Proceedings of the 1st Annual Higher Education Flipped Learning Conference

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From the Sticks: An Examination of Rural, Southern Literacies Within and Without the University

This dissertation examines rural, Southern culture's strained relationship with academia, specifically as it relates to the composition classroom, which is the place where students are formally introduced to academic discourse and standard, "public" literacy practices. Operating from John Dewey's principle of "warranted assertibility," I analyze the multiple ways in which the urban North has interpreted and defined the rural South in an effort to more accurately determine the population's cultural currency. Using Kenneth Burke's identification theory and George Herbert Mead's interactionist theory, I investigate historical, ethnographic and theoretical data in order to understand how American rhetorical identification with or dis-identification from rural, Southern populations influences the culture's treatment in academic circles. Using the work of W.J. Cash, Allen Batteau, Barbara Ching, Gerald Creed and others, I theorize how and why rural, Southern culture has become a national symbol of anti-intellectualism and thus a blind spot in most cultural studies efforts. This investigation also calls into question the ways in which academics designate marginalized "others." Academia has become so preoccupied with global cultures that many regional literacies have been left unexamined and at times, devalued as too familiar or local for serious academic consideration. Ralph Waldo Emerson's belief that the "near explains the far" grounds my argument that we should continually turn our attention to local as well as global cultures in the spirit of Berthoff's dialectical model. The rural, white, South has long been regarded as ideologically dominant when in fact it is one of the most economically, culturally, and academically marginalized populations in the U.S. I follow through the consequences of these associations for rural, Southern students as they consider and develop their academic identities in the university through the relation of personal experience and the ethnographic study of a former composition student who also hails from the rural South. Using a dialogic model, my ethnographic study operates as a kind of collaborative literacy narrative: the student and I speak from our own experiences as rural, Southern women at different stages in the academy. This form of scholarship is a new way for teachers to engage with students from a common background using sameness rather than difference as the impetus for research. Since geographic or home literacy values factor in to our classroom contexts, the denigration of the rural Southerner - or any unrecognized marginal group - can and should inform the work we do as rhetoric and composition teachers. I argue that marginalized students are often intimately acquainted with "double-consciousness," what Paulo Freire calls conscientização, or critical consciousness, which if acknowledged and used, could help students who see themselves as culturally disadvantaged feel more competent and engaged in the composition classroom. Louise Rosenblatt's reader-response theory explains how a student's "experiential reservoir" affects not only her sense of self in the academy but her composing behaviors in the university as well. Currently, the rural South figures into our work minimally, perhaps as part of a cursory inclusion of regional texts. In this dissertation, I describe how we might take this population's literacies more seriously by examining the ways in which rural educators have engaged their students. In much the way feminist pedagogy begins from the premise of an alternative, feminine way of knowing, I argue that the literacies of rural, Southern populations can similarly ground our pedagogy through Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy. Freire's pedagogy, which can be traced to rural contexts, is often misinterpreted as revolutionary and impractical when in fact it was designed to address blind spots such as the marginalization of populations such as the rural, Southern university student. Myles Horton's Highlander Folk School serves as an example of critical pedagogy at work in contexts beyond Freire's Brazil. A rural Southerner, Horton used local knowledge and ways of knowing to more effectively engage and mobilize his students. From these examples, I articulate the possibility of a "rural" pedagogy in the composition classroom. Though philosophically defined by rural, Southern epistemologies and literacies, this pedagogical theory is designed to be re-made to address any classroom population

Ballet Pedagogy as Kinesthetic Collaboration: Exploring Kinesthetic Dialogue in an Embodied Student-Teacher Relationship

