In adult education, the term "interdisciplinarity" is often treated as an agent for transforming teaching, learning, and research. This appreciation of the concept proliferates despite the fact that its actualization often supports competing interpretations and practices. Many adult educators are unaware of the distinctions made among…

Postmodern picturebooks do not follow the established norms of traditional picturebooks and instead invite readers to navigate nonlinear structures and attend to metafictive devices, including counterpoint and multiple narratives, experimental typography, nonlinearity, intertextuality, and ambiguities in meaning. These qualities challenge readers…

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine a college composition class where students are introduced to reading and writing genres representing various types along the lines of race, sex/gender, sexual orientation, class, education, etc. This study was sensitive to the identities of the student participants and the hegemonic narratives that…

Federal discourse pertaining to college access requires clarified definition. Use of the college access construct has become commonplace, yet no unified refinement of meaning exists. This study, which covered U.S. presidential communications from January 2009 to October 2021, addressed the abstraction of language as leaders presented ideas,…

This dissertation examines the relationship between American fiction and computing. More specifically, it argues that each domain explored similar formal possibilities during a period I refer to as Early Postmodernism (1965-1980). In the case of computing, the 60s and 70s represent a turning point in which modern systems and approaches were…

This dissertation has seven chapters. In chapter one, I discuss through why I am doing this dissertation, my positionality, and how I learned from and with all of my committee members. Chapter two is where I situate my dissertation study through developing a social theory of quantitative literacy by translating a social theory of literacy (Barton…

Within the past two decades, federal and state governments have increased the frequency, number, and importance of standardized tests in elementary and secondary American schools. These tests are characterized by recognition-based frameworks that privilege "best" or "correct" answers, processes, and understandings which remain…

Traditional art foundations models focus on teaching freshman level art students strategies of visual composition through the use of the elements and principles of design. These visual qualities are presented as the fundamental basis for all art compositions. Rooted in the early 20th century modernist concept of formalism, the elements and…

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of inclusive postmodern visual arts education for students with ED. The research examines arts learning, social skill interaction development, and general academic achievement. Previous research in the field of special education has focused almost exclusively on behavioral interventions from…

This dissertation used qualitative, interpretive methods to explore African American and Latino/a community college students' use of autoethnographic writing to express experiences of marginalization and sense of belonging on their college campus. Using postmodernism and critical race theory as theoretical frameworks, I investigated how students…

We now exist in an era where for the first time, symbolic representation may precede the natural world in human experience. Aristotle's a priori terrain has been upstaged. We are changing the nature of our own evolution in profound ways. The question becomes, "How do we transcend the chaos of meaning in this post-modern condition or…

This dissertation offers a study of proper names and naming as a conceptual and thematic anchor in the work of S.Y. Agnon. Proper names, I argue, constitute an underexplored and highly fruitful prism through which to read literature, and specifically Agnon's fiction. My study consists of a series of readings in several of Agnon's major…

This phenomenological, mixed-method study compared and contrasted virtual K-12 school leadership with traditional face-to-face leadership. All 106 participants served for a minimum of two years in each setting. The study was conducted in two phases in order to reveal consensus and dissensus points of view. Conceptually, a postmodern framework was…

This qualitative study, which uses a narrative research approach informed by Riessman's (2008) work, explores the "college choice" experience of seven adult students, age 25 and older, who pursue postsecondary education at a non-degree granting, less-than-two-year private for-profit institution in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. My…

This eleven-month ethnographic study puts critical discourse analysis in dialogue with postmodern conceptualizations of space and place to explore how eight educators talk about space and in the process, produce racialized spaces in Roche Bois, Mauritius. The macro-historical context of racialization of this urban marginalized community informs…