Motherhood has been set up as an institution of control over women by the patriarchy. Dominant ideas of motherhood and what constitutes being a good mother are steeped in patriarchal ideals and conceptual thoughts. What is absent from ideas of motherhood is the female lived experiences of mothering. Mothering, by contrast, is the conceptual understanding of what it means to be a mother from a women-centered perspective. Under the dominant discourse of motherhood, mothers are self-sacrificing, generous, calm, patient, and loving. Those mothers who do not meet these standards are constructed as "bad mothers," reinforcing a binary understanding of mothers. This paper challenges the good/bad mother binary by drawing on the lived experience of one mother who uses substances to demonstrate the judgmental road mothers are forced to walk. This thesis takes a feminist-based approach to explore Ruth's story: a mother who engages in substance use. This research is produced through a feminist ontology to add to a body of scholarship that works to create a counter-discourse for mothers from mothers against dominating patriarchal norms of motherhood. A Narrative case study methodology is applied to Ruth's story to extrapolate the complex realities Ruth faces as she attempts to make sense of her mothering identity within the patriarchal definition of the "good mother." While engaging in substance use, Ruth's mothering story produced four themes that facilitate understanding mothering from a holistic, women-centric lens. First, this research emphasizes the barriers Ruth experiences in building, understanding and maintaining her sense of self. Second, Ruth's story illuminates the impact of the dominant "good" motherhood discourse on how women like Ruth conceptualize themselves as a mother. Third, Ruth's story enables the exploration of the intersectional identities of mothering and substance use in a way that creates space for both identities to work together rather than in opposition. Lastly, reflecting on the surveillance Ruth has endured in relation to her family and interactions with child welfare, her story reveals how discourses of risk are connected to and associated with substance use. Through the exploration of Ruth's mothering experiences, a narrative is produced to challenge and disrupt the oppressive institution of motherhood. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This research is about Ukrainian women who have been displaced by the russian invasion and are now living on Gotland. The primary objective of this study was to create a platform where they could express their experiences, thoughts, and emotions. We intended to value their voices and were committed to maintaining a human-centered and open approach in our research, prioritizing their authentic narratives over theoretical considerations.  In this exploratory study, we discovered the power of cooking and sharing food to foster connections and intimate conversations. Inspired by feminist scholar Heldke (1988), we recognized the undervalued significance of cooking in philosophical discourses and the need for a more inclusive way of thinking about knowledge. Employing cooking as inquiry as a research method allowed for a holistic exploration of personal experiences with new cultures. With Borshch as our chosen meal, we found that its traditional slow-cooking process created a safe and familiar space for meaningful conversations.  By applying Allen et al. (2021) Integrative Framework for Belonging, we sought to shed light on narratives that arise from the accounts of Ukrainian women displaced by the russian invasion. We discovered that our contributors' experiences extended beyond the boundaries of the framework. Our findings explored various narratives – from struggling to belong to reclaiming belonging, including living through war, liminality, keeping children safe, competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions to belong. Through this exploration, we gained insights into their complex narratives and the dynamic nature of belonging.

<p>Rural communities across the United States are experiencing a rapid increase in the number of immigrant students. While the number of culturally and linguistically diverse students continues to grow within midwestern states, the demographics of teachers remain white, female, and monolingual. Often teachers have little to no training working with students and their families whose backgrounds differ from their own. Thus, there is a greater urgency for teachers to develop culturally competent teaching practices that address the needs of all students. The purpose of this year-long, school-based narrative inquiry was to examine the beliefs, attitudes, and practices of rural educators as they described their work with Latinx immigrant, elementary students, negotiated the “space” between a professional and personal identity and demonstrated an ethic of care. This inquiry is arranged into “livings, tellings, retellings, and relivings” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 70) and serves to shed light on the entwined lived experiences of myself, my participants, and the community in which we reside. Swanson’s Middle Range Theory of Care (1991, 1993) served as the conceptual framework that illuminated how my participants discussed working with and caring for their Latinx immigrant students. Findings from this study support teacher education by providing practical recommendations for promoting culturally responsive practices, grounded in care, for preservice (PST) and in-service teachers. </p>

This study investigated story journaling to enhance story comprehension. Eighteen kindergarten children participated in this six-week study with the teacher reading a total of twenty-four stories to the class. The class was randomly divided into Group A and Group B, with 3 focus participants from each group retelling the story. The retelling was audio taped and analyzed using Morrow's (2001) procedures. Group B experienced the intervention of story journaling on the third week of the study and showed an improvement in story comprehension during the fifth and sixth weeks of story journaling. Group A did not experience the intervention of story journaling until the fifth week of the study and showed a slight improvement by the end of the sixth week of story journaling. There appears to be a connection of story journaling to story comprehension when children are given the opportunity to story journal after hearing a story.

