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Title: "Four years of arduous service" : the history of the Branch-Lane brigade in the Civil War
Creator: McDaid, William Kelsey
Date: 1987
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Give me the worst of them, and I'll make them the best" : an ethnographic study of a successful alternative school for at-risk African American children
Creator: Khalifa, Muhammad A.
Date: 2008
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Gliding through our memories" : the performance of nostalgia in American musical theater
Creator: Edney, Kathryn Ann Tremper
Date: 2009
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Gothified Histories" : eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women's gothic novels and enlightenment historiography
Creator: Swender, Catherine Ann
Date: 2003
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Gowned Vultures" : anti-legal attitudes in Elizabethan-Jacobean literature
Creator: O'Connor, Thomas Francis, 1931-
Date: 1974
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "HOW IS THIS MAKING MY INSTRUCTION BETTER AT ALL?" : CENTERING TEACHERS' VOICES AND STRIVING FOR HUMANIZATION IN AN INVESTIGATION OF HIGH-STAKES EVALUATIONS
Creator: Guenther, Amy R.
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation investigates teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes evaluations and examines the methods used to conduct this research. While the evaluation of teacher performance has been a long-standing practice in the United States, recent education reform policies have placed a much greater emphasis on teacher evaluation (Cohen & Goldhaber, 2016). These neoliberal policies largely focus on assessing performance to hold teachers accountable (Papay, 2012) and have resulted in many states...
Show moreThis dissertation investigates teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes evaluations and examines the methods used to conduct this research. While the evaluation of teacher performance has been a long-standing practice in the United States, recent education reform policies have placed a much greater emphasis on teacher evaluation (Cohen & Goldhaber, 2016). These neoliberal policies largely focus on assessing performance to hold teachers accountable (Papay, 2012) and have resulted in many states adopting performance-based teacher evaluation systems with high-stakes attached to them (Goldstein, 2014; Lavigne, 2014). These reforms have significantly changed both how teachers are evaluated and the implications of their evaluations. The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand the professional and personal consequences of these high-stakes evaluation systems on teachers, as well as how this research might be conducted in humanizing ways. Thus, I examine the lived experiences of teachers from three elementary schools in different suburban districts in Michigan, as well as aspects of humanizing research (Paris, 2011: Paris & Winn, 2014) that I incorporated into my research methods. This three article dissertation highlights the perspectives of teachers and reveals potential reasons for the ineffectiveness of high-stakes evaluation to improve practice, as well as several harmful consequences that high-stakes evaluations can have on teachers. At the very least, this current evaluation system does not encourage teachers to work together to improve their practice. At its most consequential, it appears to be encouraging isolationism and creating adversarial relationships among some teachers. Thus, I argue, by implicitly and explicitly discouraging collaboration, the current evaluation system is decreasing teachers’ access to the social capital that could help them be more effective in their practice. Additionally, while doing little to enhance their practice, these high-stakes evaluations are negatively influencing teachers’ identities. This finding is particularly significant when one considers teachers’ identities have been linked to their commitment, well-being, sense of agency, and effectiveness (Day & Kington, 2008). Therefore, I argue, it is doubtful that the current evaluation system, which focuses on accountability, is producing the desired effect of improved teaching and may actually be counterproductive, negatively influencing both teachers’ practice and their identities. I contend that teachers’ voices should inform necessary changes to teacher evaluation to produce evaluation systems that actually improve their practice and enhance their identities as teachers. Furthermore, in describing and reflecting upon my efforts to make my research more humanizing for my participants, this dissertation offers methods and a rationale for utilizing aspects of humanizing research amidst neoliberal policies. Such methods can implicate and counter the deprofessionalizing and dehumanizing effects of neoliberal policies on teachers.
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Title: "Hatucheki Na Watu" : Kenyan hip-hop artists' theories of multilingualism, identity and decoloniality
Creator: Milu, Esther
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This is a qualitative research study that constellates several theoretical and methodological approaches to understand why and how three Kenyan Hip-hop artists, Jua Cali, Nazizi Hirji and Abbas Kubbaff, engage in translingual communicative practices."--Abstract.

