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 Positioned to handle the "peaks and valleys": Narratives of Black and spiritual students attending PWIs(2021) Hall, Terra Nicole; Moore, Candace M.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The interrelatedness of spirituality and race has been understudied in higher education (McGuire et al., 2017; Patton & McClure, 2009; Watson, 2006). Whereas existing scholarship has indicated religion and spirituality have been found to be important for Black college students (Chae et al., 2004), there is a need to distinguish between religion and spirituality (Paredes-Collins & Collins, 2011). Although religion may still be highly significant for some Black college students, growing evidence points to a shift in the general population away from formalized religion to one of individualized spirituality (Streib, 2008). Therefore, the current study sought to explore the intersection of racial and spiritual identities for Black undergraduate students and understand how self-identified Black and spiritual students experience support while attending predominantly white institutions (PWIs). A conceptual framework that included the radical healing framework (French et al., 2020) and Black liberation theology discourse (Cone, 1977) was used to frame the current study. In this critical constructivist narrative study, semistructured interviews and visual data served as data sources. The collected data from 13 Black and spiritual undergraduate students attending PWIs uncovered knowledge about the intersection of racial and spiritual identities. Specifically, findings illuminated Black and spiritual students’ definitions of spirituality, identification of on- and off-campus sources of support, and revelation into the emotions and feelings experienced by Black and spiritual students from encounters with people and spaces. Through an analytical approach of restorying, a parable was created to (re)present participants’ narratives. Findings from this study offer implications for student affairs’ practice and research. Student affairs practitioners are recommended to curate and maintain a list of on- and off-campus spaces, expand curricular and co-curricular opportunities to discuss race and spirituality, and increase agency for faculty and staff to address racial and spiritual identities with students. Future research should seek to study the intersection of racial and spiritual identities among graduate students, explore spirituality without a Christian lens, consider other institutional contexts outside of PWIs, probe into intersections of other marginalized social identities, and attend to these topics outside of an ongoing global health pandemic.Item WHO AM I?: MEDIA INFLUENCE ON THE GENDER CONSTRUCTION OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS(2018) Lawrence, Angela S; Valli, Linda R; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While gender construction and identity occur across many years of childhood and early adulthood, it is in the adolescent stage when children ask the question, “Who am I?” In this study, I examine the ways media, as well as parents and peers, influence adolescent gender construction. Because of my interest in environments that seek to minimize media exposure, I situated the study in an alternative school setting. My main research question asked, “In what ways do students perform gender in a school environment that shapes interactions with media in particular ways?” To ensure that the investigation considered multiple perspectives, I examined students’ use of media at home and at school; how parental values regarding their children’s media use related to gender performance, values, and ideals; and, lastly, how gender performance at the school compared to what we know about gender performance in traditional environments. Previous research has examined messages students receive about expectations for gender performance in typical, media-saturated environments, but there is little on gender performance in alternative educational settings, a gap this study seeks to fill. Moreover, this study aims to advance the understanding of gender performance in a setting which encourages minimal exposure to media, defined for the purposes of this study as television, videos, movies, computers, gaming systems, radio, CDs, books, newspapers, and magazines. I employed an embedded case study method to examine gender performance as the overarching case, situating the media habits of six student participants as well as parent and staff perspectives as the sub-cases. Data collection included interviews, document collection, anecdotal notes, and classroom observations. Findings from the research demonstrate that when students are less attuned to the societal norms and stereotypes as expressed in mainstream media, they are more apt to express their individuality and perform gender in confident, unapologetic ways that felt comfortable and natural to them. I also present findings and implications from the study with regard to the ways student participants utilize media for socialization and skill-building purposes and the ways parents and students navigate differing opinions on appropriate and inappropriate media content.Item PERSPECTIVES OF VETERANS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE TERM "STUDENT VETERAN" AND THE IDENTITY SHIFTS BETWEEN MILITRAY AND COLLEGE(2014) Hernandez Baron, Paola Maria; Griffin, Kimberly; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Given changes in the G.I Bill, warfare, and higher education, post 9/11 veterans are a unique and expanding college student population. The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to better understand how post 9/11 student veterans perceive and identify with