This is a collection of village narrative poems mainly set in rural Limpopo that searches into the complexity of the past and how historical events impact on the present. Although the poems are imagined along the Marxist dialectic, they’re fresh imaginative creations featuring a strong element of surprise, spiritual mysticism, experimenting with form, delving into unknown poetic avenues, creating new music, exploring new sounds and taking risks. The long and intense poem, Ancestral wealth, which is a tribute to the poet’s father, reflects on death and its impact through the effective application of various stylistic elements and poetic devices, thus immortalising the life of a rural South African. Overall the poems, including retrospective and experimental ones, condemn the free market economic system and all that it seems to necessitate: the degradation of ecology, indifference to human suffering and the alienation of vulnerable social groups.

A collection of narrative and confessional poems. The poems are mostly short, cinematic, physical, imagistic: moments in time. They explore the poet’s own life, body, memories, and family relationships, and the tensions between power, duty, love and faith. Several poems concern the navigation of meaning and belonging in a time when international urban culture often clashes with tradition.

A young woman from a rural village near Kimberley is killed by her husband in a fit of jealousy. Her illiterate mother is summoned to the hospital to authorize the removal of vital organs – eyes, liver, kidney and heart – for organ donation. But some members of the family feel that their child should not be buried with parts of her body missing. Thus begins a story that changes the lives of many people, both black and white, over the following twenty years.

This thesis examines pupils’ justice conceptions regarding educational assessment. Due to the context-dependency of norms and values as well as of assessment, the study compares the justice conceptions of pupils in two different’socio-educational’ contexts: Sweden and Germany. The main interest of the study is to understand and to reconstruct pupils’ own relevance structures and what just assessment means from a pupils’ point of view. Here, the study aims to reach beyond the level of mere description by providing theoretical conceptualisations of pupils’ justice conceptions regarding assessment. Thus, the study´s methodological foundation is characterised by a combination of a context-sensitive comparative approach on the one hand, and on the other hand a pragmatist Grounded Theory approach. Data were mainly generated through focus group interviews with pupils attending the last year of the lower secondary level in the Swedish comprehensive school as well as in different school types in the German school system. In total, the sample consists of 95 pupils, who were interviewed in 21 focus group interviews. In addition, other sources of data were included, such as regulations and guidelines that supported a context-sensitive analysis of pupils’ conceptions. The theoretical conceptualisation that explains pupils’ justice conceptions is ‘meta-assessment’. ‘Meta-assessment’ refers to pupils’ evaluation of the assessment they experience in terms of justice and represents the shared, abductively derived and overlying analytical category regarding pupils’ conceptions. Pupils’ ‘meta-assessment’ is based on normative justice conceptions as well as on justice conceptions that are related to pupils’ situation and context-bound experiences with assessment. The first ones are about the ethico-moral character of pupils’ justice conceptions. The second shed light on the contextual conditions and consequences of the logics and practices underlying educational assessment as experienced by pupils on an everyday basis. This implies that just assessment from a pupils’ perspective needs to be understood in its wider contextual embedment; and in relation to teaching and learning in order to understand the complex interrelations of what just assessment ‘is’, and ‘should be’ from the perspective of those, who are mainly affected by it.

