the teachers’ perspectives to provide information about what informs their instruction of writing and revising.Item Illustrated Conversations: A Phenomenological Study of Listening to the Voices of Kindergartners(2009) Dean, Michele Ann; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the voices of kindergartners engaged in illustrated conversations. Max van Manen's methodology for hermeneutic phenomenological research provides a framework for the study, and the philosophical writings of Heidegger, Noddings, Bakhtin, van Manen, and Palmer guide the interpretations of how we come to be with young children through dialogue. Illustrated conversations, a process whereby the child writes his/her thoughts and drawings in a journal and then engages meaning-making with the teacher during a tape recorded dialogue, creates spaces for a teacher and student to have personal conversations about their lifeworlds. Using their own voices as the essential pathway winding through the experience, the study explores how the sixteen kindergarten children sense the spirit of home, explored the freedom to imagine their own ideas, acknowledged their identity, and developed relationships with others by engaging in illustrated conversation. Their wondrous voices echo their sense of home and family as they defined, and redefined, their identity through friendships with the researcher and peers. The silent conversations bring forth further meaning, uncovering how space and time with young children help them better hear their own voices and the voices of others. True listening becomes a part of pedagogy. Canvassed drawings and written thoughts, springboards for ideas, propel the conversations forward while also revealing how without voice, the meaning of the pictures and thoughts fell silent in the seeking of self. Children's voices--heard in dialogue, paused or silenced in between, and engraved on paper--connect pathways leading to self-identity. Truly listening to young children is a reflective experience that illuminates the voices and languages of young children. This study uncovers how listening to and reflecting upon the stories young children choose to tell in tactful and reciprocal conversation is pedagogy worth exploring. The study suggests that illustrated conversations can support teachers in balancing the new curriculum mandates being required in kindergarten classrooms with engaging and meaningful interactions that uncover the cognitive, language, and social/emotional development of children. Through illustrated conversation, teachers are able to hear and support the hundred languages of children.