Thesis Chapters by Meagan Hoff
Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, 2018
Teaching in diverse contexts can be a challenge for teachers who strive to create classrooms that... more Teaching in diverse contexts can be a challenge for teachers who strive to create classrooms that respect the diversity of students. Among many skills, teaching requires a critical consciousness of the ideologies that shape the pedagogy within a classroom. As a white, American teacher who speaks English as her native language, the author brings multiple perspectives of privilege to her teaching practice. In this narrative, she reflects on her experience with ideological becoming as she critically examines her experience while teaching a summer camp for teenage girls who came to the United States as refugees. " This 1 millionth child refugee is not just another number. This is a real child ripped from home, maybe even from a family, facing horrors we can only begin to comprehend. "-UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake Every year, millions of people are forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict and persecution (Alazroni, 2017). As the quote above from Anthony Lake reminds us, these millions are not numbers, they are people (as cited in United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2013). On some level this seems obvious, but when these abstract figures became people in my life and students in my classroom, the true weight of what I did not know became increasingly apparent. On paper, my teaching education and philosophies were marked with the tenants of humanizing pedagogy. I had read Freire (2005) and Darder (2012), and I believed in the transformative power of education. This was an easy façade to maintain while working with students who looked remarkably like me and who lived by similar narratives. Despite being a student of cross-cultural education, I had yet to fully understand the concept of culture in practice. Rather than existing as a definitive entity, Benhabib (2002) described culture as " a constant creation, recreation, and negotiation of imaginary boundaries " (p. 8). Individuals create unique life stories that are informed by established narratives of a culture. My narratives were rigid, and they defined how I saw students, how I taught them, and how I responded to them. It would take a summer of teaching and learning with a group of young refugee girls for me to understand the limitations of my own worldviews and begin to challenge them. As a student, I had done some research on the ideological becoming of pre-service teachers. Bakhtin (1981) described ideological becoming as " an intense struggle within us for hegemony among various available verbal and ideological points of view, approaches, directions, and values " (p. 346). Looking back on the experience that I recount below, I can see now that this was a story from my own process of ideological becoming and how hard it was to see from the inside. I walked to the door. Two girls with scarfs loosely wrapped on their heads peered out between closed curtains. That was my destination. Before I could knock, an older woman swung the door open. She smiled, and I smiled back as the two young girls dashed in and out of my sight. I said good morning, and the woman nodded in return. Their mother and I continued to smile across
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When we speak we communicate more than the sum of our words. Interlocutors give and interpret inf... more When we speak we communicate more than the sum of our words. Interlocutors give and interpret information including ethnic and cultural affiliations through those first syllables and sounds of an utterance. The goal of this research is to examine the interactions between ethnic identity constructs and degree of accent in English. Given that identity is a product of social labeling and self-identification, by linking identity and accentedness, this present study gives insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural communication. Participants consisted of 20 native Mandarin speakers recently arrived in the United States and enrolled in a Midwestern American university. This research is a quantitative investigation of the correlation between ethnic identity, other-group orientation, and phonological acquisition. Data was collected at the beginning and end of an academic term. The goal of this study is to explore whether ethnic identity and strength of accent correlate at initial measurement upon arrival to the United States and then three months later, to see if changes in pronunciation are predicted by ethnic identity. The results of a multiple regression analysis revealed that other-group orientation was the most significant predictor of accentedness upon arrival in the United States. Furthermore, repeated measures ANOVA results revealed a significant decrease in other-group orientation over the first semester, with no significant change in accent over the same time period. This means that there was a relationship between other-group orientation and strength of accent when participants arrived in the United States. The change in strength of accent was not significant, however there was a decrease in other-group orientation at the end of the first semester. This indicates that participants were less willing to interact with people from other ethnic groups. These results suggest that the social aspects of language learning, such as interactions with, and positive attitude towards other ethnic groups are important in the process of phonological acquisition. In addition, cultural adaptation strategies may impact learner’s phonological acquisition. The present findings support a sociocultural approach to language learning that places value on the cultural context of the learning process.
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Papers by Meagan Hoff
FIRE, 2019
The purpose of this study was to explore how preservice teachers (PST) became aware of literacies... more The purpose of this study was to explore how preservice teachers (PST) became aware of literacies in global and local contexts and to understand how PST conceive of literacy after experiencing an international service learning (ISL) study abroad program in rural South Africa. For this qualitative grounded theory study, we used critical literacy and humanizing pedagogy as theoretical frames for designing the program and analyzing data. Findings show PST experienced a "literacy awakening." They became more aware of nuanced and complex ways literacies function in a community and imagined how their understandings would shape future teaching.
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The study explored usage patterns of the Learning Support Centers in Higher Education (LSCHE) web... more The study explored usage patterns of the Learning Support Centers in Higher Education (LSCHE) web portal, an open educational resource (OER) that serves learning support center professionals. Results of an online survey taken by LSCHE users (N=41) tracked their self-reported usage and perceived value of resources on the web portal, which received an average rating of 3.3 out of 5.0 on eight characteristics. LSCHE scored highest on relevance of resources (3.8) and clarity of homepage (3.6). Lowest scores showed a need for improvement in ease of locating resources (2.9), timeliness (2.9), and ease of navigation (3.1). The article will also address the continued evolution of the web portal.
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Thesis Chapters by Meagan Hoff
Papers by Meagan Hoff