Thesis (M.A.), English--University of Central Oklahoma, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-52).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from second page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], xi, 405 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 393-405).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-208). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2009. / Title from archive page (Digital Archive@GSU, viewed July 16, 2010) Lynee Lewis Gaillet, committee chair; Baotong Gu, Beth Burmester, committee members. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-208)

This study provides detailed accounts of the perspectives on teaching and learning experienced by the instructors and participants in three career exploration programs for women. One of the programs was located at a community college, one at a private college, and one was offered through a non-profit agency. The perspectives of the women are represented by each individual's expressed attitudes, feelings, and ideas about how they experienced teaching and learning. I also examine and relate the accounts of the women to the ways in which teaching processes and learning objectives were created, influenced, and/or constrained by the broader social and administrative context in which the programs take place. Therefore, the study addressed the following broad questions: (1) What values and attitudes toward teaching and learning are expressed by instructors and how do they shape the pedagogical interactions that take place in these career education programs? (2) What has been the participants' experience of learning in these programs? And, (3) In what ways does the social, institutional, and political context in which the programs take place affect the teaching/ learning environment? This study originates from my interest as a feminist educator to gain a greater understanding of how critical and feminist pedagogical approaches are manifested in actual practice, in this case, three particular career exploration programs. Information for the study was gathered from program instructors through semi-structured interviews; through an informal focus group in each program with volunteer students; and by reviewing relevant program related materials. After providing detailed accounts of the perspectives of the instructors, participants, and descriptions of each program, the external factors which create, influence, and constrain the nature of the programs, and the voices of the instructors and participants are explored in relation to the literature reviewed for the study. This analysis revealed that the instructors employed teaching approaches which are consistent with the values and aims of critical feminist pedagogy. However, teaching approaches were also applied which appear to reside within traditional educational approaches. Thus, in these particular contexts, the instructors created and acted within a teaching-learning environment which both reproduced and challenged the status quo. The methodological approach utilized in this study illustrated how adult educators concerned with the liberatory possibilities of adult education must invariably operationalize these ideas in complex, constrained, and often contradictory social sites which act to shape the possibilities of instruction. It did so by directing attention to both the social actors and the social and political processes that act to create and organize specific adult education activities. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Discursive power relations that enclose the field of early childhood have functioned to construct the idea of the “normal” child, a process of silencing that limits spaces of “being” for children in classrooms. Relatedly, constructions of the “good” early childhood teacher are shaped by dominant discourses of child development that define “best” and “appropriate” practices in accordance with children’s developmental “needs.” In this study, I take up feminist poststructural theories in self-reflexive examination of my teaching practice with toddlers to allow for alternate ways of seeing the “child,” and therefore, the “teacher.” In laying bare the child and teacher as discursively constructed, complexities of classroom subjects become visible and possibilities for new ways of doing “teacher” emerge when we work to destabilize the hegemonic “truths” of the field. Using feminist poststructural theories to shape a narrative teacher research methodology, this study employs ethnographic and narrative methods in self-reflexive analysis of my own teaching practice. Working with data produced during one semester in the classroom, I interrogate my daily practices and understandings of “toddler,” teaching, learning, development, and research in order to displace dominant ways of understanding “toddler” and “toddler teacher.” The possibilities for teaching toddlers have been constrained by intersecting discourses of development, readiness, neoliberalism, and gender as development and progress are prioritized while the widespread assumption that early childhood is “women’s work” (Grumet, 1988) shapes the roles and statuses of teachers who work with our youngest children. The discoveries and new knowledges I have constructed through this work have exposed, challenged, and reimagined positionings of the teacher. From the gendered “care” work assumed to come naturally to women, to the technical practice based on a foundation of developmental knowledge, to the policing of children in classrooms, this study offers examinations of relations of power that may enable teachers and children to position themselves differently in classrooms, within and beyond existing discourses.

With federal gender equity mandates in place, some may assume that schools are now havens were children are protected from discrimination based on failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity. Yet, research suggests that the school literacy curriculum serves as a site that privileges gender performances consistent with the binary gender order. This pattern has been observed such that school literacy practices reproduce the binary gender order through text, talk, and disciplining of the body. Informed by post structural feminist perspectives on discourse, power, and performativity, this qualitative case study employed feminist methodology to explore how power flowed through performances of gender within the context of one second grade literacy classroom. Data sources included participant observation field notes, informal student and teacher interviews, video and audio recordings, and the collection of literacy related objects/documents. Results of the analysis suggest that there were two distinct literacy spaces within the classroom: the teacher-controlled official literacy space and the student-governed unofficial literacy space. Within the official literacy space, particular teaching moves made at the intersection of gender and literacy could later be linked to particular students’ gender performances. In the unofficial literacy space of the classroom, some students’ gender performances diverged greatly from those they performed in the official literacy space thus making visible how power operates within embodied acts. Lastly, in looking across the two distinct literacy spaces of the classroom, it was revealed how the flow of power through performances of gender and thus, the discursive practices that hold existing gendered structures in place, were more visible in unofficial literacy spaces than in official literacy spaces. Therefore, results of the analysis suggest that looking to unofficial literacy spaces will provide invaluable guidance when reconceptualizing how official literacy spaces might better support gender equity within the early elementary literacy classroom.

International schools have proliferated globally since the second half of the twentieth century to meet the demands of a global mobile community and of families seeking an education in English for young people. While research on international schools has accompanied this growth, few studies have explored gender dynamics at international schools, which bring together diverse students, families, teachers, administrators, and staff. This study explored how four white women teachers at an international school in Morocco read womanhood and gender in different social locations. Employing feminist concepts and theories such as nomadic subjectivity, transnational feminism, and postfeminism, I produced a narrative ethnography of their readings through interviews, journals, and a focus group over the course of the 2020-2021 school year. Individual narratives reveal how the four women teachers engaged gendered discourses divergently, with two participants leaning towards postfeminist ideas of gender equality and individual empowerment and the other two participants highlighting the gender inequities they perceived in their lives. I also looked across all participants to explore their shared experiences as white, foreign-hire women teachers, which included a superficial belonging in Moroccan communities outside of the international school and readings of gender and womanhood shaped by structures such as whiteness and coloniality. This study offers a needed perspective on gender dynamics in international schools as experienced by teachers and also suggests the importance of location and culture in studies on women, gender, and teaching.