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This study explored best practices for teaching creative movement to twenty-four urban second graders by examining their perceptions of self and others. Creative movement education programs rarely focus on the exploration of self and group identity through the lens of diversity. More importantly, few studies have examined how to implement creative movement programs through pedagogies best suited to urban children. Over 12 weeks of practice, observation, and reflection, extensive data were collected regarding the children's interactions and creative processes. The curriculum focused on individual and group identities and examined the experiences of the children with the aim of developing pedagogical methods that best suited their urban cultural backgrounds. The study sought to answer the following research questions: 1) What are the children's perceptions of themselves and others throughout the creative movement learning process? ; and 2) How can teachers use this knowledge to devise creative dance pedagogy for urban children and create holistic curricula that develop these perceptions? During bi-weekly dance sessions, the students and teachers explored the concepts of "self" and "group" by moving, discussing, sharing different dance styles and images, using props and being actively involved in creative movement and expression. The project culminated in a school performance, in which the children presented dances that they had developed that represented the content explored in the sessions. The data collected included video recordings of the children's actions and comments, reflective drawings and texts that the children created, and observational notes recorded by an assistant teacher and the children's homeroom teacher. The video recordings of each session were transcribed and analyzed. The children's drawings and written texts, and the teacher's observational and reflective journals, were also reviewed. All data collection involved in the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for human subject protocol. A qualitative research approach guided the analysis, with a focus on Action Research and ideas drawn from the philosophical doctrines of Phenomenology and Phenomenography. The recorded video sessions and resulting transcriptions were used to create narrative descriptions that shed light on the children's experiences and uncovered specific elements that were of use in the development and refinement of creative movement teaching practices. Despite presenting occasional challenges as a group, the children spontaneously improvised and developed movements that expressed their preferences. They used the class as a creative outlet-aesthetically, physically and, at times, emotionally. The children danced to express their individual and group cultures as well as their movement preferences, their personal traits, and their perceptions of others. The pedagogical approach to the class promoted identity and diversity in the teaching and learning environment, providing teachers with insight into best practices for teaching urban populations. The study's Action Research methodology involved a reflective cycle of planning, action, and result. It investigated students' perceptions of themselves and others through their responses to creative movement education, and studied how these perceptions impacted creative movement facilitation. It discovered best practices that take into account students' unique cultures and learning styles. These practices can be used as a foundation for facilitators of creative movement classes involving urban children, enabling the development of curricula that explore experience, promote cultural expression, and foster diversity in learning. They also offer disciplinary strategies that cater to the environmental standards and unique needs of urban students. / Dance

Whereas transformative pedagogy is a well researched subject, intersectional feminist pedagogy and specifically Transversal dialogue has not been used to ease conflict in Catalonia. This research examines the potential for intersectional feminist pedagogy to change oppressive behaviours in both students and teachers in a classroom conflict in a Catalan secondary school. Using ethnography, the thesis describes and analyses a five month research process, which involved participant observation, participatory action research and anti-oppressive sessions using Transversal dialogue. By concluding that changes in oppressive behaviours in both teacher and students can be empowering, the research challenges the idea put forward by Kevin Kumashiro about changes occurring through crisis. Rather, I argue that Edyta Just’s adaptation of Deleuzian philosophy to pedagogy offers a more flexible framework to understand these changes. This thesis aims to contribute to intersectional feminist pedagogy by first demonstrating that changes in oppressive behaviours can occur in empowering ways and second that theories of how to bring about those changes need to be flexible.

As fully online course offerings continue to grow at colleges and universities around the country, we are faced with the challenge of preserving what we value in first-year writing while making the affordances of online environments work for our students. This dissertation explores how the online writing instructor, guided by feminist pedagogy and civic rhetoric, can begin to shift the center of power within the course, allowing students to become co-teachers and promoting the social construction of knowledge central to first-year writing. Facilitated by computer-mediated communication technologies, this approach relies on online activities that invite ongoing contributions from students, promote interactivity within the course, and facilitate a collaborative learning environment that can foster student success in online distance learning. Having studied the effects of these feminist moves on two sections of online first-year research and writing courses, I examine in this text their impact on the development of community, students’ impressions of their place within the community, and the decentering of the virtual learning space. Specifically, I explore how students can write to shape and to change our online community and how students tie their work within the course to their development as writers and critical thinkers. Ultimately, in combining the goals of feminist pedagogy, first-year writing, and civic rhetoric in our design and delivery of online writing courses, we can begin to fulfill our vision for significant learning experiences for our students that will be as good as or better than their experiences in the traditional classroom.

In a world of increasing religious/political tensions and conflicts this study asks, what is the transformative significance of an arts and ritual-based approach to developing and encouraging women’s spiritual and multi-faith leadership? To counter destructive worldviews and practices that have divided people historically, politically, personally and sacredly, the study reinforces the political and spiritual value of women spiritual and multi-faith leaders creating and holding sacred space for truth making and world making. An a/r/tographic and mindful inquiry was engaged to assist self and group reflection within a group of women committed to multi-faith education and leadership in their communities. The objectives of the study were: 1) to explore through collaboration, ritual and art making processes the women’s experience of knowing and not knowing, 2) to articulate a curriculum for multi-faith consciousness raising, and 3) to develop a pedagogy and methodology that can serve as a catalyst for individual and societal change and transformation. The co-participants/co-inquirers (including the lead researcher as a member of the group) are fourteen women, who practice within eleven different religions and/or spiritual backgrounds, and who are part of a volunteer planning team that organizes an annual women’s multi-faith conference (Women’s Spirituality Celebration) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The aesthetic/ritual structure of the labyrinth served as a cross-cultural multi-faith symbol in guiding the dissertation, which includes three art installations and four documentary DVDs of the process and art. New understandings found in the study include: 1) the ethical sanctuary that a/r/tography as ritual enables for personal and collective change to take place within, 2) the addition of synecdoche to the renderings of a/r/tography, assisting a multi-dimensional spiral movement towards a whole a/r/tographic practice, 3) a lived and radically relational curriculum of philetics within loving community that drew forth the women’s erotic life force energy and enhanced the women’s ability to remember the power of the feminine aspect of the Divine, and 4) the decolonization of the Divine, art and education, which took place as a pedagogy of wholeness unfolded, requiring a dialectic relationship between restorative and transformative learning.

