This research studies the effectiveness of teaching art appreciation to home schooled children ages 10-17 through a DBAE curriculum in pinhole photography via a weekend workshop. An autoethnographic approach to recording data about the students’ learning and my experience as their teacher was used in the research. Data was recorded as journal notes during and after each workshop from my experiences as their teacher and analyzed according to a grounded theory based on open coding. The workshop was open for registration of up to 25 home schooled students of any race, male or female, from the ages of 10 - 17. While the research reports a successful change in students’ appreciation of photography as a result of the workshop, parental values proved to be both an obstacle and area of potential future research.

This research studies the effectiveness of teaching art appreciation to home schooled children ages 10-17 through a DBAE curriculum in pinhole photography via a weekend workshop. An autoethnographic approach to recording data about the students’ learning and my experience as their teacher was used in the research. Data was recorded as journal notes during and after each workshop from my experiences as their teacher and analyzed according to a grounded theory based on open coding. The workshop was open for registration of up to 25 home schooled students of any race, male or female, from the ages of 10 - 17. While the research reports a successful change in students’ appreciation of photography as a result of the workshop, parental values proved to be both an obstacle and area of potential future research.

The focus of this study was to understand my experiences of teaching sensitive topics in my professional capacity, as a female beginner teacher who has an Islamic upbringing and strong religious views according to which I live. The purpose of this study was to make sense of these personal and professional experiences when teaching sensitive topics as an Islamic beginner female teacher. In so doing this study sought to contribute to body of knowledge about key concepts namely sensitive topics, an Islamic context, female beginner teacher identity and autoethnography as research design. The literature reviewed for this research study was centred around the said key concepts and included scholarly work by Collins (2017), Lowe and Jones (2015), Du Bois (2014), and Anacona (2014). Theoretically, this study was underpinned by an interpretivist epistemological paradigm informed by Berg (2007) and from a conceptual point of view I drew on tenets of both the religion and feminist theory guided by the work of Rambo (1999). Data was generated in the form of short anecdotal self-reflective narratives spanning over 25 years and encapsulated the gist of my upbringing and later experiences which all influenced the ways in which I have experienced the teaching of sensitive topics as a female beginner teacher female within an Islamic context. Findings were divided into three main themes, namely the Islamic religion, Islam and gender and teaching sensitive topic as a Muslim, female beginner teacher. Findings were refined into relevant subthemes. The gist of the findings revealed that a strict Islamic upbringing contributed largely to the discomfort experienced by a female teacher when teaching topics of a sensitive nature, such as sexual education which is compulsory in the current Life Orientation curriculum. Findings further pointed to the fact that this discomfort can be alleviated through self-talk, engagement with scholarly work and deep thought incited by engagement with sensitive topics. Recommendations were suggested for classroom practice. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Humanities Education / MEd / Unrestricted

In a pioneering effort, this study examined the participatory practices of the African American community in Texas using community archives and the role of information professionals. This dissertation is driven by two research questions that arise from the COVID-19 pandemic: Q1: What factors influence African American communities in Texas to engage in community archiving practices for inclusion in Black galleries, libraries, archives, and museums? and Q2: What role does the researcher play in advocating for the existence of African American community archives in Black cultural spaces? To explore the research questions, a qualitative triangulation approach was implemented, which involved a process guided by autoethnography. The literature on community archives primarily focused on the perspectives of white scholars within the archives field; as a result, a plethora of theories have been synthesized: archival theory, Black archival practice, community archives theory, Black feminist thought, social closure theory, and Black feminist anthropology, which culminated in a conceptual framework to guide the praxis and understand the function of African American community archiving as a theory. I collected data in four phases through online surveys, oral history interviews, and personal experience. According to the study, African Americans are eager to preserve their history but need greater support to do so effectively. The dissertation study confirms that including the Black community in the community archiving process is vital. Community participation and the participation of information professionals help to promote patron engagement and advocate for integrating African American community archives in Black galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (BGLAM).

