College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item SEARCHING FOR A FACE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF NON-FACE-TO-FACE UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING(2021) Stakland, Steven Keyes; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Online education is increasingly dominating the experience of formal learning. Although possible at any level of formal education this non-traditional program of learning via the Internet seems to be most accepted for undergraduates. Few have explored the meaning of the experience. The purpose of this dissertation is to present the meaning(s) of non-face-to-face learning for undergraduates. I define online education as non-face-to-face since it never requires a fully embodied encounter with others in real time, e.g., even in a synchronous video exchange reciprocal eye contact is impossible. I met several times with nine participants from different institutions who had taken or were currently enrolled in online classes (prior to 2019). Over the course of my conversations with these participants I recorded and created a text from our conversations and their written accounts. Using the method of hermeneutic phenomenology I present themes here based on my interpretation of that text. I have found that the loss of face-to-face contact is essential to the phenomenon in ways I did not anticipate. The meaning of the phenomenon is related to the essence of technology itself. Considering the meaning of online learning engages with the definition and purpose of education. Although the experience is described in terms of efficiency (ease and convenience) it is also shot through with absence, multitasking and voyeurism. The feeling of efficiency gives a sense that learning is absent. This leads to frustration with the experience. Non-face-to-face learning is described as a kind of game. It can give undergraduates a greater sense of responsibility for their education but without embodied presence with others the vulnerability that leads to community is absent. The explicitness of the asynchronous textual nature of the exchanges between students and instructors introduces ambiguity. The purpose of earning credits comes to dominate the experience instead of the means of learning. I give insights related to the vital importance of in-person learning and indicate paths for further phenomenological work in online education particularly related to teaching. Non-face-to-face learning should be thought of as something different than in-person learning. It cannot ever be a copy or full replacement.Item Difference Amongst Your Own: The Lived Experiences Of Low-Income African-American Students and Their Encounters With Class Within Elite Historically Black College (HBCU) Environments(2015) Mobley, Jr., Steve Derrick; Drezner, Noah D.; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The subtle and deeply impactful nuances of Black intra-racial social class differences that manifest amongst students who attend historically Black colleges (HBCU) has remained untouched and understudied in higher-education scholarship. In this phenomenological study, I explore how low-income African-American students encounter social class within elite HBCU environments. The men and women in this study graduated between the years of 2001 and 2010. Contemporary HBCU student experiences are underscored and reveal great tension between self, community, and place. The philosophical works of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Edward Casey are joined with the voices of Black scholars including W.E.B. DuBois, Audre Lorde, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, and Toni Morrison to provide critical context for the phenomenon being studied. Max van Manen’s key phenomenological insights also provide a methodological foundation for the study. My co-researchers encountered significant shifts and evolved within their oppressed identities during their undergraduate years. During their undergraduate years they felt a difference amongst their own that they still reconcile today. The participants within this study endured feelings of alienation, wonder, and even confusion within their distinct higher education environments. This study concludes with phenomenological insights for myriad educational stakeholders that include higher educational researchers, higher education practitioners, families, and students. I provide pedagogical insights into how elite HBCU environments can not only intercede and provide a more enriching cultural environment for their low-income students, but their families as well. The pedagogical insights that “end” this study also summon the need for future research to continue to explore Black intra-racial differences that are present within both elite HBCU communities and elite PWI institutions as well. Exposure to the pertinent issues that are outlined in this scholarship provide a new entry into critical discourses that must now be had. This dialogue is needed so that students within elite HBCU environments do not continue to suffer in silence within their oppressed identities.Item CHANNELING THE CURRENT: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF MOVING MEDITATION FOR FINDNG A FLOW IN THINKING AND WRITING(2013) Morris, Sarah Lynn; Hultgren, Francine H.; McCaleb, Joseph; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)CHANNELING THE CURRENT: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF MOVING MEDITATION FOR FINDNG A FLOW IN THINKING AND WRITING Sarah Lynn Morris, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation Directed by: Professor Francine H. Hultgren Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland, College Park This phenomenological study explores lived experience of moving meditation for finding flow in thinking and writing. Moving meditation is intentional practice of mindfulness that brings us deeply into our selves and the world. Connecting to pedagogical implications for teaching composition, this study suggests embodied practices may open a flow of words and ideas for those practicing movement meditation. Grounded in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and van Manen, this work explores embodiment and lived experience, using human science phenomenology as method. Further grounded in writing process and moving meditation texts, this work connects body movement and writing practices through lived experience. I first turn toward my own experience to examine moving meditation as method of finding flow in my thinking and writing. Next, I