Browsing by Author "Mueller, Derek"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
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    Beyond Consensus: A Rhetorical Genre Analysis of the Mountain Valley Pipeline's 401 Public Hearings
    Scarff, Kelly (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-10)
    This study seeks to understand public and institutional uptake of the public hearing genre. More specifically, this study examines how public hearing genre conventions are established and how those conventions inform and often govern tensions that arise in public discourse about a contested environmental project. In my research, I analyzed a corpus of public comments from two Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) 401 Water Quality Certification public hearings that were held in August 2017 and hosted by Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ). Additionally, I conducted interviews with 13 community members and two state representatives who spoke at one of the two hearings. This approach led me to several important findings. Most significantly, I found that while many community members understood VA DEQ's stated purpose of the public hearings, they prepared comments that spoke to an entirely different purpose because they were responding to a different kind of problem than that of VA DEQ. This finding is crucial to understanding the other tensions and ideas of consensus that occur among citizens and VA DEQ representatives since the kind of problem informs the uptake of the public hearing and the overall interpretation of the public hearing genre. My dissertation thus argues that there are ways we might reimagine ideas of effectiveness, consensus, and the public hearing genre, specifically in the case of the 401 Public Hearings and more generally in other public hearings where public discourses center on a contested environmental project like the MVP.
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    First-Year Writing Teachers' Emotions and Grammar Instruction: A Mixed Methods Study
    Franklin, 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.
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    It Goes Without Saying: Infrastructure as Rhetorical Theory for Navigating Transition in Writing Program Administration
    Adams, 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.
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    The Literacy Sponsors Gallery Wall: Rethinking Literacy Sponsorship Through Multimodal Drafting
    Doan, Bailey Elaine (Virginia Tech, 2023-04-27)
    This study explores the benefits of multimodality in the drafting process and advocates for more disciplinary support of multimodality across first-year writing curriculums in the field of Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies. I explore my primary research question, how might multimodal drafting through the Literacy Sponsors Gallery Wall assignment support students' process of writing the Literacy Narrative, through an IRB-exempt study of the implementation of an original multimodal writing assignment, the Literacy Sponsors Gallery Wall, in my first-year writing classroom during the Fall 2021 semester. The results of this study illuminate valuable opportunities for multimodality to be integrated into the composition classroom during the writing process rather than it being utilized primarily as a transformative tool once the writing process has concluded. When multimodality is included as a natural aspect of the writing process, it allows more room for students to express and celebrate their multiliterate identities.
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    Open Access Forum 2018
    Potter, Peter J.; Walz, Anita R.; DePauw, Karen P.; Paretti, Marie C.; Maczka, Darren; Drozdova, Katya; Mueller, Derek (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2018-10-22)
    The Open Access Week kickoff event will feature a brief introduction to open access by Peter Potter and an introduction to open education by Anita Walz, followed by a discussion with panelists Katya Drozdova, Karen DePauw, Marie Paretti, Darren Maczka, and Derek Mueller. [Note: there are audio problems for the first 1:30 of the video.]
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    Open Access Forum 2019: Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Education & More
    DePauw, Karen P.; Carey, Cayelan C.; Mueller, Derek; Potter, Peter J.; Walz, Anita R.; Young, Philip (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2019-10-21)
    Join faculty presenters from around the university, University Library faculty, and the Future Professoriate Graduate class in a robust discussion about nuances, similarities and differences in the "opens." Learn about open access (OA) trends in the U.S., Europe, and at Virginia Tech. Learn about the differences between open access and open educational resources (OER). Presenters and panelists include Karen DePauw (Dean, Graduate School), Cayelan Carey (Biological Sciences), Derek Mueller (English), Peter Potter, Anita Walz, and Philip Young (University Libraries).
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    Open Access Forum 2020: Connecting the Opens: Open Access, Open Educational Resources, and Open Data
    Briganti, Jonathan; DePauw, Karen P.; McNabb, Kayla B.; Miles, Rachel A.; Mueller, Derek; Roy, Siddhartha; Sridhar, Venkataramana (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2020-10-19)
    Join faculty presenters from around the university, University Libraries faculty, and the Preparing the Future Professoriate graduate class in a robust discussion about nuances, similarities and differences in the "opens." This event begins with brief discussions of open access (OA), open educational resources (OER), and open data before situating this conversation within open access trends in the U.S., Europe, and at Virginia Tech. Presenters and panelists include Jonathan Briganti (University Libraries), Karen DePauw, (Graduate School), Kayla McNabb (University Libraries), Rachel Miles (University Libraries), Derek Mueller (English), Siddartha Roy (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Venkat "Sri" Sridhar (Biological Systems Engineering).
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    Possibilities for Making Institutional Change: An Institutional Critique of Diversity Discourse at a Predominantly White Institution
    Evans, Amilia Natasha (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-02)
    The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how diversity discourse inscribes oppressive institutional structures (slavery, racism, and whiteness), specifically, institutional power, and offer possibilities for making sustainable change. This dissertation is an institutional critique (Porter et al. 2000) that includes Black women's experiences in diversity leadership roles at Virginia Tech, an analysis of the institution's bureaucratic structure, an analysis of diversity discourse published by Virginia Tech's Office for Inclusion and Diversity (OID), and climate surveys. By following diversity discourse, I explore how the discourse and modalities inscribe institutional power, the "outsider-within" construct of Black women, and obstructions to institutional change through discursive practices. In general, change happens at institutions but does not connote equitable, sustainable change. I argue that mapping the discursive and material construction of institutional power can reveal discursive methods/methodologies for remapping the institution toward inscribing structures of resistance.