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In communication and family studies, narrative inheritance Òprovides us with a framework for understanding our identity throughÓ the stories of those who preceded us in our families (Goodall, 2005, p. 497). Ballard and Ballard (2011) supplement the concept of narrative inheritance with the idea of Ònarrative momentum,Ó suggesting that family identity moves forward into the future through the narratives the family tells (p. 80). In this account, I question the hegemony of both concepts, particularly narrative momentum which discounts the variety of family types, while supporting the dominant cultural discourses of what defines Òfamily.Ó

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A teacher’s understandings of literacy have an impact on the pedagogical decisions that the teacher makes. Such understandings of literacy may evolve through professional learning, experiences, and reflective practice, but this evolution is seldom documented and therefore not often considered as a systematic means for improving practice. Similarly, educators are rarely able to document the longitudinal literacy life of one learner. This autoethnographic study explores and documents how the researcher’s understandings of literacy have changed over time. The researcher is the primary participant in the study, but her daughter’s literacy learning (from early childhood into adolescence) informs the three eras of the researcher’s teaching life. These three eras are named: teacher, teacher-mother, and teacher-mother-researcher. In each era the researcher interprets her daughter’s literacy learning through the theoretical lens of literacy as social practice. The study draws upon documents, interviews, and artefacts from both the researcher’s life and from her daughter’s literacy life in order to construct stories that express the lived experience of an educator in the act of examining her own literacy theory-practice evolutionary process. Findings from this study can inform educators of the need to challenge their understandings of literacy theories in relation to their past and current literacy practices, enabling them to effectively construct their future practices.

Historically, attending college and pursuing a graduate degree has been associated with greater economic opportunity. However, research reveals that the relationship between higher education and social mobility has shifted over time. The current context of rising student loan debt, the higher cost of education, more tenuous job markets, and stagnating wages diminishes the association between higher education and economic advancement, particularly for students who come from a working-class background. The cost to attend state universities has risen over 200% since the 1980s (Collinge), while graduate assistant salaries and the federal minimum wage remain comparatively unchanged. Additionally, many with a graduate degree are increasingly left to piece together a living wage through multiple adjunct instructor positions or employment in the service industry. While attending graduate school can be seen as a transitional—and sometimes ambiguous—space between student and professor, if PhDs are not able to secure full-time, steady employment post-graduation, then their ambiguous existence becomes prolonged, creating both a financial crisis and crisis of identity. In the context of the shift in the relationship between social mobility and higher education, my research addresses class as an identity while also accounting for the complicated understandings of that identity during this historical shift. Thus, the dissertation responds to the following research questions: (1) How has the relationship between social mobility and higher education shifted over time? (2) How does this change in relationship systemically and philosophically impact those who earn graduate degrees? and (3) How can academics adapt our pedagogical practices and institutional policies to address this historical shift and its impact on graduates? Accounting for socioeconomic class more thoroughly and in a contemporary context, this research develops a theory of class identity that builds toward social justice praxis at the intersection of socioeconomic class and education, contributing both to the field of communication studies and to broader academic and social spheres. I develop and use collaborative autoethnographic interviewing (CAEI) as a dialogic method by which to gather the stories of working-class academics who have not achieved social mobility through attending graduate school. By seeking participants and gathering stories of graduate degree-holders who have experienced the shift in relationship between higher education and social mobility first-hand, this research provides a better understanding of coalitional opportunities that can be forged between upper, middle, and lower-classes; the educated and uneducated; and those invested in social justice who have not yet had the opportunity to expand their work to include economic equity.

This thesis adds a complex account to existing climate change engagement literature, which captures the ways that interactions with, and interpretations of, climate change emerge across the spaces and practices of day-to-day life. The empirical research for this thesis was based in Penryn and Falmouth, two small adjoining coastal towns located in the county of Cornwall, in the southwest of the UK. Fieldwork across a number of sites including schools, community groups and the local fishery engaged participants in a wide variety of research interactions. A combination of ethnographic and autoethnographic techniques were applied to produce complex, nuanced and personal accounts of interactions with and reflections on climate change that emerged in a day-to-day context. This study employed the innovative use of a personal research archive to facilitate the process of sense making across a body of highly detailed and contextual data. Through the use of thematic coding, links between data collected in diverse research encounters has been drawn together to produce meaningful narratives of climate change engagement in day-to-day life. These narratives capture the adaptive, imperfectly situated and inconsistent engagement responses that emerge as a result of the challenging nature of climate change and the inevitable, multiple pressures of the day-to-day context. The research approach taken in this study, and the findings set out in the thesis make contributions to three main areas of climate change engagement literature. Firstly, it explores the way that climate change is situated and understood in the context of day-to-day life. Secondly, it considers the implications of conceptualising climate change engagement as either a ‘process’ or a ‘state’. Finally, it extends existing analysis of ‘barriers to engagement’, locating them within the complexity of the day-to-day context and identifying them as part of essential interpretive iterations of engagement.