explore the phenomenon in a range of traditions to further uncover the lived experience of moving writers. The metaphor of the circuit as descriptive of writing process and body process further illuminates the phenomenon. Initial emergent themes include process, practice, flow, solitude, and nature. Recognizing the intersubjective in the particular, this study focuses on lived experience of four high school English teachers as they make meaning through focused movement. In four sessions of meditative contemplation, these teachers walked in the woods, wrote reflections, and considered personal and pedagogical experiences. Renderings of these teachers' journals and conversations suggest themes including fear, care, wholeness, and transcendence. Drawing from these conversants' insights, I explore ways in which meditative movement opens a flow in thinking and writing for these teachers, writers themselves in the current of life. Orienting toward pedagogical implications, I engage with lived experience in order to suggest ways in which teachers of writing may create wholeness of experience for classroom communities: taking students outside, seeing students in wholeness, positioning themselves as more experienced writers, focusing on process rather that product, and being bodies themselves. In doing so, they may generate a culture of care that fosters growth of writing and writers--body, mind, and spirit wholeness-- with the world as classroom and lived life as text.Item Prisms and Polyphony: The lived experiences of high school band students and their director as the prepare for an adjudicated performance.(2012) Miles, Stephen Wayne; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry is called by the question: What are the lived experiences of high school band students and their director as they prepare for an adjudicated performance? While there are many lenses through which the phenomenon of music preparation and music making has been explored, a relatively untapped aspect of this phenomenon is the experience as lived by the students themselves. The experiences and behaviors of the band director are so inexorably intertwined with the student experience that this essential contextual element is also explored as a means to understand the phenomenon more fully. Two metaphorical constructs - one visual, one musical - provide a framework upon which this exploration is built. As a prism refracts a single color of light into a wide spectrum of hues, views from within illumine a variety of unique perspectives and uncover both divergent and convergent aspects of this experience. Polyphony (multiple contrasting voices working independently, yet harmoniously, toward a unified musical product) enables understandings of the multiplicity of experiences inherent in ensemble performance. Conversations with student participants and their director, notes from my observations, and journal offerings provide the text for phenomenological reflection and interpretation. The methodology underpinning this human science inquiry is identified by Max van Manen (2003) as one that "involves description, interpretation, and self-reflective or critical analysis" (p. 4). I have reflected on the counterpoint of the student experience, and both purposefully and inadvertently, viewed this counterpoint through the various windows O'Donohue (2004) suggests await our gaze in the inner tower of the mind (p. 127). The student experience showed itself through the ensemble culture, the repertoire studied, the rehearsal process, and the adjudicated performance itself. Student conversations and reflections indicate that they experienced both discovery and transformation as they interacted with the music, each other, and their director throughout this process. The fresh prismatic and polyphonic understandings that emerged may offer the possibility for others to consider more deeply the context of how students experience who they are within an ensemble and how that experience shapes their musical understandings and personal growth.Item Walking the Woods: The Lived Experience of Sexual Assault Survival for Women in College(2012) Monahan-Kreishman, Mollie Marie; Hultgren, Francine; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: WALKING THE WOODS: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVAL FOR WOMEN IN COLLEGE Mollie M. Monahan-Kreishman, Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Dissertation directed by: Professor Francine Hultgren Department of Teaching, Learning, Policy and Leadership This phenomenological study explores the lived experience of sexual assault survival for women in college. Through a grounding in the philosophy of hermeneutic phenomenology (Gadamer, 1960/2000; Heidegger, 1927/1962, 1968, 1928/1998, 1971/2001, 1950/2002), this work uncovers the lives of six sexual assault survivors who lived through rape during their university years. The research activities designed by van Manen (1997) provide the methodological framework for the study. Within this framework, the researcher is able to bring readers into a visceral feeling of the lived experience. Deep, rich meaning is brought forth from the words of each rape survivor. The six survivors in this study remained at their respective universities for one to four years following the rape. They identified as American Indian, Taiwanese American, Italian American, European American, Caucasian, and White. At the time of the study, participants ranged in age from their late twenties to early forties. They attended different universities across the country. Hermeneutic phenomenological conversation revealed one overarching theme of the all en-COMPASS-ing nature of rape survival in college. In other words, after being raped in college, the experience continued to be intimately connected to everything they would live through thereafter. The first of two sub-themes, stoppings, uncovered experiences that halt survival from the outside, the inside, through (re)iterations of the rape, through divisions, and through loss of control. The second of two sub-themes, movings, uncovered experiences that progress rape survival, such as moving away from campus, reclaiming reiterations, reclaiming voice, reclaiming strength, reclaiming body, reclaiming reactions, reclaiming foundation, and the movement from victim to survivor. From this work, two main sets of pedagogical implications come into view. The first, being with, examines the personal ways in which we, as college and university professionals, can authentically listen and respond to women surviving