In this thesis, I invite readers to accompany me as I build a bridge that links my learning as a Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major in an elite private college back to the educational settings I grew up in. Here, I present a curriculum for middle school students in a private summer school I attended and worked at in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I chose to create a curriculum as a case study and a launching off point to learn how to bring feminist theory and critical social justice pedagogy back to my home and into my work. I hope to take intersectional feminist lenses and epistemologies forward into a career in K-8 teaching.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture / Katie Kingery-Page / Encouraging creativity is an important part of a child’s education and often not adequately supported by outdoor school environments. Contemporary playgrounds are designed in response to perceptions of liability and a limited interpretation of child development. Prefabricated plastic constructions and expanses of asphalt are poor initiators of creative expression. This project proposes a more stimulating, artistically crafted alternative to the typical playground. Beginning with documented research of play, the project layers psychology, education and humanities to form an understanding of how formal space affects human experience. More specifically, poetry, land art, sculpture, narrative and character studies inform the design solution for a 6.4 acre site at Northview Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas. Integrated design provides children a meaningful experience of space and direct contact with nature. This design encourages imaginative and creative play, expanding the experiential quality of a contemporary playground.

The conceptual foundation for my work lies in the idea of "interaction." I work towards exposing this idea in its more basic and routine form, as well as the broad scope of it. Ranging beyond the common associations made with human to human interaction, my work enters a number of realms including environmental, architectural, and intra-personal interactions, working amongst the subtleties of each. I seek to create an image of relate-able experience, thus I feel the medium of photography is necessitated, as it is rooted in the idea of documentary and realism, in effect, cataloguing images of or influenced by the outside world.

Emerging adulthood is a term coined to recognize 18 to 25 year-olds who engage in self-exploration while not yet fully identifying as adults. Many emerging adult college students experience stress, anxiety, and depression. Although many colleges provide affordable and available mental health resources for students, many students who need help appear to not utilize these services. Gaining greater understanding of underlying processes that influence psychological treatment-seeking behavior is imperative. The current study sought to explore the role experiential avoidance (EA) plays as a treatment-seeking barrier in the context of emerging adulthood. Undergraduate students completed online measures of emerging adulthood dimensions, psychological symptoms, EA, self-stigma of, perceived public stigma of, intentions to, and attitudes and beliefs towards seeking treatment, treatment seeking behavior, and a demographics questionnaire. Binomial hierarchical logistic regressions and correlational analyses examined the relationship of EA and treatment-seeking behaviors, accounting for known barriers and emerging adult characteristics. After controlling for demographic variables, results indicated that EA was significantly positively correlated with self-stigma (r = .187), p < .001), perceived public stigma (r = .178, p < .001), intentions (r - .207, p < .001), psychological symptoms (r = .713, p < .001), and attitudes and beliefs (r = .009, p = .003). These and other findings are discussed further, along with the study limitations and implications, as well as possible future directions for work in this area.

Alors que le paradigme de la société de la connaissance tend à investir de plus en plus les champs politiques, économiques et sociaux, appréhender le phénomène du volontariat solidaire international sous ce prisme permet de mettre en avant les relations entre employabilité, citoyenneté et identité cognitive. En effet, le volontariat s’inscrit dans une tension entre une vision utilitariste à travers l’acquisition de compétences, une vision collective à travers sa contribution à l’intérêt général, et une conception individuelle liée à la construction identitaire. Etudier le volontariat solidaire à l’international sous l’angle de sa dimension formative et de ses potentielles répercussions dans la suite des parcours professionnels de jeunes adultes participe donc, à notre sens, d’une réflexion plus globale sur les fins et les moyens des apprentissages dans notre société. C’est à partir des parcours professionnels d’anciens volontaires que nous nous sommes intéressées aux répercussions de ce type d’expériences : qu’apprend-on au cours d’expériences de volontariat solidaire à l’international ? Comment ces apprentissages influent-ils dans la suite des parcours professionnels ? Dans quelle mesure les expériences de volontariat jouent-elles un rôle dans le rapport au travail de celles et ceux qui les vivent ? / The paradigm of knowledge society is increasing significantly in political, economic, and social fields. Understanding international volunteering through this lens enables to highlight the links between employability, citizenship and cognitive identity. Indeed, volunteering lies within a tension between a utilitarian vision through skill acquisition, a collective vision by contributing to common interest, and an individual conception linked to identity building. Studying international volunteering for solidarity from the point of view of its formative dimension and its potential impacts on young adults' career paths, contributes to a global reflection on the ends and means of learning in society. Based on career paths of former volunteers, this thesis looks at these experiences' repercussions: what does one learn during an international volunteering experience? What impact does this learning have on career paths' developments? How far are volunteering experiences instrumental in participants' relation to work?

