SELF-INITIATED CREATIVITY IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM

In this study, the researcher used an action research methodology to investigate the self-initiated creative processes and artifacts of his fourth and fifth grade students over the course of one school year in an attempt to shed light on the pedagogical effects of an elementary classroom that allows its students significant creative agency. The majority of the literature on the self-initiated creativity of children examines the work of primary grade students in an art room setting, revealing a gap in the literature and the need for a study regarding self-initiated creative processes and products made by children in an intermediate general classroom setting. The research site was a democratically based, child-centered classroom in a private day school where students were encouraged to share in the development of the conceptual, curricular, and physical aspects of the learning environment. The self-initiated creative activities of the children provided a unique lens through which the researcher was able to view and understand his students’ learning styles, gain insight into their metacognitive processes, and observe the ways they navigated their classroom space. Empowering students to become critical agents through choice and autonomy led to arts-based approaches of inquiry and spontaneous creative learning experiences. An analysis of the data contributed to an understanding of six essential principles for facilitating self-initiated creativity within the everyday constraints of a traditional schooling environment, as well as cautionary revelations about how I could have been more effective at co-constructing an enduring culture that supported self-initiated creative learning in collaboration with my colleagues at the research site

Communication

Machine communication - to interact not just via but also with machines - has transformed contemporary communication. It puts us not just in conversation with one another but also with our current machinery. By analyzing the alienness of this computational communication, through a close reading of interfaces and a field study of software development, this volume uncovers what it means to "communicate" today

Communication

Contemporary communication puts us not only in conversation with one another but also with our machinery. Machine communication—to communicate not just via but also with machines—is therefore the focus of this volume. Diving into digital communications history, Finn Brunton brings to the fore the alienness of computational communication by looking at network timekeeping, automated trolling, and early attempts at communication with extraterrestrial life. Picking up this fascination with inhuman communication, Mercedes Bunz then performs a close reading of interaction design and interfaces to show how technology addresses humans (as very young children). Finally, Paula Bialski shares her findings from a field study of software development, analyzing the communicative forms that occur when code is written by separate people. Today, communication unfolds merely between two or more conscious entities but often includes an invisible third party. Inspired by this drastic shift, this volume uncovers new meanings of what it means “to communicate.

Maybe She Found Me in a Poem

Maybe She Found Me in a Poem explores my own family relationship and family stories through a variety of poetic forms, persona poetry, and prose pieces centered on an imagined relationship with my grandmother who died before I was born. The collection asks, “How much are our family stories our own?” and “Can we create memory?” Themes of haunting, ghosts, queerness, shared memory, death, and burial are carried throughout the collection and brought forward in their respective sections. Images are placed throughout as part of the collection to amplify the “haunting” power of the text

Being formless: a Daoist movement practice

This study aims to develop a Daoist movement practice. Based on qi-energy, Daoism, a Chinese ontological study of being, suggests that Dao is the formless changing of in-between being. I explore how the formless nature of Dao informs my own creative practice. I argue that formlessness signifies an uncertain, unexpected, and constantly changing boundary of the self. Improvised movement emerges from within, and as an extension, of formlessness. The improvisational mode considered here is thereby experiential, an expanded way of being, rather than compositional. This thesis presents a somatic practicing process of embodying Dao in emergent movements. Chapter 1 discusses a practice-as-research methodology, which relates the ways in which practice and theory intersect to the relationship of yin and yang from a perspective of qi-energy. In Chapter 2, I discuss the somatic experience of improvised movement arising from qi and rethink the understandings of "practice" in the encounter between movement-based practices and Daoism. In Chapter 3, I borrow Eugene T. Gendlin's theory of a felt sense and explore how the felt experiencing of qi is activated by a holistic awareness and gives rise to movement through the body based on the Daoist concept of the changing self. Then I explore four diverse states of the in-between inspired by the Daoist philosophy of "light" through improvised movement in Chapter 4. Furthermore, in Chapter 5 I develop a sequential transformation of in-between states toward Dao and discuss this process from a Daoist view of the self. A boundary of the changing states is examined in a series of emergent movements as a process of practicing the self in Chapter 6. I finally reflect upon Dao in my developed principle that focuses on an awareness of subtle emergences, and conclude formlessness, as it corresponds to Dao, is an emerging felt sense of being that is constantly changing before interpretation within the self in this movement practice. DVD abstracts: DVD chapter 1: Four states This series of edited videos offers the viewer a flavour of the four in-between states developed over the course of this research (see Chapter 4). Some of the videos are supported with poetic words. Filmmaker Lotti Gompertz's footage uncovers the subtleties of the energy and emergent movement in the four states. DVD chapter 2: Sharing a practice This video consists of documentary material recorded by a still camcorder during a five-session workshop conducted during this research. The highlights of each stage appear briefly, in sequence, presenting the sense of transformation felt throughout the workshop. Footage of the participant and myself are juxtaposed to reveal the differences and similarities of the movement and energy emerging between us that helped me understand my self and Daoism during the workshop (see Chapter 5). DVD chapter 3: Continuous transformation Drawing on footage shot by Lotti Gompertz, this video presents the highlights of each state of my emergent movement. It provides the viewer with a taste of the subtle transformation of the emergent movement and energy involved in becoming a wu-wei (see Chapter 5). DVD chapter 4: Practicing the self This video documents a session in which the focus was on an awareness of subtle changes and emergences. Documented by a still camcorder, this edited video is composed of footage of a guest participant and myself working in the session (see Chapter 6), allowing emergent movement to unfold. The gradual transformation of a felt sense of the self during the session is revealed through subtitles that capture the words we spoke while moving

What Silence Says: Family, Race, Identity, and the American Dream in Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You

This research paper attempts to legitimize contemporary fiction author, Celeste Ng, and her writing as worthy of inquiry in the field of literature. This paper explores Ng’s debut novel Everything I Never Told You and the use of silence in the text in conjunction with the theme of identity. Everything I Never Told You complicates and frustrates the conventional boundaries of ethnic literature and family drama by interverting stereotypes. Ng utilizes silence throughout the novel, highlighting how damaging silence can be to a family through the death of the Lee’s middle daughter, Lydia. However, Ng also deploys the use of healing silence as the remaining family members come back together to reconcile. Further complications with silence arise when readers begin to examine the racialization of the American Dream. Celeste Ng reveals that silence ensnares identity through the relationships of the Lee family and their individual failures with the American Dream. Demonstrating destructive qualities before Lydia’s death and healing components after, Ng utilizes silence not only as a coping mechanism against the racialized American Dream, but also as an act of resistance