This phenomenological study explored the role of end-of-course examinations on teachers’ decision-making on curriculum and instruction through a comparative analysis of teachers who taught courses with end-of-course examinations and teachers who taught courses with locally created assessments (LCA). This study examined the experiences of nine teachers in a small school district located on the east-central coast of Florida. The study’s theoretical framework drew on Bourdieu’s (1972/1977) tools of habitus, capital, practice, and fields to explain the role of education in the reproduction of social system. The study examined how standardized testing shaped teachers’ use of habitus and capital to determine their practice in their curriculum, instruction, relationships in different educational fields, morale, and perspectives on teacher evaluation. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Both intensional and extensional explanations of linguistic meaning involve notions -- linguistic roles and referential relations, respectively -- which are not perspicuous and seem to evade satisfactory explanations themselves. Following Sellars, I make a move away from semantic explanation of the designation relation and of linguistic roles toward an explanation which relates to the use of linguistic and perceptual signs (i.e., pragmatics). In doing so, concerns are raised that seem to be more closely associated with epistemology and phenomenology than with the philosophy of language or logic. In particular, experience is taken to be intentional, i.e., to have a propositional content which is irreducible to the causal order. Along with intentionality, certain essentially autobiographical conditions of experience are neglected in typical conceptions of the problem of meaning. They are reintroduced here. Further, I take as a presupposition the pragmatist notion that each of our conceptual schemes emerges from a community of persons, rather than from individuals. What follows from the preceding starting points is a picture of incomplete personhood in which persons are seen as being inclined both toward experiential wholes which have conceptual content and toward establishing and unifying beliefs which resolve doubts. Because of the conditions of experience constitutive of, and peculiar to, personhood and the necessity of the community for individual inquiry, the notion of incomplete personhood has a central position in my pragmatist conception of the problem of meaning. By emphasizing the pragmatistic conditions of experience and the active role of persons in finding objects and in continually reaching toward a final complete picture, the problems related to objectivity are found to be peripheral to a conception of meaning which captures the practice(s) of persons' living object-directed lives. The result is a new way of conceiving of the problem of meaning. / Master of Arts

This study attempted to capture and describe the lived experiences of correctional academic teachers who provide educational services in facilities in the northeastern region of the United States through qualitative phenomenological inquiry. This study strove to provide a deeper understanding of correctional teachers’ perceptions concerning the mission, value, efficacy, and importance of the work that they perform, as well as the resulting approaches they take, in their academic classrooms. Through phenomenological data analysis, the study assessed teachers’ perceptions of the rehabilitative ideal, as well as the role of correctional education program offerings within a rehabilitative framework.

This dissertation is a performative exploration of experience within our technoscientific--that is, technologically and scientifically saturated--world. Drawing upon posthumanism and cyborg studies and working through specific, mutated versions of performative inquiry and phenomenology, I aim to encourage creative public participation in technoscientific discourse. That is, I apply an adapted method (cyborg phenomenology) to my own staged personae performances of nonhuman entities in order to investigate technoscientific experience from a less anthrocentric perspective. My goal is to interrogate my performance experience in order to better understand the dynamics of agency and relationship within our technologically infused world, and to employ performance and performative writing as pedagogical tools for educating others about these dynamics. This document might be best read as an example of performative inquiry as a useful approach to the study of technoscience and its consequences. As a whole, this dissertation is a call for, theorization with, and performative demonstration of artful participation in the multi-layered discourses of technology and science that impact the lives of all beings in our world. It is an experiential experiment, an exploration of possibility, and a beginning.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF J. Edward Hackett, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philosophy, presented on December 6, 2012 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: Scheler's Phenomenological Ontology of Value: Implications and Reflections for Ethical Theory MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Kenneth W. Stikkers My dissertation provides the first comprehensive account of what values are in Max Scheler's Formalism in Ethics (Formalism hereafter). As a phenomenologist, Scheler did not attempt to invent a new ontological language to describe value experience clearly as Heidegger invented for his fundamental ontology of Dasein. In so doing, Scheler's phenomenological descriptions often use metaphysically rich language and in so doing, Scheler generates ambiguity surrounding what he most sought to make clear, value. To remedy this confusion, I argue that Scheler's concept of Aktsein can supply an ontological understanding of value given the dearth of a clear ontological explanation of value in his phenomenological period culminating in the Formalism. This inquiry is divided into three chapters. In Chapter 1, I explain the central concepts in his phenomenology of value at root in the Formalism. I both explain and reveal the central ambiguities in the Formalism. For the most part, Chapter 1 is expository and develops an interpretation of the central ambiguities in Scheler's phenomenology of value. In Chapter 2, I problematize these central ambiguities and take note of when and where phenomenology collapses into ontology. This transition can best be made clear in his Idealismus und Realismus essays where Scheler explicates the structure of being-in-an-act at the very moment he "ontologizes" phenomenology. In addition to that moment in this work, I make analogies to Heidegger's phenomenology as a way into ontology. By making specific analogies to being-in-an-act and being-in-the-world, I show how the similar ontological tendencies in Heidegger provide us with a way to regard Scheler's Aktsein. In making this analogy, I do not reduce Scheler's phenomenological ontology to Heidegger, but instead put them into dialogue with each other revealing the solution of Scheler's ontology of value is realized in the act-intentionality of love. When I draw my conclusions both from the analysis of the Idealismus und Realismus essays and Heidegger, I label Scheler's ontological account of value: participatory realism. In Chapter 3, participatory realism is, then, put into contact with philosophers from the emotivist tradition. I define the emotivist tradition to include a noncognitivist interpretation of David Hume, A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson. While I could have been content to seek out a solution to this ambiguity in Scheler's work and conclude the merits of my interpretation, I am a firm believer in Scheler's position as a solution to the problem of value ontology. As such, participatory realism's uniqueness and merit are better served by putting it into contact with another decided alternative. Given that the analytic tradition had supplied emotivism as a view that connects the emotions with value-experience, it seemed only fitting that Scheler could call into question a dominant answer to value ontology and further clarify the resources Scheler brings to bear on the problem itself.

