Browsing by Author "Dubinsky, James M."
Now showing 1 - 20 of 31
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- Agency in the Barrio: Exploring the Intersection of Participation, Politics and Urban Development in Guatemala CityBrink-Halloran, Brendan Jon (Virginia Tech, 2013-11-19)Completed as a series of article-length manuscripts, this dissertation reflects four interrelated aspects of my research on the topics of citizen participation, political practices of vote buying and approaches to community development in low-income urban areas, in the collection of neighborhoods known as Ciudad Peronia on the edge of Guatemala City. Together, the four articles in this thesis explore varying aspects of the social and political dynamics present in the interrelated processes of community organization and local development in Ciudad Peronia. The essays survey the complex array of contextual features that influence local outcomes, while also highlighting the important decisions of key actors. I highlight the interplay between context and agency, and in doing so, provide insight into the efforts of individuals and groups to construct meaningful citizenship rights, especially to basic living conditions, by means of a diverse array of self-organization initiatives and a variety of engagement strategies with the state. Despite the many obstacles revealed in this research, numerous individuals made a concerted effort to secure dignity and inclusion for themselves and members of their communities.
- Assessing the Impact of Writing Centers on Student WritingLama, Prabin Tshering (Virginia Tech, 2018-04-30)This study assesses the influence of writing center tutorials on student writing and presents tutoring best practices. Writing center scholars have emphasized the need for evidence-based studies to understand how one-on-one tutorials influence student writing practices. After examining twenty tutorial recordings along with their pre-and post-intervention drafts in two state universities (ten in each university), the author traced the influence of writing center tutorials on students' post-session revisions and identified tutoring best practices. The findings show that all the twenty students included in the study followed up on the issues addressed in their tutorials, in some form or the other, in their post-session drafts. In terms of tutoring strategies, the findings revealed that although most of the tutors in the study could identify and speak about global concerns (i.e. development, structure, purpose, audience), many lacked specific strategies to address these concerns effectively. To address this concern, this study identifies tutoring best practices related to global concerns. Furthermore, the findings also revealed that the tutors faced challenges navigating the directive/non-directive continuum of tutoring. To address this concern, this study presents tutoring best practices to demonstrate how tutors can shift flexible between directive and non-directive strategies during a session.
- Creating Better Citizens? Investigating U.S. Marine Corps Basic TrainingHodges, Eric (Virginia Tech, 2014-05-08)Yonkman and Bridgeland (2009) and Nesbit (2011) have each offered studies in recent years in which military veterans reported possessing skills and values that facilitate civic engagement. I investigated these claims by exploring basic training in one branch of the United States (U.S.) military, the Marine Corps. I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 10 enlisted Marine Corps veterans and 7 drill instructors to ascertain their perceptions regarding the didactic aspirations and pedagogies of their service's basic training related to skills and values development. I utilized a civic capacities model developed by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) and Kirlin (2003) to examine whether Marines' entry training could be classified as civic in character. According to this study/s participants, Marine Corps Basic Training did teach skills and values that qualify as civic dispositions. I also explored several pedagogical strategies utilized by the Marines, such as learning communities, role modeling, narrative pedagogy and the use of a capstone exercise, which could be applied by civic educators. Topics for future research of the sort undertaken here include both national and international comparative studies of entry-level military training, the effects of combat on veterans' civic dispositions and whether and how community involvement can aid in veterans' transitions to civilian life.
- Democratic Justice for Brazilians with ImpairmentsKirakosyan, Lyusyena (Virginia Tech, 2013-05-03)For decades, Brazilians with impairments have not been able to enjoy full citizenship rights because of the existing oppressive structures in their society. This study examines comprehensions of justice for citizens with impairments in Brazil and what the implications of those perspectives may be for policy arguments and for social change. The principal sources of these justice-related outlooks are three key stakeholder groups: policymakers, disability nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and people with impairments. The analysis is organized as follows. First, I provide an overview of the study, its aims and significance and research questions. Second, I discuss the theoretical foundations of the inquiry, focusing on debate among democratic theorists on the meaning of citizenship and social theorists on the significance and goals of social justice, as well as the key debates among disability theorists on the purport of disability, oppression, emancipation and social inclusion. Next, I describe the research design and methods employed in this effort, explaining the rationale behind my choice of a qualitative approach and offering details concerning the study's data collection, analysis and interpretation. Fourth, I summarize the issues and tensions implicit in Brazil\'s practices and institutions as these relate to the nation's disabled citizens. Fifth, I discuss the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which has helped an already growing social movement in Brazil formalize and legitimate its aims and place disability justice on the national agenda. Sixth, I explore the major conceptions of justice expressed by disability NGOs and analyze what these views suggested for efforts to secure full citizenship for the disabled in Brazil. Next, I explore the conceptions of impairment, disability and justice as imagined and lived by Brazilians with impairments. Specific ideas and conceptions of disability informed the understandings of justice of the individuals with impairments whom I interviewed. Finally, I provide an interdisciplinary interpretation of the research findings, in which I create a dialogue among different perspectives in order to outline a new understanding of justice for people with impairments and the social change needed to reach that aspiration. After discussing the insights of different stakeholders on justice, I share my recommendations for further research.