rape. The second, being-for, examines the campus world, and the possibilities brought forth when faculty, staff, students, friends, family and survivors come together in the creation of communities that pause and focus on what survivors need in order to survive.Item Complicating the Phenomenological Conversation of Basketball as an En-gendered Life Course(2012) Sotudeh, Kasra; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experience of basketball in the lives of collegiate women who claim to be scholar-athletes. The scholar-athletes were invited to unpack their scholastic and athletic life stories, not just as a mode of relevance for communicating with others, but more significantly, as a way of transacting what is embedded within their memories via the written narrative form. Through the corporeal, temporal, spatial, and relational moments in basketball the meaning of the lived experience is illuminated. The question that compels my study is: What is the lived experience of basketball in the lives of collegiate women who claim to be scholar-athletes? The philosophic works of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau-Ponty provide the foundation for this lived experience study. The "grounding" that each of these philosophers impart is used to penetrate the hermeneutic nature of basketball as "play" via autobiographical application. Furthermore, van Manen's phenomenological process provides a platform of engagement and writing through the reflective practice of Pinar's currere method as a mode for slowing down the lived experience of play. A group of eight former women basketball players who identified themselves as scholar-athletes were the participants in this study through a 15-week course entitled EDPS 488B: Complicating the Conversation of Basketball as a Life Course. By analyzing their lived accounts of basketball through a variety of literary means, each scholar-athlete was able to gradually build her own autobiographical written narrative of basketball in relation to the social, political, and intellectual contexts of curriculum as lived. In this process, I develop a philosophical approach to examining the significance of sport though a revalidation of seasoned becoming, a transformation of athletic feat into scholarly thought, a deliberation of unrehearsed narrative, and a recognition of never-ending sanctity. Setting a scholarly life course into athletic motion suggests themes encompassing the challenge of bringing the body and mind into an even playing field, the return to a moment when identities were merely playful and time simply stood still, the value of the sporting space on the athlete's sense of community development, and the enlightenment of the self through the other via the discipline of heart and mind. Drawing from the insights I gained from my participants, I suggest that the praxis of sports as a life course is reliant upon curricular transformation and not the isolation of academics from athletics. The notion of irrelevance has trapped our mindset into the anxiety of wanting to be accepted. For scholar-athletes and a multitude of other hyphenated forms of human existence, anxiety hovers over an ever-changing becoming, almost fooling the being out of existence and into an artificial realm of acceptance. Scholar-athletes can serve as powerful role models within society, and hence, their lived experience is consistently challenged by their actions. The currere process not only tells the scholarly story of athletic lives, but it allows others in the broader community to engage in the practice of complicated conversations from a variety of perspectives, both within and beyond the boundaries of the sporting space.Item The Lived Experience Of Latina/o Peer Mentees: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Approach(2012) Gomez Riquelme, Luis Angelo; Hultgren, Francine; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research is about the peer mentee experience of Latina/o students. For this purpose, a group of nine participants were selected, who were part of a peer mentoring program in a Mid-Atlantic public university. The experiences they shared were interpreted through the methodological lens of hermeneutic phenomenology. The purpose of this study is to begin filling in one of the voids in the mentoring practice, which is the experience of peer mentees, and what this study reveals is that the peer mentee experience is the result of loneliness and prejudice that Latina/o students are able to overcome when they have a good peer mentoring experience. This interpretation is done following Clark Moustakas' philosophy of being. Peer mentees receive guidance and help alleviating their solitude, which in this study is interpreted as being-with. Consequently, peer mentees find purpose and are reminded of the reason why they stay in college, which herein is interpreted through the existential concept of being-for. Finally, this study also reveals that being a peer mentee can help finding or making sense of being in college and recovering a sense of belonging, which is interpreted through the phenomenological concept of being-with. The recommendations of this study to improve this practice involve fostering community, creating a sense of belonging, and advocating for a pedagogical experience that is liberated of prejudices and assumptions about Latinas/os, in addition to continuing the support of peer mentoring.Item AMIDST THE TEST: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING "UNDER" NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND(2011) Woodward, Barbara Agard; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry I explore the lived experience of public school teachers teaching amidst the federal law entitled No Child Left Behind. My research question wonders, "What is the lived experience of teaching under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)? My exploration relies heavily upon the work of Ted Aoki, Edward Casey, David Jardine, William Pinar, Hans George Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. Van Manen's (2003) hermeneutic phenomenological research activities provides the framework for my methodology. Eleven public school teachers were engaged in individual and group conversations to bring forward the lived dimension of teaching amidst NCLB. The rendering of the audio taped conversations suggests a place in teaching akin to illness. These themes yield insight into teaching amidst a testing culture focused on data. Participants reveal how the myopic focus on test results creates a looming