Title: "I felt a compulsion to write" : a qualitative examination of the learning experiences of three female composers
Creator: Giebelhausen, Robin Joan
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: With the goal of understanding what experiences and musical identities of women who choose to compose, the purpose of this research was to examine the experience and musical identity of women who choose to compose music.This study was guided by the following Grand Tour question and sub-questions:Why do these women choose to compose?1. What experiences and relationships have played a foundational role in shaping these women as composers?2. What experiences and relationships allowed these women...
Show moreWith the goal of understanding what experiences and musical identities of women who choose to compose, the purpose of this research was to examine the experience and musical identity of women who choose to compose music.This study was guided by the following Grand Tour question and sub-questions:Why do these women choose to compose?1. What experiences and relationships have played a foundational role in shaping these women as composers?2. What experiences and relationships allowed these women to self-identify as a composer? 3. What influences, if any, do these women perceive that their gender has had upon their approach to composing?This investigation was a multiple case study of the learning experiences of three female graduate composition majors enrolled at State University, a large, state university in the midwest. The primary data collection involved four or five interviews between the participants and myself, email communications, one focus group interview with all participants, and field observations at composition studio classes and composition recitals. Two stages of musician-composer identity were observed: the foundational musician-composer identity and the emerging composer-musician identity. There were four main components at play in the foundational musician-composer identity: family support, positive mentors, multiple experiences, and perseverance/independence. Differing from the foundational musician-composer identity, the emerging composer-musician identity and themes that supported this identity allowed the women the confidence to self-identify as a composer. These three themes—arranging as a creative introduction, interest in music theory, and a need for an alternative to music performance—established a scenario in which all the women felt confident to call themselves a composer, though in some cases the label was fragile. I was unable to identify influences confidently that gender had upon their approach to composing. I was unable to answer this question not because I did not ask it, but because the women themselves were relatively unaware of any influences they faced related to gender in their field. These women compose because they must. This compulsion happened independently and in conjunction with many of the experiences that allowed for a foundational musician-composer identity and later an emerging composer-musician identity. Implications for music education include the inclusion of more creative experiences in K-8 music education, a need for arranging as a scaffolding device in creative pedagogy, and the inclusion of alternative music classes for which public performance is not the main objective. Implications for composers include collaborating with researchers and practitioners in music education to help nurture future music composers in K-12 music education.
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Title: "I have a chance to make it different for this child" : an exploration of maternal cumulative risk and child welfare outcomes of children born during maternal incarceration
Creator: Kasiborski, Natalie Blake
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "The aim of this dissertation is to explore the intersection between the child welfare and criminal justice systems, as well as the role of maternal cumulative risk on the outcomes of involved mother/child dyads."--From abstract.

Title: "I hear, and I forget ; I see, and I remember ; I do, and I understand" : an exploration of children's museums as successful learning environments for students with and without disabilities
Creator: Rapp, Whitney Hosmer
Date: 1997
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "I question it myself" : mid-victorian novels' formation of ethical subjectivity and the liberal reform of inheritance laws
Creator: Jang, Hyunsoo
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation explores the socio-economic dimensions of inheritance in notable mid-Victorian novels and their engagement with contemporary social debates over amending feudal inheritance laws. The dissertation argues that these novels contributed to reinforcing a reactionary cultural force that drove the compromised liberal legislation of new inheritance laws. The reform of the inheritance laws, led by Victorian liberals, focused on strengthening absolute testamentary power while...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the socio-economic dimensions of inheritance in notable mid-Victorian novels and their engagement with contemporary social debates over amending feudal inheritance laws. The dissertation argues that these novels contributed to reinforcing a reactionary cultural force that drove the compromised liberal legislation of new inheritance laws. The reform of the inheritance laws, led by Victorian liberals, focused on strengthening absolute testamentary power while displacing radical reformers’ demand for state intervention in redistributing inherited wealth into the hands of broader population. The liberals prioritized the cultivation of individual moral capacity or character-building over the improvement of economic equality. With their generic narrative power, mid-Victorian novels about inheritance dramatized the liberal reformers’ socio-economic ideas and sought to shape a subject who would internalize those ideas in his or her mind. My dissertation also illuminates how mid-Victorian liberals’ reasoning for the reform exposes a paradox in liberalism and a limit of the distinctive Victorian concept of ethical subjectivity.