<p>The purpose of this critical ethnographic dissertation research was to explore the multiple and diverse ways in which university student activists in Honduras constructed oppositional political cultures within the institutional constraints and possibilities of the university and the broader neoliberal and authoritarian postcoup context. In this research, I considered studying up and down and anything in between a necessary task to understand the complexity of student activism in relation to the university’s complicity with the coloniality of power and knowledge (Nader, 1972; Quijano, 2000, 2007). Critical ethnography, decolonial, space and place, and collective action theory provided the philosophical, methodological, conceptual, practical, political, and ethical commitments to understand how the University Student Movement’s political culture resisted neoliberal higher education reform. This research, in addition, offers an ethnographic analysis and interpretation of the student movement’s political culture and the role it played in democratizing the university. First, I used a historical perspective to contextualize reemerging student movements in Honduras. After tracing Latin American student movement’s origin to the Cordoba Student Movement of Argentina, I examined the ways in which the student movement of Honduras adopted, reclaimed, and extended the democratic principles implemented in the former. University autonomy, ideological pluralism, democratic governance, academic freedom, and curriculum reform were salient points of analyses. Second, I examined the student movement’s horizontal organization, identified the democratic social practices and political culture that emerged after the coup of 2009, and interpreted student activists’ knowledges born in struggle through a decolonial lens concomitant with a sensitivity to space and place and collective action. Particularly, the direct participation of students in all decision-making processes within the student movement was interpreted as an act of resistance to reclaim democratic spaces within a sociopolitical context increasingly becoming dictatorial. Third, I analyzed the student movement’s impact in democratizing the university’s governance structure and resisting neoliberal higher education reform. Fourth, I shared the knowledge produced collectively by student activists. The way students conceived of the university and its curriculum and governing practices unsettled the authorial individualism still present in educational research. The knowledges born in struggle, I argued, have sociopolitical, cultural, and decolonial implications. In addition to the analytical and interpretive work which included the research, knowledges, and practices student activists shared with me during the 12 months of fieldwork and participant observation in Honduras, I highlighted how the emergence of a heterogeneously articulated student movement slowed down, at the very least, the neocolonial and neoliberal reconfiguration of the university. This dissertation thus addressed the political relationship between the global and the local. The re-localization of politics here must not to be confused with reactionary politics. It means instead to recognize how the particular is enmeshed in a more complex web of power, domination, resistance, and reexistence. To resist locally means that collective actors engage global powers, even if indirectly and unintentionally. Student activists, who were able to put a stop to the series of neoliberal reforms implemented since the coup of 2009, reminded those in power (local, national, and global) that neoliberal higher education reform within a re-politicized autonomous university with an organized student movement will be faced with resistance. This ethnographic account will hopefully reveal the ways in which student activist built a politically culture characterized by alternative forms of organizing to resist what is too often conceived fatalistically as the inevitable neoliberalization of education. These fatalistic perspectives will hopefully be unsettled throughout the dissertation. The significance of this study is that it is oriented toward an ethnographic understanding of higher education reform and student resistance in Latin America, a region with a student population which continues to be engaged in collective action. The educational significance of this work revolves around the need to rethink and rebuild universities in radically democratic terms. This rethinking involves the need to not only democratize access to higher education but rather to democratize governance, curriculum, knowledge, research, and ways of knowing and being. Transforming the university into a democratic place in which students are directly and meaningfully involved in governance and curriculum reform opens a path toward decolonial futurities where knowledge is no longer dictated from above but rather deconstructed and reconstructed from below. This dissertation research, lastly, as it works at the intersections of curriculum studies, decolonial theories, methodologies, pedagogies, and emerging university student resistance in Latin America, offers, I hope, a valuable way to do curriculum inquiry in higher education institutions within international contexts. </p>

<p>This thesis is an article-based (3-paper format) dissertation. In the first article, the research team adapted an input-process-outcome (IPO) model of group-level processes in the classroom, as a theoretical framework, to examine students’ experiences regarding pre-college engineering curricula, classroom environments, and their experiences with the creative process in the two engineering courses offered in a university-based summer enrichment program. Applying provisional and open coding to semi-structured interview data from 16 participants, an Input-Process-Outcome Model of Collaborative Creativity (IPOCC model) was developed. In this study, I grouped our findings under Inputs, Group Processes, Outcomes, and Mediating Factors. The IPOCC model expands the 4P model of creativity to incorporate more collaborative contexts. According to the 4P model, creativity can be viewed from four different perspectives: Person, Process, Product, and Press. The IPOCC model suggests that in K-12 collaborative practice, creativity involves group-level considerations in addition to individual-level components. The IPOCC model offer insights for educators in terms of input components, group processes, and mediating factors that can facilitate learners’ engagement in creative teamwork. Findings of this study indicated that a combination of challenging tasks, open-ended problems, and student teamwork provides a rich environment for learners’ engagement to think creatively.</p> <p>The purpose of the second study was to systematically investigate how novice/K-12 students’ visual representation of design ideas has been operationalized, measured, or assessed in the research literature. In the different phases of screening in this systematic review, inclusion, exclusion, and quality criteria were applied. From an initial sample of 958 articles, 40 studies were included in the final step of the coding process and qualitative synthesis. Applying provisional and open coding, three broad themes, and 23 characteristics were identified that have been used by researchers to conceptualize sketching of ideas, in novice/K-12 design activities: Communicating Ideas, Visual-Spatial Characteristics, and Design Creativity. We propose this Three-pronged Design Sketching (3-pDS) framework to examine K-12 design sketches. </p> In K-12 settings, one major challenge of conducting research on the influence of engineering education programs and curricula involves assessment. There is a need for developing alternative, effective, and reliable assessment measures to evaluate students’ design activities. The third study aimed to address this need by developing the idea-Sketching Early Engineering Design (i-SEED) Scale to assess pre-college learners’ freehand sketches in response to a design task. Applying the Three-pronged Design Sketching (3-pDS) as a theoretical framework, the purpose of this study was to examine evidence of content validity, construct validity, and internal consistency of the i-SEED Scale data. The data collection took place in a residential summer enrichment program for students with gifts and talents at a Midwestern university. Following different stages of scale-development design, a sample of 113 design sketches were scored in this study, and the scores were used to provide evidence of the validity of the data for the i-SEED Scale. The sketches were generated by 120 middle- and high-school students in a collaborative design-oriented course. Exploratory factor analysis results supported a three-factor model for the i-SEED Scale, including Visual-Spatial Characteristics, Design Creativity, and Communicating Ideas.