This thesis presents an inquiry into the nature of and history behind public thermal bathhouses, as well as a design proposal for a new and uniquely site-based public thermal bathhouse structure, the form of which has been developed with an eye toward typology. The research and writings of this thesis explore the topic of public thermal bathhouses, both as historic phenomena and viable places of congregation still relevant and of great importance to healthy and vital contemporary communities. An effort has been made to demonstrate that written histories, archaeological landmarks, and contemporary international urban communities throughout the world provide ample documentation in support of the notion that public thermal bath houses both served and continue to serve an integral role within healthy, vital and sustainable cultures. The physical modeling, drawings and sketches of this thesis develop ideas about form and materiality, and explore and bring together discreet architectural phenomena into a singular, formal, proposal for a prototypical public bath house typology, one whose program and form are well suited to a contemporary small town within the United States. At present, the ritual of public bathing exists within the United States, at best, far outside main stream culture as a singular, sensational event such as a hot spring or a commercial, private day spa- neither of which retain any semblance of the core principals, typological rituals, degree of sensory immersion, or whole-body therapy that define the essence of a more traditional and timeless public bathing experience. It is the intention of this thesis to present a compelling case for why a public bathhouse not only could exist on the current American landscape, but moreover why it should, and if so, what form it might take.

This motion-sensing phenomenological inquiry explores relational flow moments experienced by five professional tap dance artists in improvisational inter-action with jazz musicians to better understand the meaning of feeling relational flows in inter-activities. Guided through the Function-to-Flow conceptual framework, interviews and study with the five research participants focused on the functional capacities required to feel relational flows (e.g. movement repertoire and listening being), the form and structures of feeling relational flows (e.g. visible, audible, animatable and tangible forms of relational flows), and the feelings of relational flow experiences (e.g. connecting to, disconnecting from and transcending the self, Other and spiritual world) to discern meaning from inter-active, improvisational jazz-tap experiences. A motion-sensing phenomenological approach, which combines Max van Manen's hermeneutics with Michel Henry's material phenomenology of life to turn not simply to the things themselves but to the how of their appearing - that is, to the affective resonances of living, of bodily being - enables a primacy of sensorial attunement to the affects of kinaesthetic being or the feelings of being a body in motion. Interviews with the participants reveal meanings of relational flow in improvisational tap dance practices, and align with Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's call to phenomenologically inquire into the extraordinary experiential movement realities of professional dancers to deepen our understanding of the effect of their honed kinetic capacities. This inquiry seeks to not only deepen our knowledge of relational flow experiences, but also to add to research on tap dance, improvisational practice, and dance education more broadly.

Agency and desire are interdependent. Agency is not a given, but an achievement of ordered desiring. We want to control our desires rather than be controlled by them, but the dilemma is that our selves are separate neither from our desires nor our control. John Dewey articulates this dynamic and proposes a solution; we can control desire and thereby ourselves by an immanent and reflective reconstruction of the meaning and object of desire. However, Dewey over-estimates the cognitive control of meaning and desire, because he presumes that desire is always ideational, rather than explaining how desire comes into cognitive awareness and control to be available for reflective manipulation. This work will extend Dewey's theory of experience and habit by explaining the structural habitual conditions necessary for the cognitive control of desire, e.g., how desire becomes ideational and subsequently an ideal. It offers a constructive criticism and a new heterodox phenomenological method based on the works of John Dewey, Thomas Alexander, and Victor Kestenbaum.

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African Americans continue to access non-emergency mental health care at a lower rate than White Americans, despite have equal risk for mental health issues. Currently, literature in counseling focuses on this deficit and why African Americans do not attend counseling, as opposed to those African Americans who do choose to go into counseling. The purpose of this heuristic phenomenological study was to investigate the lived experiences of adult African American mental health counseling clients. Two types of purposive sampling, criterion and snowball, were used to identify and recruit participants. Six African American women were selected for inclusion in this study. Data for this study were collected through two face-to-face audio-recorded interviews with each participant, a demographics questionnaire and researcher field notes. Experiences and meanings identified in this study included: Navigating Crisis, Stigma of Counseling, Counselor and Client Relationship and Acceptance of Self and Others. This study adds a counter-narrative to the counselor literature that highlights African Americans who do choose to become counseling clients, their experiences, and the meanings they take away from that experience.