The twenty-first century ballet class often retains traditional organization, beginning with the barre work, continuing with the centre practice, adage, pirouettes, and allegro. However, the pedagogical demands on teachers have evolved within that framework due to critical questioning of how factors such as patriarchal underpinnings of class structure, the students lived experience, and the efficacy of newly added pedagogical strategies influence dance education. Employing ethnographic methods, in the form of two separate studies, this research addresses how embodied student-teacher relationships based on multisensory perception can create kinesthetic dialogue, which facilitates the transmission of embodied knowledge. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how an embodied student-teacher relationship manifests itself in the ballet studio, highlighting whether kinesthetic dialogue facilitates the transfer of bodily knowledge. The questions driving the research were: What combination of verbal and non-verbal communication is observed between the teacher and the students in each environment? Do instances within this communication illustrate the pedagogical tool of kinesthetic dialogue? Do moments within this pedagogical dialogue appear to trigger previously developed body memory in the students, based on their reactions to instructions, as well as in their performance of the material? Ethnographic data collection techniques included: participant observation, teacher interviews, student email interviews, student focus groups as well as student surveys. Results are reported using both a priori themes as well as themes that emerged from the data. The data interpretation across both studies is reported using two overarching pedagogical themes: the application of traditional pedagogical strategies with their accompanying ideologies, and the incorporation of innovative techniques that facilitated a progressive approach to learning. Literature demonstrates that the student-teacher relationship is saturated with a patriarchal history, hierarchical constraints and external aesthetic expectations. However, critical analysis by scholars and educators regarding institutionalization, the body, and pedagogy are shifting the foundations of traditional ballet for future generations. This research indicates that bringing ballets well-established pedagogical tools to consciousness has the potential to create more effective learning situations. An understanding of kinesthetic dialogue can facilitate the conscious application of a reciprocal mode of kinesthetic communication that ballet teachers have intuitively employed for centuries

Learning To Refuse: Pedagogy, Protest, And Lecture-Performance, 1964-1975

This study examines how artists in the US reimagined aesthetic practice through performances of refusal from 1964 to 1975. Attending to the emergent genre of the lecture-performance, I analyze pedagogical projects that articulate dissent through interventions into existing models of knowledge, asking: what is to be learned from saying no? These projects respond, in part, to artists’ encounters with university training. They redefine artistic activity through critical engagements with the labor of the information worker, a figure sartorially invoked by the bespectacled uniform of a professorial archetype. Artists deployed the lecture format to imagine how knowledge might be assembled otherwise: within counter-institutional frameworks, beyond authorized discourse, through embodied tactics of performativity, and toward socially transformative ends. They did so at a moment when artists’ academicization proceeded as an explicitly gendered project that privileged masculine-coded cognitive labor over and against modes of work coded as feminized craft. Jettisoning these divisions, the lecture-performance situates knowledge in the specificity of embodied agents. In this way, lecture-performance renegotiates the discursive practices that regulate bodies of knowledge and knowledgeable bodies. Placing these developments in conversation with the agitational speech of artist activism, my study focuses on affiliates of the 1970 Art Strike Against Racism, Sexism, War, and Repression. It tracks forms of pedagogy and protest across a range of media beyond the lecture-performance, including video lectures, pamphlets, and photographic series by Robert Morris, Adrian Piper, Faith Ringgold, and Andy Warhol. Its case studies toggle between artworks, performative speech acts, and direct action, arguing for the porousness of their categorical boundaries in this period. Redressing the claim that artists’ strikes, protests, and boycotts foreclose possibilities for productive engagement, I route practices of refusal toward their generative, dialogic capacities. Charting the convergence of movements in art and activism from 1964 to 1975, this study asks what we have to learn from statements of refusal delivered at the interstices of academic lecterns, political podiums, and sites of artistic display

7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21)

Information and communication technologies together with new teaching paradigms are reshaping the learning environment.The International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd) aims to become a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences,opinions and research results relating to the preparation of students and the organization of educational systems.Doménech I De Soria, J.; Merello Giménez, P.; Poza Plaza, EDL. (2021). 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD21.2021.13621EDITORIA

Activist Biology

Brazilian society was shaken by turmoil in the 1920s and 1930s. The country was rocked by heated debates over race and immigration, burgeoning social movements in cities and the countryside, entrenched oligarchies clinging to power, and nature being despoiled. Against this turbulent backdrop, a group of biology scholars at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro joined the drive to renew the Brazilian nation, claiming as their weapon the voice of their fledgling field. Without discarding scientific rigor, they embraced biology as a creed and activism as a conviction—and achieved success in their bid to influence public policy in environmental protection and the rational use of natural resources. For the first time in English, Brazil’s leading environmental historian, Regina Horta Duarte, brings us a nuanced analysis of the National Museum of Brazil’s contribution to that country’s formation and history. In "Activist Biology", Duarte explores the careers of three of these scientists as they leveraged biology as a strategy for change. Devoted to educational initiatives, they organized exhibits, promoted educational film and radio, wrote books, published science communication magazines, fostered school museums, and authored textbooks for young people. Their approach was transdisciplinary, and their reliance on multimedia formats was pioneering. Capturing a crucial period in Brazil’s history, this portrait of science as a creative and potentially transformative pathway will intrigue anyone fascinated by environmental history, museums, and the history of science. Duarte skillfully shows how Brazilian science furthered global scientific knowledge in ways that are relevant now more than ever