- The Disappearance of Business Communication From Professional Communication Programs in English DepartmentsDubinsky, James M.; Getchell, Kristen (SAGE, 2021-08-18)Since 1985, the field of professional communication has grown in size and reputation while maintaining a space within its primary disciplinary home of the English department. This article relies on historical evidence to examine how a field that was once evenly divided between business communication and technical communication is now technical communication-centric, almost to the exclusion of business communication. The authors pose questions about the field of professional communication and how faculty who consider business communication to be their primary discipline (regardless of their disciplinary home) might play a role in future discussions related to disciplinarity and domains of knowledge.
- Effective Visual Design for Proposal WritingJohnston, Allegra Christine (Virginia Tech, 2003-03-26)The field of document design has gained considerable attention over the past couple of decades. New technology has drastically increased the design possibilities for writers, and researchers are gaining greater insight into the way that readers interact with the visual elements of their texts. This has led to an explosion in the availability of guidance on document design, but there are still areas where the research is incomplete. One of these areas concerns a common but important type of document: the proposal. There are numerous guides on proposal writing, but most of them are concerned with content and give little attention to document design. Since successful proposals are crucial to both the business and non-profit arenas, it is important that the documents are accessible and make a good impression on reviewers. Good document design can help. In this study I took the existing research on document design and developed a set of questions meant to address the different elements of document design. I tested a sampling of both grant proposals and contract proposals using those questions with a system of scoring based on Likert scaling. I combined the quantitative results with qualitative responses from interviews in order to gain insight regarding the overall effect of visual design elements in proposals. The results of this study showed that there are certain elements of document design (such as layout or contrast) that are important to proposals, but that non-design factors (such as cost or experience) usually outweigh the design for evaluation purpose.
- First-Year Writing Teachers' Emotions and Grammar Instruction: A Mixed Methods StudyFranklin, Cheyenne R. (Virginia Tech, 2021-11-08)This dissertation studies how first-year writing teachers' experiences learning grammar impact their teaching of and responses to the topic of grammar. Scholars like Francis Christenson and Martha Kolln agree that some knowledge of grammar helps students' rhetorical acuity but not when taught with rules and isolated exercises. CCCC's "Students Rights to Their Own Language" and the work of scholars like Geneva Smitherman and April Baker-Bell have shed light on the language-identity relationship and the damage that standardization inflicts on a person's sense of self. This pedagogical paradigm has created tension for writing teachers and their departments. Grammar is, for many, an emotional topic. Joseph Williams wondered at the rage caused by certain grammar deviations in his essay "The Phenomenology of Errors." This dissertation builds on Williams' work, suggesting we look to teachers' histories to understand their emotions and find usefulness in these emotions. Using grounded theory, I code six interviews in which first-year writing teachers describe their memorable encounters with grammar instruction. I then identify patterns in these stories and the interviewees' practices and compare them against the results of a nation-wide survey of over a hundred first-year writing teachers. In this study, I identify a type of experience I call epiphanic encounters with grammar instruction. Encounters are epiphanic when the instruction impacts the learner's sense of self. I trace a connection between these encounters and teachers' feelings of empathy for their students and passion for grammar instruction's reform. I argue that reflection on epiphanic encounters can help teachers locate points of empathy for their students' experiences of grammars and promote productive conversations about grammar instruction. Based on these findings, I recommend that educators of first-year writing teachers implement grammar-focused reflection into their teacher training as a way of leveraging teachers' emotions toward the topic of grammar to facilitate productive conversations about grammar instruction. In the first chapter, I question the impact of teachers' emotional resonances from personal encounters with grammar instruction. I introduce my emotional encounter with grammar instruction and describe the emotional reactions I have encountered when attempting to engage writing teachers in conversations about grammar instruction. After reviewing the project, I situate my work in scholarship on emotions in composition. My findings respond to Joseph Williams' "Phenomenology of Errors" in which he explores why people respond strongly to "grammar errors." My work also contributes to inquiries in teacher training and the use of self reflection as professional development. I suggest that student teachers reflect on their past encounters with grammar to better empathize with their students' experiences. Chapter Two constructs a history of grammar instruction in America, from the 1860s to the present, mid-twenty-first