Among researchers within the design area, role play is often spoken about in a positive manner. This study aims to discover the limitations with role play as a tool for experiential learning. This is done by evaluating a prototype of an early-stage concept of a role play-tool. The tool is aimed for Swedish SMEs to raise awareness and create curiosity of guanxi, which is a vital part of Chinese business culture. The tool is compared to another experiential-based tool, Experience Map, with the same purpose but based on real scenarios rather than simulated scenarios. Prototype testing with intended users identified the difficulty of giving instructions on cultural behaviour as one limitation. This limitation is especially difficult in settings where the participants have no previous knowledge within the area, which is the case for this study. Another limitation is the challenge of giving enough instructions for the players to act on, without interrupting the exploration aspect of the tool. Besides, the target group seem to prefer more hands-on tools that are more relevant for their specific business and less time-consuming. The main difference between the tools is that the experience map which is based on real scenarios, creates a greater interest among participants and a higher level of the participants’ willingness to use it.

China’s economy is growing. It has been said that “the question like ‘how to do business with Chinese people’ have occupied the minds of international business people who are planning to enter China.” (Fan &amp; Zigang, 2004). Sweden as a country which listed China as its largest trading partner in Asia and a priority country in Sweden's export strategy, has a need to gain understanding about guanxi –an important concept in Chinese business culture. In this thesis, the author will present the development of three exercises inspired by design methods (role play, visualization and customer journey map) which aim to help Swedish business managers to learn guanxi in an experiential way. It includes the challenges the design team went through, how did they solve it and what are the latest version of the exercises looks like. The main challenges presented in this thesis are: how to embed specific knowledge smoothly into exercise; how to set up the role of facilitator(s); and how to increase the level of satisfaction for the users. Those challenges are not only specific to our project, but also could be inspirational for other people (e.g. designers, business culture scholars and so on) who want to create similar exercises or looking for new ways to deliver the knowledge about cross-cultural business communication.

A presente dissertação fundamenta-se na psicologia analítica, criada pelo psiquiatra e psicanalista suíço Carl Gustav Jung. Partindo deste referencial e tomando como base os pilares da pesquisa qualitativa foi realizado um grupo vivencial de sonhos com estudantes ingressantes no 1º ano de graduação em Psicologia de uma universidade pública, com o objetivo de compreender como os estudantes estão vivenciando esse momento específico. Por meio do estudo do movimento grupal nos encontros, de uma análise do material obtido e da elaboração simbólica a respeito do desenvolvimento do grupo e dos encontros foi possível identificar e observar símbolos que apontam para um período de mudanças e enfrentamento de angústias e medos, encontrando sustentação e significação no grupo. O grupo vivencial com a utilização de recursos expressivos artísticos revelou-se também como meio de autoconhecimento, possibilitando o exercício da alteridade e seu manejo, indicando seu uso durante a formação do psicólogo em diversos momentos / The present dissertation is based on analytical psychology, created by the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. Starting from this framework and based on the pillars of qualitative research, an experiential dream group was realized with incoming students in the first year of graduation in Psychology from a public university, in order to understand how the students are experiencing this moment. Through the study of the group movement in the meetings, an analysis of the material obtained and the symbolic elaboration of the same and of the encounters, it was possible to identify and observe symbols that refer to a process of change and confrontation of fears that found support in the group. The experiential group with expressives artistcs resources revealed itself also as a tool for self-knowledge, allowing the exercise of alterity and its management, its use being indicated for the training of psychologists, in several moments

Thesis advisor: Sharlene Hesse-Biber / Service-learning is an experiential form of education that moves students outside of the walls of academe to meet community-identified needs through the application and renegotiation of a set of theoretical and methodological skills. It is simultaneously a teaching strategy, an epistemological framework, and an educational reform movement. This research takes the form of multi-methodological case studies of service-learning classrooms and service-learning partnerships, examining the translation of feminist pedagogy to the service-learning experience. The voices of students, faculty, pioneers, administrators, and community partners articulate the common and uncommon struggles of teaching a new generation of students to learn and serve in agencies while simultaneously recognizing their own capacity for agency. This work provides evidence that applying feminist pedagogical principles to service-learning initiatives creates more meaningful transformations for our students, faculty, and communities. The interdependent Feminist Service-Learning Process posited here is an innovative framework for moving our students across the civic borders necessary for community engagement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / Schools and classrooms in the United States are increasingly religiously diverse, and religion remains a deeply influential social force, locally, nationally, and globally. However, decades of misunderstanding about the constitutionally appropriate relationship between religion and public education have created a cycle of silence about religion in K-12 schools and in teacher education. As a result, public school educators are not prepared to teach about religion in the curriculum. Nor do they have the skills to respond to common challenges that arise in religiously diverse school communities. This dissertation examines four professional development courses about religious diversity to understand the motivations and experiences of the educators who participated and to explore the impacts these courses had on the educators’ teaching practices. The 145 participants in the professional development courses learned about several religious traditions through a combination of visits to religious communities, guest speakers, and classroom discussion. The mixed methods study surveyed the participants three times, once before the courses, and twice afterwards. Follow-up interviews with 13 educators were conducted approximately one year after they completed the courses. The findings reveal that educators working at all grade levels and in all content areas found valuable benefits from increasing their understanding of religion, including a greater appreciation for the religious identities of their students and increased comfort with religion when it appeared in a range of school settings. Based on my analysis, I propose a framework of Pedagogical Content Knowledge about Religion to describe five domains of knowledge and skills that are necessary for educators to be able to competently respond to religion in public schools. This framework and the findings of this study have valuable implications for the development of future professional development courses and in charting a trajectory for further research on religion in U.S. public schools. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.