feeling within schools as they wait for results from the state assessments. As a consequence, students are color-coded in a non-human way as the colors of red, blue and green. This encourages teaching prescribed scripts within a narrow margin. Reflecting on this dis-ease in teaching, as suggested by these themes, calls for a refocusing and re-languaging of teaching and learning in American public schools. I propose a refocusing of education in three divergent directions. The first is a focus "down" into the classrooms, i.e., more intensely with where students, teachers and communities thrive. The second is a focus on the whole of teaching in relation to the parts. Finally, I call for a focus on the unique which will enable playing outside boxes, a curriculum of discovery and a suspension in the current belief system entrenched in test-focused technical languageItem Seeking Personal Meaning in New Places: The Lived Experience of Religious Conversion(2011) Brimhall-Vargas, Mark G.; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This phenomenological study explores the lived experience of religious conversion. As a study concerned with the development of religious identity (often rooted in psycho-social research where identity development usually relies on linear processes of growth), this dissertation research suggests that religious identity development, in particular, cannot easily be mapped to these models. What insights about religious identity, and identity generally, can be drawn from the standpoint of religious conversion? How do people who have experienced this phenomenon make meaning of that experience? What implications does "fluid" identity hold for educational settings? This research is done in the tradition of phenomenology drawing on the work of philosophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Levinas, Derrida, and Merleau-Ponty as foundational "grounding" for this study. Each of these philosophers raise key concepts used for the rendering and illumination of the phenomenon of religious conversion. Van Manen provides a detailed process by which phenomenological philosophy can be used to conduct this form of research. Initial exploration of the existential phenomenon suggests themes including the various pressures that make hiding a change in identity necessary, a deep questioning surrounding the nature of religion itself and the meaning it holds for people, and the rejection of certainty as a value in religious identity. Once themes of religious conversion had been explored, I recruited ten participants representing a wide array of identities related to religion, race, sex, sexuality, gender identity, age, and educational attainment for this study. My phenomenological data suggest that religious identity development can be deeply understood as a complex phenomenon often mirrored in the mythological "heroic journey" commonly found in cultures around the world. In this process, I develop the concept of phenomythology, a process of weaving myth and phenomenology together as an existential process to uncover and illustrate the seemingly universal search for ultimacy and liminality in life's small events as revelatory of larger significance and deeper inward meaning. Drawing from the insights I gained from my participants, I suggest that the lived experience of religious conversion can be linked to other social science theory (such as queer theory) to better prepare educators who encounter individuals who have complex religious identity. Specifically, I explore pedagogical possibilities for including insights from religiously queer identity as a way for understanding social difference. My first concern is helping educators understand how religiously queer people might "show up" in a classroom setting. Additionally, I offer a variety of ways to use this difference as a gift of perspective to learning, including a reconceptualization of identity within the setting of intergroup dialogue as phenomenological "cohabited space" to build solidarity and alliances for progressive social action.Item Being through Books: A Phenomenological Study of Constructing a Sense of Self through Fiction(2010) McShane, Laura Marie; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Fiction provides us with diverse frames of reference and knowledge through which we make meaning of events in our lives and deepen our understanding of our own lived worlds. Using Max van Manen's methodology for phenomenological research, this study explores the lived experience of creating a sense of self through reading fiction. Through hermeneutic analysis of text developed from conversations with and written reflections from committed readers who identify fictional narrative as a major influence upon their lives, I address what it means to become ourselves through books. Fiction brings us across worlds, moves us across stages and states of being, allows us to see ourselves in mirrors and across to others through windows. Participants articulate the importance of fiction in troubling their given notions of the world, providing gateways to wider worlds and role models for new identities, and helping them to make meaning of their lives and lifeworlds. They describe dwelling at multiple thresholds, liminal spaces between quotidian reality and fictional worlds, and how negotiating those worlds brings them to self-knowledge, self-reflection, and their authentic selves. These six women, voracious readers for a range of decades, portray reading as an engagement with imagination that uncovers the hidden, transporting them from being out-of-place into multiple rich and supportive lifeworlds. The ultimate product of the self revealed through fiction is the essence of our being--that core of self expressed by the concept of Da-sein (Heidegger, 1953/1996), which carries the notion of "being there." As we story ourselves into sentience, we emplace ourselves within our own lifeworlds, recognizing our own core of being, and creating the narrative that becomes a lifelong discourse and ongoing journey, our own currere. Understanding the experience of self-creation through fiction opens up pedagogical engagements that recognize students as beings who engage in self-reflection through narrative, and connects the power of narrative to support their being-in-the-world. Taking advantage of the quality of "across-ness" in liminal spaces, teachers can become participants in the self-storying of students, and partners in their self-construction, leading to transformation that represents real education, not just schooling.