century. Through this review, I show how pedagogical debates and language anxiety have always followed grammar and, depending on the person's skill and class, made it the source of anger, fear, hope, or shame. I highlight the social and educational shifts that formed grammar around the ugly shapes of class and race discrimination, including the East Coast's development, regional dialects, and increased demand for education. Chapter Three details my methods of investigation. Here I explain the rationale behind my study design, which uses surveys and interviews. The interviews provided qualitative details beyond what the heavily structured survey could and allowed teachers to describe their beliefs and experiences in their own words. It was important to collect these first-hand accounts to better understand the internal processes behind teachers' reactions. The survey provided quantitative data with which to identify overarching trends and test theories devised from the interviews. These steps in turn indicated the generalizability of the findings. This chapter also explains my use of Critical Incident Theory to write the survey and interview questions and my use of grounded theory to code and analyze the data. In Chapter Four, I present the results of the nation-wide survey and the six, one-on-one interviews. By comparing responses to different survey questions, (e.g. number of respondents to report having had positive emotions at the time of their experience and now hold negative emotions toward teaching grammar), I determined that the teachers' emotions at the time of their experience did not correlate with any particular teaching practices or feelings toward teaching grammar. However, 72% of all teachers surveyed and 89% of teachers who had "very negative" emotions at the time of their experience reported that their experience has impacted their teaching of grammar. This means grammar studies that hope to change teachers' practices will need to consider how to address teachers' past experiences. Chapter Five is the first of two analysis chapters. By attending to content and word choice of survey and interview responses, I find that the teachers whose stories include evidence of epiphanic encounters with grammar instruction tend to show empathy for students' diversity and the negative experiences their students may have had with grammars. Furthermore, most of these teachers spoke of teaching practices they implement to serve multilingual/multidialectal students. Teacher training can benefit from these findings since self-reflection on transformational learning experiences could be used in teacher training to help teachers appreciate the issues surrounding grammars and respond to them with sensitive practices. In Chapter Six, I show how in addition to empathy, teachers with epiphanic encounters also tend to feel passion. I use the term passion to designate heightened emotions, such as anger or excitement, that compel teachers to teach new perspectives on grammars in classes and/or social settings. I find that this emotion is not always pleasant for the teachers experiencing it, but their beliefs in a more equitable teaching of grammars motivates them to spread alternative understandings of writing instruction and grammars' role in it. Additionally, this chapter compares the survey data to the interview data and finds evidence that the pattern of passion exists in this larger sample. This finding strengthens the likelihood that this trend extends to most first-year writing teachers, making grammar-focused reflection a viable tool to motivate new teachers to continue valuable conversations needed to spread new knowledge about grammars. In the final two chapters, I present a lesson plan to be used to prepare student teachers to address grammars in a way that honors students' identities and language rights. This activity has teachers reflect on their emotional encounters with grammar instruction and consider how their students' experiences may be similar or different. The discussion questions push student teachers to dig deep into the complicated and uncomfortable issues surrounding grammar instruction. After the lesson, students should understand the most common debates about grammar instruction and have strategies to teach grammars rhetorically and respectfully.
- Fixing the Future: Examining Social Cycles in Cold War Science Fiction Fix-Up NovelsBoyer, Elizabeth Ann (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-29)This thesis examines the relationship between Cold War science fiction fix-up novels and social cycle theory. The study engages with textual, cultural, and comparative analysis to elucidate and analyze links between the fix-up novel format, a cyclical conception of human history, and the Cold War setting of the construction and publication of three SF novels. The objects of this study are three Cold War era fix-up novels with origins in World War II pulp science fiction magazine short stories: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, City by Clifford D. Simak, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. The project examines these three novels alongside the reflective nature of the fix-up novel format, the authors' interactions with social cycle theory, and the Cold War cultural considerations of ideological instability and the threat of annihilation. By examining these works through the lens of retroactive continuity, social cycle theory, and the Cold War cultural imaginary, this thesis demonstrates the complex interplay between literature, culture, and history, and the ways in which SF authors have used their works to engage with the pressing concerns of their time.