the term "student veteran." The findings suggest that "student veteran" is more than a label and shares some qualities of a social identity. The participants wanted to be treated as "regular students," but also valued what the term "student veteran" signifies including a unique sociohistorical, cultural, and personal context and history that framed their academic experience. Participants described the term as a way to uphold military culture amidst the more ambiguous college culture. Participants felt the term carries imposed meanings and judgments different from that which participants themselves attribute to it. Findings suggest both theoretical and applied implications for expanded cultural competency around interacting with heterogeneous student veteran populations.Item WIDGETS AND DIGITS: A STUDY OF NOVICE MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHERS ATTENDING TO MATHEMATICS IDENTITY IN PRACTICE(2013) Frank, Toya Jones; Clark, Lawrence M; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This is a study of novice middle-school mathematics teachers' attention to mathematics identity guided by three primary goals: (a) to understand how they were conceptualizing mathematics identity, (b) to investigate how they attended to mathematics identity in practice, and (c) to glean an understanding of the forces that they saw as influential in attending to mathematics identity. I explored how these teachers conceptualized mathematics identity and attended to it across four dimensions: ability, importance, motivation, and the nature of mathematical tasks. I used a metaphor of interlocking gears to represent how these four dimensions were interrelated. While each practicing novice teacher (PNT) conceptualized mathematics identity differently, they all viewed it through an ability lens, meaning their attention to mathematics identity was predicated upon how they positioned students as mathematically competent or incompetent. I used qualitative methods to highlight the perspectives and practices of three PNTs novice teachers who participated in an alternative certification program that prepared teachers to teach in a district with a long, documented history of low student achievement. I used Engeström's (1987, 1999, 2001) activity theory to explore how the elements of the teachers' activity systems promoted or impeded their attention to mathematics identity. I highlighted salient themes across all PNTs in a cross-case analysis. The teachers in the study attended to mathematics identity in various ways. I categorized these tools in three ways: (a) attention to mathematics identity via instruction, (b) attention to mathematics identity via planning, and (c) an emergent sociopolitical stance. I used the cases to provide illustrative examples of what attending to mathematics identity in each category looked like in practice. Across all of the PNTs, the rules at multiple levels (classroom, school, and district) that governed their activity systems were similar in nature. Their test-driven (Valli, Croninger, Chambliss, Graeber, & Buese, 2008) contexts shaped instructional decisions. At the classroom level, classroom management also proved to be a force that either supported or impeded the PNTs' attention to mathematics identity in practice. With the findings and analysis in mind, I present implications for teacher education, data collection, and theoretical considerations.Item Examining Developmental Stages of Leadership for College Students: A Validation Study of the Leadership Identity Development Model(2011) Wagner, Wendy; Komives, Susan R; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to confirm or disconfirm the leadership identity development (LID) model (Komives, Longerbeam, Owen, Mainella, & Osteen, 2006). The LID model identified six stages in the development of a leadership identity. Although used widely to inform the design of leadership development programs, it has not been validated by further research. This study used Q methodology to classify subjects with similar views of leadership into groups. The resulting groups were congruent with the stages of the LID model that are most frequently experienced during the college years. Thirty-nine subjects described their points of view about leadership and themselves as leaders through a 64-item card sort, placing the cards into piles along a continuum from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Principle components analysis was used to classify subjects into groups based on similarities in the card sorts. The way each of the four resulting groups described leadership was interpreted by examination of an aggregate card sort representing the views of the students in that group. These descriptions were compared to the stages of the LID model. Factor one from this study was similar to stages four through six of the LID model. There was no evidence distinguishing these three stages from each other in this subject sample. Factor two was similar to stage three with an independent view of self with others. Factor three was similar to stage three with a dependent view of self with others. Factor four had only a single subject, whose description did not readily fit into the LID model. Further research is needed to examine the LID stages experienced pre-college, as well as further exploration into whether LID stages four through six are truly distinct. However, the findings of this study do provide support for the existence of the stages of development most often experienced during the college years (stages three and four) as described in the LID model.Item Positioning and Identity in the Academic Literacy Experiences of Elementary English Language Learners(2011) Hickey, Pamela J.; Martin-Beltran, Melinda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigates the academic literacy experiences of elementary English Language Learners (ELLs) in first grade, fourth grade, and sixth grade. Participants included students as well as their reading/language arts mainstream teachers and their English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers. Informed by both cross-sectional cross-case study and narrative inquiry methodology, this study used positioning theory and identity theory as complementary analytic lenses. Students' positionings, both reflexive self-positioning and interactive positioning by others, were identified and named through analyses of their interactions in academic literacy events during reading/language arts. In order to consider the ways that students' positionings may afford or constrain their access to and engagement with academic literacy events, the researcher created an analytic framework naming student positions. Additionally, positions were considered in light of the ways that they mediated students' levels of engagement as literacy events unfolded. To investigate the construction of students' literate identities, the researcher examined students' patterns of positioning during literacy events and considered interview data from students and teachers as well as field notes that documented conversations with participants. The researcher also gathered two self-portraits from student participants, including one self-portrait showing the student engaged in an academic literacy task at school and one showing the student engaged in a fun activity outside of the school context. The study demonstrated that students' positionings, both positive and constraining, may work to construct and re-construct students' literate identities even as students' literate identities may inform the ways that students take on and negotiate positions in a recursive process. The study also found that students with strong literate identities bridging home and school contexts took on more positive positions thus engaging more deeply with academic literacy tasks than students with striving literate identities. Students with striving literate identities often took on positions of constraint in strategic moves that allowed them to get through literacy tasks without engaging deeply. Finally, this study demonstrated the powerful ways that teachers may support students' deep engagement with literacy tasks through positive positioning and following through on their lesson implementation by offering opportunities for re-positioning and the use of scaffolds.Item The nature of bi-ethnic identity in young adults of Asian and European descent and their perceptions of familial influences on its development(2009) Wagner Hoa, Amanda Laurel; Wigfield, Allan; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to identify the key constructs of bi-ethnic identity, the key familial influences, and other salient influences on bi-ethnic identity as perceived by young adults of Asian and European descent. The rapidly changing demographics of the United States provide an impetus for research on the developmental processes of bi-ethnic individuals. In this qualitative study, participants were interviewed about their bi-ethnic identities and possible influences on bi-ethnic identity development. Data analysis for this study incorporated techniques from grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) and analytic induction (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). Five bi-ethnic identity types emerged from participants' responses to interview questions: majority identity, minority identity, dual identity, integrated identity, and unresolved identity. These identity types are a unique contribution to the literature in that they specify how individuals of Asian and European descent define themselves. Additionally, this study identified four facets of bi-ethnic identity that indicate how bi-ethnic individuals think and feel about their background: centrality, self-label, affirmation, and affect. Six categories of influences on bi-ethnic identity development emerged from responses to interview questions (parental, extended family, personal, peer, environmental, discrimination), with 18 subcategories. This study is important because most prior research on bi-ethnic identity has focused on uncovering developmental stages, while we lack understanding of the nature of bi-ethnic identity and influences on its development. This study was important given the dearth of research on bi-ethnic Asians, although future research is needed with other bi-ethnic groups.Item Grounded Identities, Transient Lives: The Emergence of Student Voices in an Era of Globalization(2008-11-20) Gargano, Terra; Finkelstein, Barbara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study offers a rare glimpse into the histories, images, and meanings that inform the experiences of six international degree-seeking undergraduate students at the University of Maryland College Park in the spring of 2007. Specifically, the design and content of this study centers around the recovery of student voices as a way to understand the limitations and possibilities of international education policies and practices. The experiences of these six students in many ways challenge the understanding and categorization of a traditional international student. Focusing almost exclusively on nationality as an organizing agent and bereft of significant and robust concepts that bring into view the content of international student sense-making, international education discourses neglect to explore the complexity and range of meanings students ascribe to educational sojourns, thereby resulting in a series of undocumented generalizations made about students. This study reveals that these twenty-first