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Title: "I want to be a better person and a better teacher" : Exploring the constructs of race and ability in a music educator collaborative teacher study group
Creator: Knapp, Erika
Date: 2022
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The way teachers engage with dis/ability and race in their classrooms links to theirunderlying belief systems (Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). Unfortunately, substantial evidence connects teacher beliefs and perceptions to the reification of hegemonic norms, which upholds barriers for students in educational settings (Annamma, 2015b; Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). The purpose of this study was to examine a music educator collaborative teacher study group (CTSG) focused on exploring and unpacking...
Show moreThe way teachers engage with dis/ability and race in their classrooms links to theirunderlying belief systems (Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). Unfortunately, substantial evidence connects teacher beliefs and perceptions to the reification of hegemonic norms, which upholds barriers for students in educational settings (Annamma, 2015b; Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). The purpose of this study was to examine a music educator collaborative teacher study group (CTSG) focused on exploring and unpacking narratives of race and dis/ability in music education. Research questions were: 1) How do teachers conceptualize issues of race and ability in both their belief systems and stated classroom practices? 2) How, if at all, did participants’ beliefs about race and ability change as a result of participating in the CTSG? 3) What conditions facilitated changes in mindset and behavior for participants? I designed and completed a descriptive, collective case study (Stake, 1995; Yin 2018) that examined the experiences of eight music educators across the U.S. Participants were public school music educators who varied in age, teaching experience and assignment, personal identity characteristics and geographic location. As the researcher and facilitator, I served as the ninth member of the CTSG. Participants met via Zoom eleven times (every other week from July 27 to December 14, 2021) to share stories, discuss assigned readings/videos, participate in activities, and collaborate on lesson plans. Throughout the study, participants completed three individual interviews (beginning, midpoint, end), took turns leading the group sessions, contributed to a private social media page, and wrote in their online journal. In addition to my analytic memos, I used transcripts of interviews, planning meetings, CTSG meetings, conversations on Facebook and reflections in journals as data. I utilized two frameworks, Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013) and Transformative Learning Processes (TLP) (Salvador et al., 2020a) to frame the study, design the CTSG, and analyze the data. Initially participants varied in their stated beliefs and described classroom practices. Further, participants displayed a continuum of prior experiences and stated goals, as well as a broad spectrum of agreements and dissonances between their words (stated beliefs and goals) and actions (conversations in the CTSG and descriptions of their teaching practice). By the end of the study, participants described and demonstrated several changes resulting from participation in the CTSG. Participants reported becoming more aware of the ways that racism and ableism operated in schools and in their personal lives. Furthermore, they reported that participation in the CTSG had lit a spark for continued discovery, reflection, and action. Many ended the CTSG by setting personal and professional goals, such as building allyship in their classroom or redesigning their curriculum through an equity-focused lens. Several conditions proved salient in creating an environment conducive to change. Primary factors that contributed to change were participants building connections with other music teachers, experiencing emotional intensity, having the space and time to grapple with difficult materials, as well as the structures put in place during the CTSG. Based on these themes, I offered several recommendations for practice and policy, including the importance of preservice and continuing education to work with diverse learners, and the necessity of highlighting voices of minoritized students in music education.
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Title: "I wol nat serve--" : authority and submission in late medieval English literature
Creator: Charnley, Susan Christina De Long
Date: 1996
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "I would be a completely different teacher if I had been with a different mentor" : a longitudinal study of three beginning teachers
Creator: Wexler, Lindsay Joseph
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study investigates the role of educative mentors as three novices learn to teach, following them from their yearlong student teaching (2015-2016) through their first year teaching (2016-2017). During student teaching, each novice was paired with a mentor teacher who received preparation and support in the form of monthly professional development to engage in educative mentoring practices. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine what novices are able to take up from their student...
Show moreThis study investigates the role of educative mentors as three novices learn to teach, following them from their yearlong student teaching (2015-2016) through their first year teaching (2016-2017). During student teaching, each novice was paired with a mentor teacher who received preparation and support in the form of monthly professional development to engage in educative mentoring practices. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine what novices are able to take up from their student teaching mentors and take with into their first year teaching when they are able to work with educative mentors. This qualitative study highlights the perspectives of the three novice educators, drawing on their lesson plans, written reflections, interviews, and audio recorded conversations with their mentor teachers. By focusing on the experiences, practices, and reflections of the novices, rather than telling the stories of mentor teachers, I aim to document the potential learning opportunities for novices when they are paired with educative mentors. Through this, I hope to provide a rationale for teacher preparation programs and school districts to invest time and resources in preparing mentors to enact educative practices. Ultimately, I argue that when mentors during teacher preparation are supported in enacting educative practices, the novices’ instruction may be influenced beyond student teaching.
