Browsing by Subject "Pedagogy"

The issue that this paper addresses is how the college coach has abandoned the roles of educator and liaison between athletics and academics. The current era of college was examined using academic analysis, interviews with college administrators and academics connected to college athletics, and literature regarding the topic. The conclusion reached is that the college coach is in dire need of reform both professionally and pedagogically and that for the college coach to justify an existence in academics that is not solely for entertainment, college coach must reform their profession with academics values.

Objectification theory, as delineated by Barbara L. Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts, posits that women are trained to view themselves as visual objects for consumption. The related term, self-objectification, describes the altered psychological state where an individual begins to view themselves as a body or sum of body parts. Ballet dancers exhibit higher levels of self-objectification and eating disorders than the general public and high levels of self-objectification are correlated to eating and body image disturbances. This thesis gathers, applies, and expands pedagogical tools for discouraging self-objectification in the ballet classroom in university, private studio, and open online settings. It also proposes the facilitation of flow states as the “next frontier” of addressing one of ballet’s infamous problems and details a choreographic process dedicated to understanding and cultivating amenable conditions for flow and yu. Flow is an embodied experience where an individual is performing at optimum level while fully engaged in an activity. The related concept, yu, is associated with the spiritual release and ease that comes after an individual has disciplined their habits toward living an ethical life. The final choreographic work investigates various aspects of flow and yu including intention, curiosity, bliss, distraction, collective engagement, joy, space, and suspension of time. The resulting performance reflects the individual and collective experience of flow and yu of the dancers who performed the piece. The thesis concludes with a reflection on insights that can be gleaned from intersecting paths of pedagogical research and choreographic inquiry.

There is not enough space in this document to capture all that you have done in support of this work.

Playing Incarnation recognizes that the imagination is at the center holistic learning, and seeks to present a pedagogical model that focuses on inspiring and training the imagination through models of play. The model arose from an experience based model of learning implemented at Grace Lutheran Church of River Forest, Illinois, between 2012 and 2016; and the resulting research into neurological processes of learning. The research presented here begins with understanding how Christian education literature since the 1990’s has recognized and employed the imagination in education, finding Maria Harris’ model, presented in Teaching and Religious Imagination as foundational for a pedagogy of the imagination. Then, the imagination is explored through historical Christian thought to see how the imagination has been conceived by the western tradition of the church, drawing a theological picture of the divine imagination as a foundation for human imagination. This picture is influenced by Robin Stockitt’s Imagination and the Playfulness of God, and Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God. The research then turns to understanding the neurological processes that form the imagination, following David Hogue’s Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past, and using the story of John, a student, as a case study. Finally, the structures and forms of play are explored, following Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and Courtney Goto’s The Grace of Playing, and then using the faith education model from Grace Lutheran to understand how play structure triggers and trains the imagination in Christian forms of life. The result argues that faith education trains students’ imaginations to construe reality through the gospel, continually reinforced by experiences that practice Christian forms of life, resulting in forming a person as an icon of the Incarnation.

Adolescent girls need a meaningful and liberative theological lens for interpreting their lives. I argue that a close reading of Romans 6-8 offers this lens because of Paul’s apocalyptic understanding of the present time, the implications of the crucifixion of Christ, and the promise of the coming new creation. I additionally argue that critical liberative pedagogical strategies enable girls to see from this new perspective with the help of adults, particularly adult women, in their communities of faith.

Adolescent girls are subjected to different layers of oppression in the United States. They are given no voice and no vote in the public sphere. Their silence is assumed by their churches as well. Additionally, all girls struggle against sexism. Racism, classism, sizism, and heterosexism also impact some girls. Girls experience prejudice related to all these areas of oppression in their lives in personal ways. Pauline apocalypticism offers a way to understand these experiences and how they occur in order to liberate girls from taking responsibility for the ways others objectify them.

Using conversational interviews based on the work of Elliot Mishler, I spoke with 24 girls who are active in United Methodist Churches in the New York Annual Conference. I then did a close exegetical reading of Romans 6-8, and put the interviews into conversation with that reading. Emerging from those interviews were specific themes especially important to these girls. Some theological insights from Romans 6-8 are particularly pertinent to those themes. The conversation between Romans 6-8 and the interviews with girls led to pedagogical suggestions for how to help girls see from Paul’s perspective and interpret their stories and their lives in real time according to that perspective.

