Our Voices Matter: Engaging Middle Grades Hispanic Students In a Summer Literacy Program

This study explored the literacy engagement of Hispanic rising seventh grade adolescents during a summer literacy program. Using a participatory social justice mixed methods design (Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2018), students’ voices were used to design and refine an instructional model proposed to increase their level of engagement in literacy tasks. Through a literacy motivation survey and focus group interviews, students’ perception of motivating and demotivating literacy experiences affecting their levels of engagement were gathered and analyzed. Following this exploration, a design-based approach was employed to create an initial model that would be refined by identifying the enhancing and inhibiting factors influencing levels of engagement for a span of four weeks. At the conclusion of the study, a retrospective analysis revealed four major findings: (1) students value choice and agency; (2) a multiplicity of identities exists despite students being from the same subgroup; (3) culturally sustaining environments are valuable; and (4) out-of-school spaces are beneficial for student learning experiences. Higher levels of engagement were observed and recorded when students chose texts of interest during independent reading, as well as having a voice in other areas such as topics and time spent on given tasks. While these students have similar linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, they came with different experiences and interests not specific to their culture. Because this study took place in a culturally sustaining environment (Paris & Alim, 2017), the researcher, faculty, and students were involved in refining the instruction. Finally, this study corroborates previous research on afterschool/out-of-school programs as spaces where students can successfully be positioned as co-constructors of the knowledge and learning experiences for themselves and their peers

Spatial manifestations of two parishes

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1985.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH.Supervised by William L. Porter.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-158).I believe that we become human only through contact with one another, and I am interested in our architectural expression and accommodation of our life in communities specifically communities larger than the family and smaller than the city. I have chosen to look at two Catholic parishes as they are examples of community with a long history and a will to exist as a community for its own sake. This thesis investigates two drastically different Californian parishes, using interviews of the pastors, priests and nuns (the "leadership"), and analyzes , historically and architecturally, each parish. This investigation attempts to unveil the architectural language for community spaces implicit in these communities' created space and their perceptions and use of it. One parish realizes their conscious desire to intensify the sense of community not by being exclusive, but by accelerating activity within the parish and providing manifold opportunity for the members of the community to reach out to inhabitants of the greater neighborhood and city. By contrast, the other parish, after a turnover of ethnic groups in its constituency, has closed in on itself and reinforces a communal identity established with the tools of ecclesiastical dogma and purified ethnic identity. The contrast between the two parishes gives me the basis from which I can investigate an architectural language which appears to be essential in a conscious support of community life in our cities . The fundamentals of this language are described in the sections on "communal space " and "founded space". The formation of these two archetypes of community space is usually achieved through a dialectical process, where founded space is the built memory and again the seed for the flourishing of communal space; and a space. in which an active community thrives is always a response to and a re-formation of a space already founded.Christine Macy.M.Arch

Festival architecture /

Includes bibliographical references and index.Architectuurfocu

Afterimages : Representing the Absent Body

Arguing that "the elimination of the human, of the very body, is the elimination of content in the name of pure form", McElroy studies the work of six American and Canadian artists and architects. Artist's statements. Biographical notes on artists and curator. 9 bibl.ref

Resounding Silences:Subtle Norm Regulation in Everyday Interactions

<p>In this article we suggest a mechanism for norm regulation that does not rely on explicit information exchange or costly reinforcement, but rather on the sensitivity of group members to social cues in their environment. We examine whether brief conversational silences can (a) signal a threat to one's inclusionary status in the group and (b) motivate people to shift their attitudes to be in line with group norms. In two experimentsusing videotaped and actual conversations, respectivelywe manipulated the presence of a brief silence after group members expressed a certain attitude. As predicted, attitudes changed relative to the norm after such a brief silence. Those highly motivated to belong changed their attitude to become more normative, whereas those less motivated to belong shifted away from the group norm. The results suggest that social regulation may occur through very subtle means.</p>