century students are experienced border crossers with very complex identities. These students engage in diverse constructions of meaning as they negotiate the boundaries of geography and mind that are inherent aspects of crossing borders. The perspectives of these contemporary students suggest the need for a foundational rethinking of the assumptions that ground the international education literature and a reconceptualization of the entire apparatus of thinking about educational sojourns. Through an analysis of how student participation in transnational spaces influenced pathways to the university, how students negotiated identities as international students, and how students envisioned futures, it becomes evident that a new kind of international student is emerging.Item The Teacher's Homecoming: Understanding Vocational Identity Development of Military Career Changers(2008-11-11) Fleming, Kimberly; McCaleb, Joseph; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As increasing numbers of teacher candidates enter the field of education from other careers, teacher educators must consider the complexities of career transition. Insiders' accounts of vocational change can help teacher educators act with tact and authenticity in a way that is sensitive to the experiences of career changers. This study uses philosophical hermeneutics to develop understanding related to the sociocultural process of vocational identity development for two military career changers as they become teachers. The concept of identity is explored, and it is developed both as lived experience in community as well as a sense of self, fashioned through rememberings and imaginings. Two case studies center on Caucasian males with military experience who are transitioning into secondary English teaching positions. Thomas, a 50-year-old Air Force retiree with 24 years of service, is enrolled in a local school system-sponsored alternative preparation program. Rob, a 38-year-old past Verizon employee and current lieutenant in the Army Reserves, is enrolled in a Master of Arts in Teaching program. This study employs a participatory paradigm in which participants serve as co-researchers. The study follows each co-researcher into three communities of practice related to their teacher preparation and/or induction to teaching. Their experiences as persons-in-community are analyzed using a sociocultural perspective. The following constructs are explicated for each community of practice under study: place, social structures, practical tools, conceptual tools, metaphors, narratives, and imagined futures. Each community is shown to promote certain teaching identities while constraining others, although the process of vocational identity development emerges as a negotiation among person and community. In the spirit of Wenger (1998), each individual's nexus of being is then discussed, and vocational identity is explored in relation to coordination and contradiction of multiple communities as well as in mutual constitution with an individual's rememberings and imaginings. A vocational meta-story is told in archetypal language to represent the reverse coming of age which military career changers undergo on their journeys to become and belong as teachers. Finally, a synthesis of understandings related to identity, ways to make meaning, and the needs of military career changers is offered.Item Listening to Adolescent Heartsongs: Phenomenological Possibilities in Teaching Writing(2007-05-29) Hartshorn, Mary Ann M; Hultgren, Francine H; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: LISTENING TO ADOLESCENT HEARTSONGS: PHENOMENOLOGICAL POSSIBILITIES IN TEACHING WRITING Mary Ann McKenzie Hartshorn Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Francine Hultgren Department of Education Policy and Leadership College of Education University of Maryland This hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry, is called by the question: What is the lived experience of high school students who share something they have written from the heart? The metaphor of the human heart opens my understanding of the experiences of thirty-two students who write and share their writings in sophomore English class. My understanding of this experience deepens during after-school conversations with twelve of those students. Text, offering words for hermeneutic pondering, was compiled from conversations, journals, student writings and sharing activities. All voices were taped and transcribed to provide a visual remembrance of these lived experiences. 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). Through my students' heartfelt words, I see them write their way to self-discovery. The importance of "lived space" (van Manen, 2002, p. 102) is brought forward, and lets me understand that students need to feel at "home" in school if they are to be successful. As we create a sacred space together, my students and I experience safety and freedom. In this space we find our "i-dentities" and hear our heartsongs. When sharing those songs, students announce their fears of failure, death and the swift passage of time; their memories; their longing for communication and disappointment in not connecting. We dwell together in the unique, sacredness of each other, opening a listening space where relationality "allows us to transcend ourselves" (p. 105). It is here that we celebrate more similarities than differences. The valued end of any class should include a place where students feel comfortable with themselves and others. Curriculum should be relevant to each student, providing an opportunity for self discovery and acceptance. Writing of a personal nature must be included across the curriculum so students learn to value themselves, fellow human beings, and the universe.