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Title: "I would say that might be all it is, is hope" : disruption, attachment, and farmers' framing of herbicide resistant weeds
Creator: Dentzman, Katherine E.
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "While herbicide resistance has been an agricultural issue for decades, it is currently getting growing attention from academics, chemical companies, extension educators, and farmers. This is largely the result of weeds' increasing resistance to the popular herbicide glyphosate. Although an Integrated Weed Management approach is recommended to combat herbicide resistance, farmers are hesitant to adopt it and instead continue to express faith in herbicide solutions. Recognizing that society...
Show more"While herbicide resistance has been an agricultural issue for decades, it is currently getting growing attention from academics, chemical companies, extension educators, and farmers. This is largely the result of weeds' increasing resistance to the popular herbicide glyphosate. Although an Integrated Weed Management approach is recommended to combat herbicide resistance, farmers are hesitant to adopt it and instead continue to express faith in herbicide solutions. Recognizing that society and nature are inseparable causes of this phenomenon, I introduce a sociological perspective to a field dominated by 'hard sciences' in order to clarify why farmers maintain faith in and use of herbicides in the face of increasing herbicide resistance and suggested alternative integrated management practices. In order to do this, I employ a three chapter format. My first chapter focuses on how farmers draw on master frames to understand and make meaning of their reliance on herbicides. This uncovers issues of farmers' false trust in herbicides due to structurally binding conditions. My second chapter draws from place literature to understand herbicide resistant weeds as disruptions of place, arguing that these weeds present an observable challenge to farmers' herbicide dependence that threatens and therefore triggers farmers' place attachment. Together, these chapters describe how farmers understand herbicide resistance and their own reactions to it based on socio-environmental stimuli. Finally, my third chapter focuses on how quality data about farmers can be collected. Drawing from mixed methods, I suggest a framework of relational pragmatism that can be used to more effectively achieve this goal."--Page ii.
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Title: "I've Fooled Them All!" : Imposter Syndrome and the WPA
Creator: Robinson, Rachel
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation explores the emotional labor of women-identified writing program administrators (WPAs) through the lens of imposter syndrome. The theoretical framework I build is based upon an autoethnographic, cultural rhetorics, and feminist-informed methodology in which I center story as theory and see myself as a participant as well as a researcher. The methods used in the study include participant interviews and personal video diary entries of three current WPAs and myself over a 15...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the emotional labor of women-identified writing program administrators (WPAs) through the lens of imposter syndrome. The theoretical framework I build is based upon an autoethnographic, cultural rhetorics, and feminist-informed methodology in which I center story as theory and see myself as a participant as well as a researcher. The methods used in the study include participant interviews and personal video diary entries of three current WPAs and myself over a 15 week period in the fall of 2019 in which I studied not only what was said in the conversations, but also how the body reacted to what was being said. By collecting this large amount of personal-experience data, I’m able to listen to the stories of my participants as the theories onto which I build my primary framework for this dissertation. In listening to my participants’ stories, I understand the emotional, embodied reactions my participants and I have to ideas of feeling “less than” in roles that we are absolutely qualified for. Through (auto)ethnographically-informed qualitative interviews, I worked with three writing program administrators—two writing center directors and one First-Year Writing director—to illuminate how women-identified academic professionals think and talk about their bodies and emotions at work through the lens of imposter syndrome. In studying how WPAs confront feelings of imposter syndrome and what their embodied working practices create, I find that my participants are Radically Willful Women who, despite knowing the consequences of imposter syndrome, engage in activities that produce it anyway. Therefore, radically willful women continually participate in roles that produce imposter syndrome because their participation makes imposter syndrome feel less daunting and proves that it is a temporary state.
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Title: "If I don't do it, then who is going to do it" : centering the lived experiences of migrant college students to examine sensemaking of family responsibilities during the college transition process & carve out space for their counterstories in existing ...
