Hos in the garden: staging and resisting neoliberal creativity

This article takes up the challenge of extending and enhancing the literature on arts interventions and creative city policies by considering the role of feminist and queer artistic praxis in contemporary urban politics. Here I reflect on the complicities and potentialities of two Toronto-based arts interventions: Dig In and the Dirty Plotz cabaret. I analyse an example of community based arts strategy that strived to ‘revitalise’ one disinvested Toronto neighbourhood. I also reflect on my experience performing drag king urban planner, Toby Sharp. Reflecting on these examples, I show how market-oriented arts policies entangle women artists in the cultivation of spaces of depoliticised feminism, homonormativity and white privilege. However, I also demonstrate how women artists are playfully and performatively pushing back at hegemonic regimes with the radical aesthetic praxis of cabaret. I maintain that bringing critical feminist arts spaces and cabaret practice into discussions about neoliberal urban policies uncovers sites of feminist resistance and solidarity, interventions that challenge violent processes of colonisation and privatisation on multiple fronts

More than Mechanisms: Shifting Ideologies for Asset-Based Learning in Engineering Education

Learning spaces, the practices in which people engage, and the representations they use are ideological. Ideologies are coherent constellations of values, beliefs, and practices that impose order on how disciplines like engineering operate. Historically, engineering spaces have been dominated by a relatively technocratic, rationalistic, and exclusionary ideology, but more recent attention to asset-based approaches to engineering education offers transformative promise. Asset-based ideologies can reshape images of legitimized engineering practice, recasting engineering education to disrupt dominant exclusionary ideologies. This paper describes an assets-based learning space, SETC, that recaptures the imagination of engineering for technological and social change. Drawing from extensive ethnographic observational data, interviews, and artifacts produced in SETC, we describe aspects of this learning space, including the use of representations and practices that specifically support expansive forms of engineering practiced by youth of color. We also explore how SETC’s commitment to antiracist and liberatory practices, including shifting relationships to technology and engineering design in service of enhancing life, manifests in its transformative mission to design programs and activities for youth that disrupt dominant ideologies. SETC centers making and tinkering as legitimate expressions of engineering, and we present a case of a youth participant to illustrate the rich engineering learning that the space makes possible. The case features Naeem engineering a gear-based project that expresses his interpretation of Black Lives Matter. Situated in his long history in the learning space, we explore how youth’s interactions with conventionalized representations—which serve to maintain dominant ideologies—are enhanced by asset-based commitments. This paper contributes specific recommendations for designing spaces for new ideologies, making engineering education more equitable for youth of color while also expanding notions of what engineering is and the forms that it can take

10th Annual Research Week- Event Proceedings

10th Annual Research Week Research Reconsidered: A Decade of Inquir

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 54 Number 3, Winter 2013

16 - TO CATCH A THIEF by Vince Beiser. Mathematician George Mohler has helped equip police in Santa Cruz and L.A. with an algorithm that predicts where crimes might happen next. Is this the future of policing? 22 - HOW TO PREVENT A BONFIRE OF THE HUMANITIES by Michael S. Malone \u2775, MBA \u2777. A veteran chronicler of Silicon Valley looks at why the high-tech industry needs-and wants-folks who know how to tell a story. 26 - A POEM, A PRAYER, AND A MARTINI FOR THE RHINO Two conversations with Chancellor William J. Rewak, S.J.-who\u27s just published his first collection of poetry, The Right Taxi. 30 - THIS WILL NOT BE ON THE TEST. by Mitch Finley \u2773. For students of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, there\u27s neither homework nor grades. But there is love of learning-and a special connection to SCU. 32 - THE PLAY\u27S THE THING by Jesse Hamlin. Kurds, Arabs, countrymen: Shakespeare Iraq brings the bard to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival like you\u27ve never heard him. And you can thank Peter Friedrich \u2791.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/sc_mag/1020/thumbnail.jp

STEAM Maker Education: Conceal/Reveal of Personal, Artistic and Computational Dimensions in High School Student Projects

Much of maker education’s expansion has focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) learning, leaving out equally promising opportunities for integrating arts learning. In this paper we share findings from a project in which high school students created electronic-textiles-based art representing features of a community important to them as a part of an elective high school computer science class. We addressed the following research questions: (1) What kinds of personal and community meanings did students convey through their maker projects? (2) How did students engage with artistic dimensions in their projects? (3) How did coding interactive features support students’ artwork? Drawing on daily observations, pre/post interviews, and documentation of students’ artifacts (photographs of in-process designs, design notebooks, and artist statements), we developed four case studies of students as they made art representing their communities using electronic-textiles as their primary medium. Our findings reveal how making became a means of personal, artistic expression with quite literal layering of coded meanings, and how maker activities can integrate art. In the discussion we consider the opportunities for authentic artistic expression in maker education by distinguishing the difference between craft and art in a maker education context. We consider the ways in which these ideas have implications for equity, pedagogy, and future research