<p>Black men experience numerous systemic challenges in pursuit of their education, yet they also possess strength to achieve academic goals. The purpose of this autoethnographic study is to describe the meaning of my experiences at an undergraduate engineering program at a historically White institution to increase awareness of the ways that Black men experience undergraduate engineering programs at historically White institutions. The overarching research question is: How do I make meaning of the formative experiences along my engineering education journey at an historically White institution through the lens of African American Male Theory? To answer this question, I chose critical autoethnography because it enabled me to use my role as the researcher along with my own experiences as part of the topic and group of study. Through this methodology, I described my experiences through the lens of African American Male Theory, which was not available to me at the time the events were occurring. I analyzed personal memory data (e.g., poems, speeches, applications, resumes and interview transcripts) and my researcher journal to provide a thorough personal account of my collegiate experiences and relative perspectives on those experiences. The findings of this study provide an in-depth understanding of how I experienced an engineering program at an HWI in such a way that offers insights to better support Black men in engineering. As such, this study calls for holistic support for Black male students in engineering through interventions such as culturally relevant curriculum, narrative evaluation, standards of inclusion for classrooms, culturally competent counselors, and hiring minoritized faculty. Finally, this study appeals for more research to investigate how Black men experience freedom while pursuing their engineering degree at HWIs. </p>

<p>Early childhood teachers pursuing associate degrees often repeated the college algebra course, demanding, “Why do we have to take this? We don’t teach algebra!” Expectations for their training were not well-aligned with their mathematics preparation or teaching work. I have taught the mathematics courses and young children and have worked for an early childhood practice, policy, and research agency. I wanted to learn about these teachers’ experiences as mathematics learners and teachers, with a goal to share the complex nature of their work with teacher educators and other stakeholders to identify better avenues for their mathematics training. I explored the questions: (1) What role, if any, do mathematical learning experiences play in early childhood teachers’ mathematics teaching practice? (2) In what ways do their voices contribute to the professional dialogue regarding teaching mathematics with young children? </p> <p>Dewey’s (1938/1998) <i>experience</i> construct provided lenses to examine early childhood teachers’ experiences learning and teaching mathematics. <i>Continuity</i>, <i>interaction</i>, <i>social control</i>, <i>freedom</i>, <i>purpose</i>, and <i>subject matter</i> provided insights and situated teachers’ experiences within a disparate patchwork of settings and policies. Two family childcare providers participated in this narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly) through an interview on their experiences learning and teaching mathematics and three classroom observations. After analyzing data for Dewey’s (1938/1998) <i>experience</i> constructs, I used narrative analysis (Polkinghorne, 1995) and teaching images (Clandinin, 1985) to write an emplotted narrative for each teacher, Josie and Patsy.</p> Josie told a turning point story (Drake, 2006) of making mathematics “real,” influencing her mathematics teaching practice as she integrated “real” mathematics into everyday activities. Patsy’s appreciation for mathematics and building was seen in her story of a child explaining he used the wide blocks for his base, elaborating, “He's telling me HOW he's building.” While Josie and Patsy had few opportunities to learn about teaching mathematics with young children, they were eager to learn. I propose a training for early childhood teachers, iteratively working as a group to investigate a personal mathematics teaching puzzle or celebration, building on their mathematical personal practical knowledge. Adding my own story to those of the teachers, like Josie’s and Patsy’s, of our work together, will add to my understanding and development of my practice as a curriculum maker (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992), as early childhood teachers’ voices contribute to the professional dialogue about teaching mathematics with young children.

