Despite the positive outcomes for inquiry-based science education and recommendations from national and state standards, many teachers continue to rely upon more traditional methods of instruction This causal-comparative study was designed to determine the effects of the Inquiry Institute, a professional development program that is intended to strengthen science teachers' pedagogical knowledge and provide practice with inquiry methods based from a constructivist approach. This study will provide a understanding of a cause and effect relationship within three levels of the independent variable-length of participation in the Inquiry Institute (zero, three, or six days)-to determine whether or not the three groups differ on the dependent variables-beliefs, implementation, and barriers. Quantitative data were collected with the Science Inquiry Survey, a researcher-developed instrument designed to also ascertain qualitative information with the use of open-ended survey items. One-way ANOVAs were applied to the data to test for a significant difference in the means of the three groups. The findings of this study indicate that lengthier professional development in the Inquiry Institute holds the most benefits for the participants.

This autoethnographic study presents a narrative of my lifelong yearning to pursue the practice of magic while concurrently managing the frustrations of being a public elementary school teacher. This study also presents sets of facilitating factors that enabled me to surmount personal, professional, and sociocultural challenges to rekindle my direction and purpose in life. The research questions guiding this study include the following: 1) What are the multiple levels of influence that have contributed to my desire to be a magician and leave the teaching profession? ; and 2) In the interrelation of the above context, how do I reignite my artistic passion and purpose? Using the Bronfenbrenner model of human ecology, this study explores multiple levels of influence spanning those from a sociocultural perspective to those of an inter- and intrapersonal nature.

Curriculum is a means by which the medium of thought finds expression. It is a palette for the mind. Curriculum is a device by which thoughts are given form that can be shared. In the hands of a curriculum artist, symphonies of thought are conceived, composed, and performed. Like a palette in the hands of a master, curriculum in the hands of a teacher can transform minds. This dissertation seeks to examine, through reflective inquiry, the efficacy of an integrative, concept‐driven curriculum framework for novice elementary teachers, and, thereby, posit a generalized model of reflective curriculum inquiry to generate a deeper understanding for the researcher and her readers. The emergent model is not a curriculum, but when viewed as a framework, this model can become a means to facilitate design and to further support the development and evaluation of curricula. This dissertation is a story of how a teacher was made, not born. It is a story of how students learned conceptually and performed purposefully. It is also a story of roles and relationships found between students, teachers, parents, administrators, and curriculum. Throughout this dissertation, actor‐network theory (ANT) was used to help describe these relationships between the various roles that I assumed in relation to others, resources, and educational settings. Finally, this dissertation reveals a significant and direct relationship between standards‐derived concept vocabulary, subject matter integration, and literacy development that emphasized the need for a configurable curriculum framework to serve as a model for curriculum inquiry. / text

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

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Abstract: My inquiry, involving participant-observation and self-study, explores the stories of four older women through verbal and visual narratives. Showing how two specific types of visual narratives—sandpictures and collages—stimulate experiential story-telling and promote understanding about life experiences, I also illustrate how engagement with images extends learning and meaning-making. Effective in carrying life stories and integrating experience, the visual narratives also reveal archetypal imagery that is sustained and sustaining. Considering how visual narratives may be understood independently, I describe multiple strategies that worked for me for entering deeply into the images. I also elaborate on the relationship of visual narratives to accompanying verbal narratives, describing how tacit knowing may evolve. Through this process, I offer a framework for a curricular approach to visual narratives that involves feeling and seeing aesthetically and associatively and that provides a space for learners to express their individual stories and make meaning of significant life events. Salient narrative themes include confrontation with life-death issues, the experience of “creating a new life,” an avid early interest in books and learning, and a vital connection to the natural world. New professions after mid-life, creative expression, and volunteerism provide fulfillment and challenge as life changes promote attempts to marry relationships with self and others to work and service. My therapy practice room was the setting for five sessions, including an introduction, three experiential sandplay sessions, and a conclusion. Data derive from transcripts from free-flowing conversations, written narratives, photographs of sandpictures, and field notes written throughout the various phases of my doctoral process. This study of older women, with its emphasis on lifelong learning, visual narratives, and development of tacit knowing, will contribute to the field of narrative inquiry already strongly grounded in verbal narrative and teacher education/development. It may also promote in-depth investigations of male learners at a life stage of making meaning of, and integrating, their life experiences. New inquirers may note what I did and how it worked for me, and find their unique ways of extending the study of visual narratives while venturing into the broad field of diverse narrative forms.