A Study Of Urban Principals’ Perceptions Of Technology Implementation And STEM Program Sustainability

STEM careers are becoming more prominent in today’s workforce. The platform of today’s industries derives from science, technology, engineering, and math, the study of which ultimately provides students and stakeholders with the foundation to function in a globally diverse society. Due to the recent budget shortfalls, the existence of STEM programs within this Texas Urban School District was threatened. District principals were directed to review their respective budgets to determine where potential cuts could be made. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to describe the perceptions of urban district principals regarding technology implementation and identify recommendations for the sustainability of STEM programs within this Texas Urban School District. This research study consisted of six STEM principals, with two of each representing the elementary, middle, and high school levels. The research questions that guide this study are: (1) What are the perceptions of principals regarding the implementation of technology within urban schools? (2) What are the perceptions of principals regarding the sustainability of STEM programs within urban schools? (3) How do urban principals develop knowledge about STEM education? (4) What are the perceptions of principals regarding barriers to learning for STEM students? The results of this study revealed that technology implementation is indeed a vital component in urban education. Collectively, implementation of the technology needed for STEM learning apparently cannot be fully realized if principals lack access due to funding or other circumstances that repress its utilization. Technology implementation and STEM program sustainability can be increased through programs and businesses that consistently provide STEM resources, higher education contacts, and career pathway opportunities. Continuous professional development and training is needed for STEM instructors, as they educate students as technology evolves and as they strive to support a growing workforce. This study found that STEM learning and teachers’ technology implementation are interwoven and work together to build a bridge to prepare students for today’s workforce

InSight, Spring 2016

https://ir.uiowa.edu/insight/1004/thumbnail.jp

More than mechanisms: shifting ideologies for asset-based learning in engineering education

Learning spaces, the practices in which people engage, and the representations they use are ideological. Ideologies are coherent constellations of values, beliefs, and practices that impose order on how disciplines like engineering operate. Historically, engineering spaces have been dominated by a relatively technocratic, rationalistic, and exclusionary ideology, but more recent attention to asset-based approaches to engineering education offers transformative promise. Asset-based ideologies can reshape images of legitimized engineering practice, recasting engineering education to disrupt dominant exclusionary ideologies. This paper describes an assets-based learning space, SETC, that recaptures the imagination of engineering for technological and social change. Drawing from extensive ethnographic observational data, interviews, and artifacts produced in SETC, we describe aspects of this learning space, including the use of representations and practices that specifically support expansive forms of engineering practiced by youth of color. We also explore how SETC’s commitment to antiracist and liberatory practices, including shifting relationships to technology and engineering design in service of enhancing life, manifests in its transformative mission to design programs and activities for youth that disrupt dominant ideologies. SETC centers making and tinkering as legitimate expressions of engineering, and we present a case of a youth participant to illustrate the rich engineering learning that the space makes possible. The case features Naeem engineering a gear-based project that expresses his interpretation of Black Lives Matter. Situated in his long history in the learning space, we explore how youth’s interactions with conventionalized representations—which serve to maintain dominant ideologies—are enhanced by asset-based commitments. This paper contributes specific recommendations for designing spaces for new ideologies, making engineering education more equitable for youth of color while also expanding notions of what engineering is and the forms that it can take.Published versio

A Phenomenological Exploration of the Lived Experiences of Second-Year African American Male Students on Predominantly White Campuses through Critical Race Theory

Title: A Phenomenological Exploration of the Lived Experiences of Second-Year African American Male Students on Predominantly White Campuses through the Lens of Critical Race Theory Abstract: The critical nature of the first year has pushed thousands of colleges and universities across the United States to create intentional programs specifically for first-year students. Less understood are the experiences of students during their second year – a different and, at times, even more challenging period. Second-year students face a myriad of issues, including achieving competence, desiring autonomy, establishing identity, and developing purpose, with many experiencing a phenomenon called the sophomore slump. While recent studies analyze both the second year of college and the sophomore slump, few studies delineate the experiences of African American male students who statistically perform at rates that tend to fall below their White peers regarding retention, academic performance, and graduation rates. As such, this study aimed to acquire a better understanding of the lived experiences of African American male second-year students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs), as they navigated barriers commonly associated with the sophomore slump. Phenomenology provided an opportunity to thoroughly analyze the essence of the phenomena through the stories, experiences, and perspectives of participants. In addition, critical race theory was selected as a conceptual lens because this theoretical framework allowed for the examination of racism, inequality, and the inequitable distribution of racialized power and privilege within the structure of a college campus. Open-ended interviews were conducted with nine African American male college seniors at PWIs via Zoom, a cloud-based video communications application. Four themes emerged through a phenomenological analysis: academic confusion, mental health, faculty relations, and maturation. Two additional themes emerged from a critical race analysis: campus hostility/peer engagement and greater representation. Findings from this study provide implications for holistic student development and highlight measures to promote a more equitable and inclusive educational experience for students, particularly African American second-year college students at PWIs