Creator: Martínez, José Luis (Graduate of Michigan State University)
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The children of migrant farmworkers often take on family responsibilities to help their families. In this qualitative study, I rely on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) to examine how current migrant college students make sense of their family responsibilities and other lived experiences during their college transition process. An analysis of eighteen individual structured platicas with current migrant college students in South Texas, suggests that students'...
Show moreThe children of migrant farmworkers often take on family responsibilities to help their families. In this qualitative study, I rely on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) to examine how current migrant college students make sense of their family responsibilities and other lived experiences during their college transition process. An analysis of eighteen individual structured platicas with current migrant college students in South Texas, suggests that students' sense of family responsibility continues into college and is important to both their college selection and college transition processes. The data further suggests that in making sense of their family responsibilities, the participants in this study recalled their migrant experiences from an assets viewpoint creating a counterstory to narratives that have historically used their circumstances as a way of explaining their educational outcomes.
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Title: "If only I could be thin like her, maybe I could be happy like her" : the self-implications of associating being thin and attractive with possible life outcomes
Creator: Chin, Peggy Pui Kei
Date: 2001
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "In danger for the breach of law" : Trial scenes in Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI, the merchant of Venice and Measure for measure
Creator: Bernthal, Craig A. (Allen)
Date: 1988
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "It's not just one thing!" : examining the role of a STEM enrichment program in facilitating college readiness and retention among underserved students of color
Creator: Lane, Tonisha Brandy
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Advancing the success of students of color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a pressing and complex issue. There are several trends (e.g., changing demographics, an aging workforce, and globally competitive market), which make improving retention and success among students of color in STEM fields important. STEM enrichment programs have shown promise in sustaining underrepresented students’ science interests and strengthening their readiness for college level work...
Show moreAdvancing the success of students of color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a pressing and complex issue. There are several trends (e.g., changing demographics, an aging workforce, and globally competitive market), which make improving retention and success among students of color in STEM fields important. STEM enrichment programs have shown promise in sustaining underrepresented students’ science interests and strengthening their readiness for college level work. Thus, this study investigated how a STEM enrichment program facilitates college readiness and retention among students of color at a predominantly White, large, public, research university. In this study, I used an explanatory, holistic case study approach to examine the strategies and practices employed in the program to support student success (Yin, 2003). The study was conducted at Jefferson State University (pseudonym), a predominantly White, large, public research university in the Midwest. The Comprehensive STEM Program (CSP, pseudonym) at Jefferson State was established in 2007 with the National Science Foundation Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (NSF-LSAMP) grant. CSP contains eight program components: a six-week academic intensive residential summer bridge program, bi-weekly advising meetings, weekly recitation sessions, selected STEM sections of math and science courses, first-year seminar, residential assignment, peer mentoring, and undergraduate research opportunity. The program capacity is 50 students.The conceptual framework that guided this study integrated three theoretical constructs: (1) the Expertise Model of Students Success (EMSS), (2) sense of belonging, and (3) science identity. Drawing upon expert’s systems theory, EMSS contends that identification of barriers, knowledge, and actions are central to understanding the student experience and student retention. The sense of belonging and science identity constructs provided additional lenses to explore how the program fostered community and academic and professional development opportunities for its participants. To explore my research questions, I interviewed 50 individuals: 42 current and former program participants, 2 administrators, 2 instructors, and 4 recent baccalaureate recipients and former program participants. I also conducted 24 hours of participant observations and analyzed over 200 pages of documents. A Model for Programmatic Influences on College Readiness and Retention among Underserved Students of color emerged from the findings. This model is comprised of four major themes: proactive caring, holistic support, community building, and STEM identity development catalyst. Proactive caring was found to be a philosophy and approach used for student retention. Holistic support attended to the myriad of needs of the program participants. Community building practices created a familial atmosphere and conditions to develop meaningful relationships. STEM identity development catalysts were the ways in which the program buttressed science identity development. This study concludes with recommendations for practice, policy, future research, and theory on students of color pursuing degrees in the STEM disciplines. The implications from this study support the need for continued federal and institutional support for STEM enrichment programs to address opportunity gaps, provide a supportive and caring environment for underrepresented groups, and bolster pathways for STEM identity development.
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