In a world of increasing religious/political tensions and conflicts this study asks, what is the transformative significance of an arts and ritual-based approach to developing and encouraging women’s spiritual and multi-faith leadership? To counter destructive worldviews and practices that have divided people historically, politically, personally and sacredly, the study reinforces the political and spiritual value of women spiritual and multi-faith leaders creating and holding sacred space for truth making and world making. An a/r/tographic and mindful inquiry was engaged to assist self and group reflection within a group of women committed to multi-faith education and leadership in their communities. The objectives of the study were: 1) to explore through collaboration, ritual and art making processes the women’s experience of knowing and not knowing, 2) to articulate a curriculum for multi-faith consciousness raising, and 3) to develop a pedagogy and methodology that can serve as a catalyst for individual and societal change and transformation. The co-participants/co-inquirers (including the lead researcher as a member of the group) are fourteen women, who practice within eleven different religions and/or spiritual backgrounds, and who are part of a volunteer planning team that organizes an annual women’s multi-faith conference (Women’s Spirituality Celebration) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The aesthetic/ritual structure of the labyrinth served as a cross-cultural multi-faith symbol in guiding the dissertation, which includes three art installations and four documentary DVDs of the process and art. New understandings found in the study include: 1) the ethical sanctuary that a/r/tography as ritual enables for personal and collective change to take place within, 2) the addition of synecdoche to the renderings of a/r/tography, assisting a multi-dimensional spiral movement towards a whole a/r/tographic practice, 3) a lived and radically relational curriculum of philetics within loving community that drew forth the women’s erotic life force energy and enhanced the women’s ability to remember the power of the feminine aspect of the Divine, and 4) the decolonization of the Divine, art and education, which took place as a pedagogy of wholeness unfolded, requiring a dialectic relationship between restorative and transformative learning.

In a world of increasing religious/political tensions and conflicts this study asks, what is the transformative significance of an arts and ritual-based approach to developing and encouraging women’s spiritual and multi-faith leadership? To counter destructive worldviews and practices that have divided people historically, politically, personally and sacredly, the study reinforces the political and spiritual value of women spiritual and multi-faith leaders creating and holding sacred space for truth making and world making. An a/r/tographic and mindful inquiry was engaged to assist self and group reflection within a group of women committed to multi-faith education and leadership in their communities. The objectives of the study were: 1) to explore through collaboration, ritual and art making processes the women’s experience of knowing and not knowing, 2) to articulate a curriculum for multi-faith consciousness raising, and 3) to develop a pedagogy and methodology that can serve as a catalyst for individual and societal change and transformation. The co-participants/co-inquirers (including the lead researcher as a member of the group) are fourteen women, who practice within eleven different religions and/or spiritual backgrounds, and who are part of a volunteer planning team that organizes an annual women’s multi-faith conference (Women’s Spirituality Celebration) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The aesthetic/ritual structure of the labyrinth served as a cross-cultural multi-faith symbol in guiding the dissertation, which includes three art installations and four documentary DVDs of the process and art. New understandings found in the study include: 1) the ethical sanctuary that a/r/tography as ritual enables for personal and collective change to take place within, 2) the addition of synecdoche to the renderings of a/r/tography, assisting a multi-dimensional spiral movement towards a whole a/r/tographic practice, 3) a lived and radically relational curriculum of philetics within loving community that drew forth the women’s erotic life force energy and enhanced the women’s ability to remember the power of the feminine aspect of the Divine, and 4) the decolonization of the Divine, art and education, which took place as a pedagogy of wholeness unfolded, requiring a dialectic relationship between restorative and transformative learning. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

<p>Black women are inventing new epistemologies to better fit their own experience, and they are putting these new ways of knowing into action within their communities to generate collective change through art. Black women’s theories of their own lived experience publicly have been consistently limited by narrow definitions of what it means to create a “Theory.” In this thesis, I will analyze the work of three contemporary Black woman performance artists, Ntozake Shange, Jamila Woods, and Nitty Scott, to identify the ways in which Black women do indeed theorize within these public spaces in ways that are innovative and complex. I focus on these artists insights on three critical sites: home, school, and community. I read Shange’s <i>for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf,</i> Woods’ <i>Legacy!Legacy!</i>, and Scott’s <i>Creature!</i> alongside Patricia Hill Collins’ <i>Black Feminist Thought</i> and bell hooks’ <i>Teaching to Transgress</i> to explore the innovative theoretical spaces Black women have created in their art. Ultimately, I argue that acknowledging this process of using popular culture as a space for theoretical discourse can provide innovative tools for expression for Black women who do not, cannot, or do not wish to participate in academic discourses. Understanding these tools can empower Black women to explore their humanity and to understand the contexts, which Collins refers to as “domains,” in which Black women can claim and expand their power.</p>