- From Inclusion to Transformation: Decolonial Feminist Comix Methodology (With Handy Illustrations)Howes, Frances A. (Virginia Tech, 2014-07-25)Feminist rhetorics need to move us from inclusion to transformation: instead of "including" more and more marginalized groups into the scholarly status quo, or "including" comics into methods of analysis that we already use, we need to transform our practices themselves. Seeing comics research as an expedition into comics doesn't work. The spatial metaphor is failing because it's analogous to a takeover in the colonial sense. I center the both/and experience of being a producer of comics and analyst of them. Drawing from a critical reading of my own comic, I describe "the disobedient how," a way of learning from transgressive models. I argue that instead of "collecting" comics, decolonial feminist methodology asks that we "attend" comics through listening, experiencing, and having a relationship with them and their creators. As Shawn Wilson's work suggests, knowledge lies in relationships. I use this concept to guide an analysis of Lynda Barry's recent comics work as well as her comments during a panel at the Comics: Philosophy and Practice conference. In order for academics to have true knowledge about Barry's work, we must have a right relationship to her and to it, which requires decolonizing our relationship to texts and taking Barry's comics seriously as sources of theory. Next, I argue for scholars to pay closer attention to Alison Bechdel's comics beyond their engagement with her memoir, Fun Home. I describe her participation in queer rhetoric through a close reading of her comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For and her public discussion of her composing practices. Finally, I perform a retrospective of the history of my own comic book, Oh Shit, I'm in Grad School, drawing on (and developing documentation for) personal archives.
- From Reflection to Reflexivity: Challenging Students' Conceptions of Writing, Self, and Society in the Community Writing ClassroomO'neill, Megan Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2012-03-28)This dissertation, "From Reflection to Reflexivity: Challenging Students' Conceptions of Writing, Self, and Society in the Community Writing Classroom," examines the disconnect that characterizes much of the discussion of reflective writing in community writing studies and argues for the potential of reflexivity as a concept to further develop the kinds of reflective writing assigned in community writing classrooms. Many practitioners and scholars view reflective writing as a potentially powerful tool that may help students learn challenging or abstract theories and practices from their own community writing experiences. With such potential, it can be disappointing when student reflective writing does not achieve teacher expectations of critical thinking and analysis, stopping before critical engagement and understanding is achieved. Instead, it often centers on students' personal feelings and motivations that shape or arise from their community experiences. This dissertation argues that one reason for such a disconnect between teacher expectations and actual student writing, comes from the word "reflection" itself. While a traditional understanding of reflective writing asks students to look back on their experiences, observations, feelings, and opinions, community writing teachers use the term "reflection" with qualifiers like "critical," "sustained," or "intellectually rich." In qualifying their expectations for reflective writing, teachers are in fact asking for something very different from reflection, namely, reflexivity. When reflexive thinking is presented to students as "qualified reflection" it loses the considerable theoretical grounding that makes it a particularly unique way of using experiences as the foundation for inquiry. Building on theories of epistemological reflexivity for researchers in the social sciences, this dissertation highlights the methodological reflexivity theorized and practiced by feminist researchers. Feminist reflexivity specifically affords researchers more nuanced ways of looking at issues of positionality, social transformation, and agency. Such strategies have the potential for moving student reflections from private writings toward writings that impact students' understandings of the rhetorical and theoretical issues that community writing hopes to illustrate. This combination of feminist reflexivity and community writing reflections can provide community writing theorists and practitioners with alternative ways to solve reflective writing's challenges.
- A Techné for Citizens: Service-Learning, Conversation, and CommunityDubinsky, James M. (Parlor Press, 2010-06-14)
- Individual Differences in Internet Usage MotivesAmiel, Tel (Virginia Tech, 2002-06-13)The relationship between the psychobiological model of personality types (psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism) devised by Eysenck & Eysenck (1985) and Internet use and usage motives was examined. A sample of 210 undergraduate students were asked to report on their motives for using the Internet and how often they engaged in a variety of Internet and web-based activities. The findings demonstrate distinctive patterns of Internet use and usage motives for those of different personality types. Specifically, those scoring high in neuroticism reported using the Internet to feel a sense of "belonging" and to be informed. Extraverts rejected the communal aspects of the Internet, and made more instrumental and goal-oriented use of Internet services. Finally, those scoring high in psychoticism demonstrated an interest in more deviant, defiant, and sophisticated Internet applications. The role of personality in audience segmentation research is discussed along with implications of the findings in usability and interface design. Suggestions for future research are included.