This study investigated the effect of inquiry-based instruction in technical undergraduate education. Specifically, the effect was measured along two dimensions: 1) the effect on student learning and, 2) student attitude towards subject matter. The researcher designed an inquiry-based instructional approach to encourage interaction between teacher and students and to help students take more responsibility for their learning. Three technical undergraduate classes participated in the study. Each class was divided into experimental and control groups. For the experimental group, a twice-a-week traditional lecture was replaced with a once-a-week inquiry-based question and answer session. Students in the control group were taught as normal, by a traditional style lecture. Students in the experimental group were expected to use the extra hour, gained by meeting only once once-a-week, to study and prepare. Both groups were administered pre- and post- tests to determine the learning that took place during the experimental intervention. Pre- and post- surveys were also administered to assess the effect of the inquiry-based instruction on student attitude. Additionally, scores from student exams, professor surveys, and researcher observations were used to collect data and understand the effect of the instructional approach. The findings suggest that inquiry-based learning in technical classes can have a positive effect on learning and attitude.

This action research study focuses on a teacher's experiences while implementing critical literacy instruction in a seventh grade language arts class. Throughout the unit, a tension between teacher control and student autonomy emerged in three areas: discussion (teacher-directed and student-directed), curriculum (teacher choices and student choices), and student text comprehension (surface and critical). Finding the balance between teacher control and student autonomy was difficult. When these two elements were not balanced, the classroom experience for everyone was mediocre. When they were balanced correctly the entire classroom community had positive experiences that advanced student learning. Critical literacy instruction, though difficult to implement, was useful in helping students become literate, critical thinkers who can successfully participate in democratic society.

In an effort to improve mathematics instruction, I studied how the positions students choose or are pressed to take on can lead to failure in an inquiry-based classroom. Positioning refers to the temporary roles that a student or a teacher can place each other in or take on in a given classroom environment. Since positions are constructed and maintained by language use, I drew from positioning theory and discourse theory for my theoretical framework. From analyzing transcripts of classroom episodes and interviews with the teacher and a student, I identified common positions that the teacher and the student took on. I also looked at how these positions were negotiated in the classroom. I give a specific example of how positions could negatively change between the teacher and the student. The teacher went from a position that supported inquiry-based instruction to a position that supported traditional instruction, and the student went from a position that supported learning to a position that was detrimental to learning. The positions and the negotiation of positions impacted learning and helped to explain why the student might be failing. I found that positions changed (for better or worse) because of specific pressures, which I analyzed. For instance, when the teacher and the student succumbed to specific pressures and stepped out of certain positions, the teacher felt ineffective and the student engaged in less desirable positions that hinder learning. From this study, we can learn how to better address student and teacher failure in an inquiry-based classroom. These results have significant implications for research, teaching, and teacher education. Therefore, positioning is vital to the implementation of inquiry-based instruction in that it can either maintain or undermine it.

A Look to Burst the Brightest Neon Hearts is an inquiry, via constellation of stories diffuse in structure and subject matter, into the various (and really weird) phenomena comprising contemporary American existence. Cumulatively, the stories seek to: (1) kick up, like bottom feeders searching biogenous sediment, an underlying value system, and (2) explore how language both breastfeeds and like, weans this value system-e.g., what dark matter is it that tethers bromances to reality TV? Quantum mechanics to pop music? How can a country be responsible for both the world's highest incarceration rates, and OKCupid? These stories also explore various American conceptions and embodiments of love, plotting out a strange attractor of cultural reflection and refraction.

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<p>  </p> <p>Students from rural communities undertake postsecondary education at rates lower than their counterparts from urban and suburban communities, and mathematics is a known gatekeeper along the pipeline toward a college degree. This study investigated the mathematics identity formation of students from a rural school who were college-bound to determine what existing strengths a rural school could build from in providing students with experiences in school mathematics that align with a college-bound path. Data collected included individual interviews with college-bound students, their AP Calculus teacher, and their guidance counselor, group interviews with the students, and classroom observations conducted in the participants’ AP Calculus class. The findings are presented as three narratives, each corresponding to one of the participants in the study, that detail the processes by which they developed their mathematics identities and their paths toward college, as well as the convergences and divergences between the two. Common themes in the participants’ narratives include family, the agricultural and industrial base of the local rural community, grades, the social status attained by achievement in school mathematics, and the benefits of high-quality mathematics instruction. These findings indicate that mathematics served a largely instrumental purpose for the participants, but that this does not prevent them from appreciating and learning from a teacher who frequently used pedagogical techniques associated with reform mathematics. This further implies that students in rural schools would benefit from increased access to mathematics instruction informed by best practices, as well as a lowered focus on grades in school mathematics. </p>