Girls need to be included in the full life of the church, something that is theologically supported by Paul’s understanding of the individual as always in relationship. The church is a corporate body of those participating in Christ by means of their baptism. When girls see with a new perspective, a “new creation perspective,” they can see the powers of Sin and Death manifesting in their lives through these oppressive systems. Girls need mentors who will form an alliance with them for the interpreting of their own lives from an apocalyptic perspective and against the powers of Sin and Death as they manifest in girls’ lives both in and outside the church. These mentors should be women who can share their own stories from a new creation perspective, welcome girls’ stories, help girls interpret their stories, and work to help the whole church be a welcoming community of co-interpreters for girls.

This dissertation traces the theme of justice through the whole narrative of Exodus. Its aim is to explicate how YHWH’s reclamation of Israel for service-worship as narrated in Exodus reveals a distinct theological ethic of justice that is grounded in YHWH’s character and Israel’s calling within YHWH’s creational agenda. It adopts a synchronic, text immanent interpretative strategy which takes specific note of canonical and inner-biblical connections. This exposition gives particular attention to two other overlapping motifs in Exodus that help illuminate the theme of justice. First, it considers throughout the importance of Israel’s creation traditions for grounding Exodus’s theology of justice. It shows that the ethical disposition of justice imprinted upon Israel in the events of Exodus is built upon and is an application of YHWH’s creational agenda of justice. This becomes evident when Exodus is understood against the backdrop of creation theology and as a continuation of the plot of Genesis, a reading that Exodus itself invites. Second, because the book of Exodus functions as a pedagogical narrative—i.e., a persuasive story that is meant to form readers in normative, paradigmatic ways, this work highlights how an educational agenda is woven throughout the text. The narrative gives heightened attention to the way YHWH catechizes Israel in what it means to be the particular beneficiary and creational emissary of YHWH’s justice. The interpretative lenses of creation theology and pedagogy furthermore help in explaining why Israel’s salvation and shaping, in turn, embodies a programmatic applicability of YHWH’s justice for the wider world.

As the role of Internet Connected Technologies (ICTs) increases exponentially, and as all student populations (highly motivated or not) become increasingly composed of digital natives, it is imperative that the academy adapt to these new challenges. A university is obligated to ensure its students are adequately prepared for the Digital Age. This paper seeks to examine and evaluate the current scholarship of coding pedagogy, digital learning, and information science education, to leverage these evaluations towards the construction of a course of study which is informed by critical thought and current scholarship. It is the author’s hope to provide methods and approaches through which students who may lack an academic background in Computer Science can develop critical and analytic thinking skills alongside essential understandings of the technologies underpinning their daily lives.

This thesis provides a hip-hop based curriculum that the black church can use to engage young black men in spiritual formation. Due to the negative lyrics heard in hip-hop music, many churches have rejected this style of music in their church, sometimes even demonizing those who identify with the genre. I argue that there is precedence for the church to utilize hip-hop music because the church has a history of utilizing popular culture, in particular music, to attract and engage young people in church. Moreover, individuals are formed and gain identity from more than just church music, and being aware of popular culture helps the church develop healthy relationships with young people because it tells young people that the church recognizes their music is more than just a fad, but an essential piece of their identity. My thesis expands on the historical moments where the church has used secular music to evangelize young people while offering portraits of two churches, The Tribe in New York City and Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, that currently use a genre of popular music as a tool for helping young people gain a closer relationship with God. In addition, this thesis argues for the use of curriculum, a pedagogical approach, for engaging young black males in spiritual formation. In order to create this curriculum, I listened to a large selection of hip-hop music, past and current, and evaluated

the lyrics and themes of each song to select the songs I thought would lead to great dialogue among the participants. This thesis concludes with the creation of a Christian curriculum that uses hip-hop music as its foundation.

This dissertation is an investigation of trends in the current US system of education, as informed by historical movements for autonomous education in the period of Reconstruction and in the 1960s and 70s. The driving questions of the dissertation are 1. How to understand the system of education in the US as having a historical and current role in the preservation of an existing structure of power, 2. How did historical movements that focused on the creation of autonomous forms of education challenge the given order of society?, and 3. What would a renewal of movement for autonomous education look like in the current moment?

I examine historical, theoretical and literary texts in my analysis of the role of education in US society. My theoretical framework for the dissertation comes from the collective work of El Kilombo Intergaláctico, an organization in Durham, North Carolina, and the work of Alvaro Reyes on the crisis of capitalist society and Blackness as a political alternative. In my historical and literary research, I focus particularly on educational policy documents that demonstrate the ways in which movements for autonomous education shaped state education, and literary texts that share a vision of collective autonomous education in the US in a way that both recalls past movements and gestures toward new possibilities for movement.

Ultimately, I argue that the tradition of the creation of autonomous forms of education in the US, and existing forms of autonomous education in social movements in Latin America, have the potential to once again provide insight toward the creation of alternative forms of education in the US now that would be different from earlier and current forms of US education for domination and control.