- Introduction: Service-Learning and Professional CommunicationDubinsky, James M.; Bowdon, Melody (2005-04-08)
- It Goes Without Saying: Infrastructure as Rhetorical Theory for Navigating Transition in Writing Program AdministrationAdams, Jonathan Mark (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-21)Writing program administrators (WPAs) work in constant negotiation with institutional forces outside of individual control, where the concerns of infrastructure impact writing programs continuously. In periods of transition, where new WPAs are entering a program, or the institution itself is shifting around the established program of a seasoned WPA, the ability to understand and rhetorically act in concert with one's infrastructure can often determine the success of a writing program. In this dissertation, I conduct a mixed-methods examination of the phenomenon of WPA infrastructure, situating infrastructure as a rhetorical lens for understanding writing program administrators' work as they face moments of transition in their career. Through a combination of meta-analysis of a subcorpus of WPA lore and stimulated recall interviews with current WPAs in the field, I form a picture of the phenomenon of infrastructural rhetoric and promote its use as a holistic lens to rhetorically engage with complex institutional systems.
- Linking East with West: Websites as a Public Relations Tool for American and Chinese Banks Operating in a Culturally-Evolving Chinese SocietyJiang, Jing (Virginia Tech, 2002-06-13)In this thesis, three websites are explored in-depth and serve as a case study for an intercultural comparison of websites as public relations tools. The websites of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB), and Citibank were evaluated for this specific study because they represent three models of current banks operating in a culturally-evolving Chinese society. The two-way symmetrical model of public relations and the personal influence model have provided basic framework for this thesis. To establish the two-way symmetrical public relations via the website, these three banks employ different public relations strategies due to the different organizational structure and operating systems. In addition, culture has played an important role for banks to build relationships with their various publics. Specifically, Confucian ideology, the foundation for Chinese culture, provides insights for this thesis. To cater to the publics, ICBC adhered more strictly to Chinese culture norms, while SPDB's website is a reflection of a hybrid of Western and Chinese culture. Moreover, although Citibank does not make many efforts to culturally cater to its Chinese publics, Citibank successfully built its reputation and image through building a business-oriented and expert website.
- Moral Majorities: The Rhetoric of “Real” American Values in Contemporary ConservatismPollard, Carter Mears (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-28)
- The Nonprofit Mission Statement as Genre: Speech Acts, Social Facts, and EcologiesSchiewer, Tana M. (Virginia Tech, 2017-11-21)In this case study, the author explores the nonprofit mission statement as a genre, its place within a genre ecology, and its communication through various genres. Theorizing the mission statement as a controlling and stabilizing force in a genre ecology, the author notes the potential of the mission statement to enact the genre function, "the authority a genre has even in the absence of its author. Noting the limitations of current genre ecology modeling (GEM), the author maps the genres, documents, and activities of a small community foundation using a revised form of GEM that more purposefully includes speech genres to map relationships; in this case study, the speech genres revealed how the mission statement is mediated through genres and activities. Further, observations and interviews revealed ideological conflicts of the organization's key stakeholders that resulted in clashes between key stakeholder values and the language of the nonprofit's mission (and other genres). Additionally, ideological consensus resulted in the addition of new organizational activities and genres, even though these activities are not in line with the language of the mission statement as written. Eventually, these activities become social facts, "ideas that the key stakeholders believe are in line with the mission when they are, in fact, in conflict with it. If these social facts are not re-aligned with the mission statement, new activities and genres are created and mediated by speech genres, potentially moving the organization further away from its purpose and goals. The author ultimately suggests a cycle of genre and activity production that will realign the social facts and the mission statement and encourage organizational leaders to return to the mission statement and change the language to reflect the organization's new reality.
- Program Review: The Land-Grant Way–Connected Knowing and the Call of ServiceDubinsky, James M. (2010-09-08)
- Pronouns, Positioning, and Persuasion in Top Nonprofits’ Donor AppealsLentz, Paula; Getchell, Kristen; Dubinsky, James M.; Kerr, Mary Katherine (SAGE, 2021-12)Despite increased giving in 2019, competition for donations among nonprofits remains high, especially when a charitable organization’s niche overlaps with that of others’. Consequently, nonprofit charitable organizations must tell stories that persuade donors to support their mission and contribute. This study uses positioning theory to examine how websites of the charitable organizations that appeared in Forbes Magazine’s 2019 top 100 charities use storytelling to facilitate their ethos such that they gain support and thus increase their donor base. The results revealed that nonprofits use positioning to establish two types of partnerships: invited and assumed. Furthermore, the coding revealed three primary types of positioning within these partnerships: savior-follower, business partners, and teacher-student. These positions organize and set the parameters for each organization’s story and will not only influence and potentially dictate the speech acts that follow, but also the responsibilities and rights of all those involved.
- Race and/or Reconciliation : Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Veterans in Society(Virginia Tech, 2016)The Veterans in Society (ViS) research group is proud to present the proceedings of the Third Conference on Veterans in Society: Race and/or Reconciliation, with papers that represent a wide range of research and community engagement, and a focus that speaks to the growth of our work over the past several years.