Der Autor entwickelt, aus Sicht der Erwachsenenbildungswissenschaft, anknüpfend an den bisherigen Diskussionsprozess in Sachsen zur Einführung eines sächsischen (Weiter-)Bildungsberichts, anhand theoretischer Vorannahmen zur Steuerung im Weiterbildungsbereich sowie zur Weiterbildungsberichterstattung und anhand empirisch eruierter Empfehlungen einen Gestaltungsvorschlag für ein wissenschaftlich fundiertes Untersuchungsdesign zur Entwicklung eines sächsischen Weiterbildungsberichts. In der zugrunde liegenden empirischen Studie werden vorhandene (Weiter-)Bildungsberichte und durchgeführte Experteninterviews dahingehend analysiert, inwieweit sie Anregungen für einen indikatorenbasierten sächsischen Weiterbildungsbericht geben können. Hierfür werden mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalysen deduktiv und induktiv gebildete Kategoriensysteme erarbeitet. Es wird deutlich, welche Themen ein sächsischer Weiterbildungsbericht in Bezug auf landesspezifische Erkenntnisinteressen, seine nationale Anschlussfähigkeit sowie in Bezug auf die vorhandene sachsenspezifische Datenbasis, abdecken könnte. Dabei werden Lücken in der Datenbasis aufgezeigt und Entwürfe für Datenerhebungsinstrumente vorgestellt, um die aktuell vorhandene Datenbasis schrittweise zu erweitern, zu vertiefen und aktuell zu halten. Die Arbeit endet mit Vorschlägen für weitere Projekt- und Forschungstätigkeiten.:Inhaltsverzeichnis Abbildungsverzeichnis III Tabellenverzeichnis III Anhangsverzeichnis V Abkürzungsverzeichnis VI Vorwort VII 1 Einleitung 1 2 Theoretischer Hintergrund 4 2.1 Steuerung im Weiterbildungsbereich 4 2.2 Weiterbildungsmonitoring und Weiterbildungsberichterstattung 11 2.2.1 Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer Weiterbildungsberichterstattung 14 2.2.2 Begriffliche Abgrenzung und Modellierung von Indikatoren 21 3 Untersuchungsdesign und methodisches Vorgehen 25 3.1 Ablauf dieser Untersuchung 26 3.2 Begründung für die Wahl dieser Methoden/Methodenkombination 30 3.3 Ablauf der Dokumentenanalyse 35 3.4 Resultierendes Kategoriensystem für eine Inhaltsanalyse 44 3.5 Vorbereitung und Ablauf der Experteninterviews 48 3.6 Aufbereitung und Auswertung der Experteninterviews 55 3.7 Betrachtung methodenspezifischer, inhaltsanalytischer Gütekriterien 58 4 Darstellung und Interpretation ausgewählter Forschungsergebnisse 60 4.1 Betrachtung ausgewählter Ergebnisse der Dokumentenanalyse 60 4.2 Betrachtung ausgewählter Ergebnisse der Experteninterviews 71 5 Darstellung und Begründung des Untersuchungsdesigns 80 5.1 Referenzrahmen für eine sächsische Weiterbildungsberichterstattung 81 5.2 Ablauf der Datenerhebung 87 5.3 Öffentlich vorliegende Datenbasis für Sachsen 89 5.4 Benötigte und mittelfristig verfügbare Datenbasis für Sachsen 99 5.5 Zusammengestellte Indikatoren für eine sächsische WB-Berichterstattung 101 5.6 Instrumente für Bevölkerungs- und Einrichtungsbefragungen 107 5.7 Betrachtung und Einhaltung von wissenschaftlichen Gütekriterien 112 6 Zusammenfassung, Fazit und Ausblick 116 7 Literaturverzeichnis 124 8 Anhang 139

Grades serve as one of the primary indicators of student learning, directing subsequent actions for students, instructors, and administrators, alike. Therefore, grade validity—that is, the extent to which grades communicate a meaningful and credible representation of what they purport to measure—is of utmost importance. However, a grade cannot be valid if one cannot trust that it will consistently and reliably result in the same value, regardless of who makes a measure or when they make it. Unfortunately, such reliability becomes increasingly challenging to achieve with larger class sizes, especially when utilizing multiple evaluators, as is often the case with mandatory introductory courses at large universities. Reliability suffers further when evaluating open-ended tasks, as are prevalent in authentic, high-quality engineering coursework.<div><br></div><div>This study explores grading reliability in the context of a large, multi-section engineering course. Recognizing the number of people involved and the plethora of activities that affect grading outcomes, the study adopts a systems approach to conduct a human reliability analysis using the Functional Resonance Analysis Method. Through this method, a collection of data sources, including course materials and observational interviews with undergraduate teaching assistant graders, are synthesized to produce a general model for how actions vary and affect subsequent actions within the system under study. Using a course assignment and student responses, the model shows how differences in contextual variables affect expected actions within the system. Next, the model is applied to each of the observational interviews with undergraduate teaching assistants to demonstrate how these actions occur in practice and to compare graders to one another and with expected behaviors. These results are further related to the agreement in system outcomes, or grades, assigned by each grader to guide analysis of how actions within the system affect its outcome.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The results of this study connect and elaborate upon previous models of grader cognition by analyzing the phenomenon in engineering, a previously unexplored context. The model presented can be easily generalized and adapted to smaller systems with fewer actors to understand sources of variability and potential threats to outcome reliability. The analysis of observed outcome instantiations guides a set of recommendations for minimizing grading variability.<br></div>