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Theses and Dissertations - Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling

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Browsing Theses and Dissertations - Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling by Author "Atkinson, Becky M."

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    The impact of institutional controls on teaching as phronesis in social studies: a comparative case study of Alabama secondary teachers
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2014) Pickup, Austin; Kuntz, Aaron M.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    This study investigates the impact of institutional job requirements upon particular practices and understandings of teaching among select secondary social studies teachers in Alabama. Through in-depth qualitative data analysis, findings from participant interviews, classroom observations, and documents were compared to assess how these requirements affected participants' abilities to engage in teaching as phronesis. This philosophical concept is translated as "practical wisdom" and is distinguished from episteme, meaning scientific knowledge, and techne, meaning skill. It is argued that phronesis, with its practical consideration of human values, corresponds to the nature of the social studies content area. However, this study illustrates that institutional job requirements controlled participant teaching practices so that socially valuable aspects of education, in line with phronesis, were limited to ensure production toward institutional objectives. This study also examines how this relationship differed between urban and rural learning environments and between novice and expert teachers. Finally, this study evaluates the case findings in the context of social studies education and broader issues of contemporary educational policy.
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    Producing transversal flows: an N-1 cartography of academics' of science teaching & learning research practices and values
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2018) Wooten, Michelle Marie; Kuntz, Aaron M.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    In this dissertation, I study those research practices and values which limit trans-disciplinarity among academics of science teaching & learning. I consider trans-disciplinarity an ethically imbued practice that enables thinking about the productivity of our research practices and makes possible flows of connectivity in the generation of our research landscape. To study our limits and their possible re-configuration, I make use of critical materialist methodology, particularly the approaches of genealogy and cartography characterized by philosophers Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari. Specifically, I use genealogy to study the historical generation of norms in academics’-of-st&l research practices, and their influence on our current (2015 – 2018) landscape generation. Through mapping logics, values, and practices associated with our research norms and our material (e.g., affective, intellectual, and spatial) responses to them, cartography enables an explorative entry into how our research landscape is constructed, constructing, and re-constructible. Further, cartography possibly generates our increased awareness of how ethical contemplations involved in the minutiae of our practices make possible our resisting or enabling continued landscape differentiation.