Civic Engagement 2.0: A Blended Pedagogy of Multiliteracies and Activism

This study looks at the practice of teaching civic engagement through digital and Web 2.0 tools and examines the impact on agency and self-efficacy of first-year writing students. The primary focus is studying student attitudes toward use of these tools, civic engagement in general, and the perceived value of engaging civically through use of these tools with the hopes of better understanding the value of this work and the impact it will have on future civic, community, and political engagement. Based on the findings of a triad of studies published in 2012 – a CIRCLE study (“That’s Not Democracy”), Giovanna Mascheroni’s study of Italian youth and political uses of the web, and a study conducted by DoSomething.org – the researcher designed a first-year composition course that asked students to choose a cause or issue for the duration of the semester and take on roles of informer, reformer, advocate, and activist on three fronts: Twitter (microblogging), Wordpress (blogging), and YouTube (digital advocacy videos). A feminist methodology was used for this study, understanding that the participatory nature of the research was an essential part of the ethos of the researcher. Qualitative data was collected through analysis of student work, reflection essays, and semi-structured focus group conversations. Through the focus group discussions, the student participants and the researcher worked collaboratively to create knowledge. The findings of this study echoed those of the three studies mentioned above. In addition to showing that instruction and experience with digital civic engagement are linked to an increased likelihood to engage in the future, the study showed that there are numerous benefits to teaching new media, civic, and academic literacies through an activist lens in writing studies. Students acquire a host of academic and professional skills that will help them succeed in the classroom and their future careers. Beyond acquisition of research and 21st century writing skills, teaching digital activism empowers students, increases agency, and helps them grasp the value of disrupting existing, outdated, or oppressive power dynamics in effective ways. Finally, it helps develop lifelong learners who are self-motivated

Changing Someone Else’s Story: How Social Studies Teachers Transform The Discipline

This dissertation examines the influence of critical pedagogy in social studies. Research indicates critical pedagogy’s lack of influence on social studies teachers (Ross, 2016; Maloy & LaRoche, 2015; Evans, 2008). However, recent political events in North Carolina and the United States, as well as the long-term effects of neoliberal policies in education, have encouraged teachers to engage in pedagogical resistance. This three-article dissertation studies the pedagogical practices of current K-12 social studies teachers in North Carolina who identify themselves as critical teachers. The first article illustrates common themes found within the teachers’ pedagogies. Using narrative inquiry, I interviewed teachers at different times of the study. The findings indicate the recognition of students as knowledge holders, evoking social justice as part of the curriculum, engaging in self-reflection, the assertion of local communities into social studies, and demonstrating critical care pedagogies as contributors to the existence of critical pedagogy in social studies classrooms. Implications suggest that scholars need to reconsider the existence of critical pedagogy in social studies. The second article investigates the effects of the body and voice on critical thought in the social studies classroom. Using the sociology of the body as a theory, I discovered three manifestations through observations and interviews: the mobility of the teacher’s body, positive voices, and situating the body as a commodity. The research suggests that these three manifestations supported the development of critical conversations in social studies classrooms. The introduction of a sociological theory indicates the need for critical, interdisciplinary work in social studies research. The third article provides space for the voices of two teachers of color in the form of counter-narratives. Grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit), the teachers and I created counter-narratives as resistance to dominant narratives found in social studies. The counter-narratives challenge racism and other forms of prejudice. The counter-narratives also establish community and social justice as integral pedagogical components. The implication of counter-narratives suggests the need to establish new historical and contemporary chronicles within social studies. Furthermore, it suggests the need to engage with the increasing diversities of K-12 student populations in North America. While each article represents a divergent view, all three articles reconceptualize critical pedagogy as organic practices, with little influence from higher education. The research positions these teachers as organic intellectuals.Doctor of Philosoph