Sponsored by The University of Alabama Writing Center and the Graduate School, the 2016 Dissertation Writers’ Retreat will provide support, mentoring, uninterrupted time, and a comfortable space to help graduate students:
· make substantial progress on a dissertations or thesis; · improve their writing skills and writing process; and · network with other graduate students at the dissertation or thesis stage. Participating students will set writing goals at the start of the retreat, write for several hours each day, evaluate and improve their writing process, and share their progress with a supportive community of writers. Writing Center consultants will be on hand to offer feedback on students' work, and to help them improve their writing process, strategies, and style. The retreat will run for three weeks, on Monday-Friday, May 9-May 27th, 2016, from 8:30-3:00 p.m. Lunch, snacks and beverages will be provided. The retreat costs $200 per participant, to be paid by the student's home department or faculty sponsor (not by the student!) Students can self-nominate and request to be funded by their home departments, or departments may nominate candidates and invite them to apply. Students can apply online at the link below. They will need to upload a copy of their vita, and a letter from the advisor or graduate director indicating that the department has agreed to pay the cost of the writing retreat (an e-mail will suffice). Here is the link to the online application Priority will be given to candidates who · are doctoral students (though master's and MFA students can apply); · have completed their coursework, exams, and project proposal; and · need writing time—not research time For further information please contact Dr. Amy E. Dayton, adayton@ua.edu; or Dr. Cori Perdue, cperdue@ua.edu. The application deadline is Friday, April 1, 2016. We are pleased to recognize Qual professor extraordinaire Dr. Aaron Kuntz as he received the College of Education's McCrory Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching. Please join us in extending a warm congratulations to Dr. Kuntz and a heartfelt appreciation for his dedication to teaching at the University of Alabama!
A two-day Introduction to ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis workshop will be held at the University of Georgia on March 25 & 26 from 9 am-5pm each day. The registration deadline is March 17. For more information visit: https://coe.uga.edu/events/calendar/introduction-to-atlasti-qualitative-data-analysis-software-windows-v-7
Please don’t hesitate to contact Dr. Trena Paulus with any questions you may have. Dr. Trena M. Paulus, Ph.D. Professor and Graduate Coordinator Department of Lifelong Education, Administration & Policy University of Georgia Certified Professional Trainer, ATLAS.ti Qualitative Data Analysis Software tpaulus@uga.edu Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment’s (CREA) Third International Conference3/1/2016
Call for Abstract Submissions to a Special Issue of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy Early Literacy and the Posthuman: Pedagogies and Methodologies
Guest Editors: Candace R. Kuby, PhD - University of Missouri, USA Jennifer Rowsell, PhD – Brock University, Canada Tara Gutshall Rucker, MA – Columbia Public Schools teacher, Missouri, USA The dominant focus of educational scholarship is on issues of epistemology, how we come to know, specifically in relation to teaching and learning. However, there is an ontological movement happening in the wider social science research community around metaphysics, which focuses on issues of truth(s) and reality(ies). In particular, there is a movement to put to work (as methodologies) theories and philosophies that focus on ‘more than human ontologies’ (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; St. Pierre, 2011). This posthumanist movement is referred to by several names such as feminist materialism (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008; Barad, 2007; 2008), new materialism (Coole & Frost, 2010), and indigenous ways of knowing and being (Tuck 2015; Rosiek, 2015). In the field of education, researchers of mathematics (De Freitas & Sinclair, 2014) and most prominently early childhood education (Davies, 2014; Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Somerville & Green, 2015) are at the forefront of this posthumanist movement in education. Feminist physicist, Karen Barad (2007), calls her theory that focuses on the intra-activity of humans and non-humans, agential realism theory which is an “epistemological, ontological, and ethical” framework that focuses on the intra-active nature of humans and non-humans agentically co-creating realities (Barad, 2007, p. 32). Agential realism de-centers the human as the focus of analysis and the origin of all knowing and instead focuses on the intra-activity of humans and non-humans. Barad states, “by posthumanist I mean to signal the crucial recognition that nonhumans play an important role in naturalcultural practices, including everyday social practices, scientific practices, and practices that do not include humans” (2007, p. 32). This philosophical and paradigmatic shift effects/affects both practices and pedagogies in classrooms as well as research methodologies and methods. The interest in more than human ontologies lies in understanding the intra-actions or agentic-in-between-ness of humans and non-humans. Reality is about more than humans. This is a paradigmatic shift. However, agential realism is not a new concept as Rosiek (2015) discusses the ways that others have explored similar ontological theorizing such as indigenous studies scholars who write about the “agency of matter, objects, land, animals, collectives, stories, and other non-human entities” and even American pragmatist philosophers who “critiqued a linguistic nominalism that located all meaning within the human activity of representation” (pp. 1 & 2). Tuck (2015) encourages scholars to consider the ways Native Americans were already thinking from a posthumanist stance before the recent material turn. For example, Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley discussed indigenous knowledge systems and ‘more than human ontologies’ in his writings. As stated above, in the field of early childhood education, recent scholarship has focused on posthumanist theories as pedagogies and methodologies of research. However, within literacy research, specifically early literacy, there is less scholarship that puts to work posthumanist theories (Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2015, 2016; Thiel, 2015). For example, keyword searches in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy for “posthuman” and “intra-action” produce zero articles. While searching for the word “material” yields more results, a close reading indicates that only one article discusses materials from a posthumanist stance (Kuby, Gutshall, & Kirchhofer, 2015). While multimodal and multiliteracies scholars discuss materiality (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress, 1997; New London Group, 1996), the focus is on what humans do to materials in literacy learning. The focus is on intentional designs or end products that humans create, not so much on the rhizomatic, processes of in-the-moment becoming with materials (Leander & Boldt, 2013). The former is paradigmatically different from a posthumanist view of materials and humans intra-actively entangled together. Posthumanist theory is important in early literacy research because it builds on the linguistic turn yet embraces a material turn (Barad, 2007; 2008). The focus of posthumanist research is not logocentric (language, words) nor anthropocentric (humans) but on the human and non-human intra-actions (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010). Posthumanist theory has potential to help educators reconceptualize literacy research in the following ways: de-center the human and focus on the intra-active nature of humans and non-humans (i.e., materials, time, space, nature, environment); focus on the newness produced in entanglement of intra-actions; and shift our attention from a focus on epistemology to ethico-onto-epistemology (doing, knowing, and being entangled). Posthumanist scholarship has not seeped into early literacy research. Therefore, we seek proposals for manuscripts in this special issue of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy that focuses attention on early literacy and the posthuman. Our vision for this special issue is to provide a diverse set of articles, from international educators (both emerging and established) to help early literacy educators imagine possibilities for posthumanist theory as pedagogy and methodology. We invite the authors to consider these questions as inspiration:
Timeline for Proposed Manuscripts The special issue will be composed of several invited pieces as well as manuscripts invited from this call. Contributions need not take the form of traditional discursive academic articles – we are interested in submissions that play-and-write-with-theory. All submissions will be subject to peer review. Due Dates & Tasks: April 1, 2016- Proposed title, abstract (500 words), and bios of authors (100 words for each author) due. Guest editors will review the abstracts and invite a select number to write full manuscripts for the deadline below. Submit abstract, title, and bios in one PDF file to kubyc@missouri.edu May 15, 2016- Decision notification from guest editors. October 31, 2016- Manuscripts due to guest editors February 1, 2017- Feedback to authors from editors and reviewers April 15, 2017- Revisions due September 2017- Publication of special issue Questions? Contact Candace Kuby kubyc@missouri.edu |
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