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    Set in Stone: Rhetorical Performances in Virginia Tech's April 16th Memorial
    Covington, Brooke Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-11)
    This dissertation traces the rhetorical history of Virginia Tech's April 16th Memorial from its earliest appearance immediately following the April 16, 2007 shootings up to its present iteration as a permanent memorial on Virginia Tech's campus. Specifically, this study reveals how the April 16th Memorial is a public memory performance that has changed (and continues to change) in its form, function, and significance across time. Based on a data set that includes archival evidence, interview data, and fieldwork, I argue that over the course of its history, the April 16th Memorial has negotiated tensions and fusions between the epideictic and deliberative genres that exist within its bounds. In doing so, the memorial asks audiences to honor and remember the dead while also compelling audiences to deliberate over the social and political issues punctuated by the tragedy. Whereas the epideictic appeals in the memorial aim to reknit the community, the deliberative appeals invite audiences to imagine a better, safer world. By tracing the intersections between these two genres, this study demonstrates how complementary and competing forces in the memorial vie over not only constructions of public memory but also the lessons we are meant to gain from the April 16, 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech.
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    Thriving in the Academy: Thai Students' Experiences and Perspectives
    Inthajak, Atinut (Virginia Tech, 2022-06-21)
    In this dissertation, I investigate how Thai doctoral students adapt to and navigate academic expectations in their nonnative language. Through coded semi-structured interviews with eight participants from six different universities across the U.S., I analyze the lived experiences, stories, and challenges faced by Thai doctoral students in Humanities disciplines as students in Humanities are believed to rely more on writing as a mode of inquiry than students in STEM. I explore how, and to what extent, they cultivated agency to meet the expectations of the academy and how they assimilated into the U.S. academic culture. I initially hypothesized that writing was the most challenging skill, given that composition program and classrooms are virtually nonexistent in Thai curricula and students coming into the U.S. academy from such educational backgrounds would have limited exposure to formal writing instruction. Interestingly, through thematic coding schemes, I found that, while writing was challenging, there were other significant factors impacting their education. In my analysis, I found that students also had to navigate academic reading, participation in active classroom discussions, and acculturation into U.S. academic setting, all of which challenged their learning experiences. I argue in the dissertation that these complex social negotiations, not accounted for in most pedagogical structures in U.S. education, result in inequitable access to curriculum and undo hardships on students. By amplifying the voices of Thai students, this project highlights the ways that Thailand's educational system, deeply entrenched discourses of loyalty to Thailand's monarchy and the Criminal Code Act 112, impacts Thai students' formation and navigation of academic identity while encountering the U.S. Academy.
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    Towards a Decolonial Haole Rhetoric
    Homer, Matthew Jordan (Virginia Tech, 2022-06-14)
    This dissertation examines the concept of haole, a Native Hawaiian articulation of whiteness, in two multimodal texts related to the proposed construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna-a-Wākea in Hawai'i. Specifically, I analyze the Aloha 'Aima mural at the University of Hawai'i and the 'Imiloa web interface, as two examples of delinking whiteness through decolonial enactment. Building on this analysis, this project theorizes a decolonial haole rhetoric by redefining the rhetorical character of whiteness from outside a Eurowestern frame. Haole is an example of decolonial enactment because it responds to cultural rhetorics by engaging with the loci of enunciation rather than attending to meaning. Haole rhetoric is a form of whiteness that responds to Hawai'i's specific history of, and resistance to, colonialism. I argue for white settler allyship that works from the rhetorical ground of colonial wounds to counteract the colonial control of meaning. In this dissertation, I have developed a haole methodology that includes the following tenets: 1) any presence of whiteness manifests coloniality; 2) Indigenous knowledges are always taken on their own terms and never through Eurowestern frames of thought 3) the aim is always to inform meaning-making practices for white settlers, as opposed to Indigenous people; and 4) engagement of cultural rhetorics aim of epistemic disobedience, or delinking, from settler logics. Shifting whiteness from communicative identity to inhabiting whiteness as a decolonial enactment manifests whiteness in the peripheries of decolonial futures. An embrace of decolonial haole rhetoric and methodology maintains the colonial history between white settlers and Native Hawaiians, where rather than feigning innocence, white settlers instead consider histories of colonialism as sites on which to build responsible relationalities that may be productive for efforts of decolonization. This project demonstrates how Indigeneity can inform haole epistemological delinking, and how obligations, friendship, and intimacies are forged in colonial situations.
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    With Hope: A Student-Centered Model of Critical Pedagogy for First-Year Writing
    Ryan, Mollison Simone (Virginia Tech, 2023-04-25)
    While critical pedagogy, as introduced by Paulo Freire (1970), carries an extensive legacy of theoretical interpretation for rhetoric and composition praxis, this study argues that there is a lack of implementable models of practice in the context of first-year writing, particularly for new instructors and graduate teaching assistants. This study uses a three-part methodology. First, relevant scholarship is synthesized in four parts: critical pedagogy as theory, critical pedagogy as design for instructor accompliceship, critical pedagogy as method for students, and relevant critiques. Then, the project summarizes a gloss analysis of institutional climate, including a list of theory-informed, self-reflective instructor pre-work questions. Finally, the central model-building is conducted through a theory-informed coding of the Virginia Tech University Writing Program blueprint Literacy Narrative and Worknets projects. The result of this approach is a proposed implementable model (Miller, 2014) of critical pedagogy in practice for English 1105 at Virginia Tech, including invitational language, scaffolding exercises, and supportive assignments to affirm student agency, engage in instructor accompliceship, and create a climate of love and care in the writing classroom. This model is designed to transform critical pedagogy from unapproachable methodology to workable method that empowers and encourages instructors to try alternative approaches to the classroom. Implications of this work include furthering of diverse, inclusive methods of pedagogy that interrogate power boundaries, honor student/instructor identities, and complicate institutional power structures for WPAs and instructors.