Seimo laikinosios tyrimo komisijos - vienas iš Seimo vidinių darinių. Jos skirstomos į laikinąsias tyrimo komisijas valstybinės svarbos klausimams spręsti ir į kitas laikinąsias tyrimo komisijas. Pirmosios grupės komisijos veiklos rezultatai naudojami Seimo įgyvendinant pagrindines funkcijas - leidžiant įstatymus, vykdant parlamentinę kontrolę, steigiant institucijas ir skiriant pareigūnus bei tvirtinant valstybės biudžetą ir stebint jo vykdymą. antrosios grupės komisijos skirtos pateikti išvadas, ar yra pagrindas panaikinti Seimo nario teisinę neliečiamybę ir ar yra pagrindas pradėti apkaltos procesą. / Provisional Investigation Commission of the Parlament - one of the family of internal structures. They are divided into commissions of inquiry of national importance and the issues of interim study committees. The first group of the operating results for the main use of family functions - passing laws, the parliamentary control, creation of institutions and officials on the state budget and approving and monitoring its implementation. The second group of the Commission for an opinion, or a withdrawal of a member of the Parlament of immunity and whether there are grounds for an impeachment process.

This research is a nomadic inquiry into the ethics and aesthetics of three makers’ social and material practices. Deleuze’s concept of the nomad operated in multiple ways throughout the process, which was embedded in performative engagements that produced narratives of becoming. Over four months, I built relationships with three people as I learned about the ethico-aesthetic significance of their daily practices. The process started by interviewing participants in their homes and expanded over time to formal and informal engagements in school, community, and agricultural settings. I used Guattari’s ecosophical approach to consider how subjectivity was produced through spatial assemblages by spending time with participants, discussing material structures and objects, listening to personal histories, and collaboratively developing ideas. Participants included a builder who repurposed a missile base into a private residence and community gathering space, an elementary art teacher who practiced urban homesteading, and a young artist who developed an educational farm. The research considers the affective force of normalized social values, the production of desire by designer capitalism, and the mutation of life from neoliberal policies. Our experiences illuminate the community-building potential of direct encounters and direct exchanges. The project generates ideas for becoming an inquirer in the everyday and reveals possibilities for producing pedagogical experiences through collective and dissensual action. Ultimately, the project produces hope for performative and anti-disciplinary approaches to education, rupturing false divisions that fragment the force of thought, to produce, instead, aesthetic experiences that privilege processes and are based in direct and collective engagements with life.

Master of Science / Department of Communications and Agricultural Education / Jason D. Ellis / The general public is more generationally and geographically removed from agricultural production today than ever before, yet as influential as ever with regards to its ability to impact the operating conditions of the animal agriculture industry. To date, the agriculture industry has focused research and extension on how to educate and persuade the public in order to gain support for its practices and policies. Little work has investigated how the language choices of those communicating about agriculture may be functioning to position themselves and other participants with regards to authority and credibility, and how this affects their communication and the industry as a whole. This study sought to develop an understanding as to how three key groups in the animal agriculture conversation (experts, professional communicators, and agricultural advocates) use discourse and language to position themselves and other participants, their explanations of opposition to animal agriculture, and their ideas about how to best present and justify their arguments to the wider public. In addition to this, the study also sought to understand what power structures and dynamics exist within the conversation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data for a critical discourse analysis. The discursive practices of the participants functioned to ultimately undermine and delegitimize the role of the public and individuals and groups opposed to animal agriculture, as well as position the industry and its constituents as the only authoritative and credible voices in the animal agriculture conversation. This is likely to be prohibitive to achieving the goals of agricultural communication activities. Those communicating on behalf of the animal agriculture industry should become more aware of how their beliefs, values, and ideologies impact the discourse from which they are operating, as well as how their communication is functioning. This research was undertaken from a critical inquiry perspective, shedding light on some of the power structures inherent between the animal agriculture industry and the general public. Others undertaking agricultural sociology and related research should consider doing so integrating a similar theoretical perspective to continually challenge the assumptions and conditions under which the industry operates.

An authoritarian and bureaucratic ethos adopted by South African Schools prior to 1994 continues to be adopted in many schools. It may be assumed that with the advent of the new South African democratic government in 1994 there would be more freedom given to schools to adopt different leadership styles that were relevant to their school context. Given the top-down culture and authoritarian leadership structures of schools that were designed and developed during the apartheid era, secondary school principals and school management teams have struggled to adopt a more democratic approach to running a school since 1994. In the previous dispensation, school decision making was mostly not a collective effort, and involved a minimum of consultation and sharing of ideas, with staff not being seen as having the role or potential to positively influence significant school decisions. The national Department of Education (2003) refers to this as “… the entrenched bureaucratic and hierarchical management practices inherited from apartheid traditions.” However, greater choice and autonomy of thought are part and parcel of the democratic paradigm. A comprehensive literature review on the Community of Enquiry (CoE) methodology, a resource developed by Matthew Lipman, revealed a more open and inclusive approach to thinking together and embraces the principals of choice and autonomy. It is proposed that this methodology could be used to help school management teams (SMTs) become more collaborative and democratic in their approach to decision-making. Particular attention will be paid to the democratic values that underpin a CoE, in particular the values of equality, justice and freedom will be discussed with specific reference to the South African context. Bureaucratic, autocratic and democratic leadership styles may be adopted by the SMTs in various schools and each leadership style could influence the decision making process as well as the culture within a school. The CoE methodology could work in conjunction with a democratic leadership style to allow SMTs to be more collaborative and inclusive in the decision making process.