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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: October 22, 2001
Latest Update: August 16, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Pulling It Together

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors: October 2001.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This series of essays and practice modules is designed to give you some samples of how a thesis project or an advanced term paper might be done. Not all the Dear Habermas projects will result in theses. They are all in various stages of development and all are related to our work on Dear Habermas. Some will culminate in innovations in Dear Habermas; some will provide the groundwork for future projects.

Patricia Acone: Collaborative Writing in Online Education

Stage of Thesis Process: Research Done. Writing of Project Report in Progress.

• Introduction

  Pat's project is near completion. She has worked on it for years, but as a full-time staff member and as a member of the Dear Habermas project team. There were always too many students to tend to. And now, as Dear Habermas nears practical working status, she's always tempted to include just a little more, so that her thesis, like Dear Habermas, never seems to end.

• Review of Literature
  First draft of review.

  The primary purpose of this section is to conceptually link ideas from the literature to your project. It is from these theoretical foundations that the twists and turns of her project are taken.

• Theory on the Nature of Teaching

  • Situational leadership. Management theory based on recognizing each member of the group as a participating agent and all their input as crucial to the management context. Hershey and Blanchard.

  • Advising as teaching.. National ACademic ADvising Association (NACADA). In this Pat explores the many approaches to teaching, not all of which take place in a classroom. In affirmation of NACADA's approach she works academic advising into the structural context of teching in the academy. Pat has been interested for as long as I can remember in teaching, but in teaching in a Montessori, John Dewey, Paulo Freire way. She wants to work with the students to facilitate, not enforce, learning. And this is precisely the theme of Dear Habermas.

  • Pedagogical theory. Educators like McLaren on Paulo Freire and Che Guevara. bell hooks, Montessori, radical pedagogy, Alfie Kohn, Jonathan Kozol, etc. In this section Pat explores aspects of social justice and education, including meaningful liberal arts education for those not destined to or desirous of becoming academic scholars. Public intellectuals, such as Edward Said, have much to tell us in matters of colonization and education.

• The Nature of Learning

  • Learning styles differ widely, as do learning contexts. Pat's experience in adademic advising created an unusal awareness of such differences, and their relationship to the professors who shared similar diversity in their ways of knowing. Such a diverse group of learning patterns amongst students, and such a diverse group of teaching and knowing patterns amongst teachers requires that to make a good match between student and teacher, one must be aware of the ways we learn and teach.

  • Learning and Teaching as Respect for the "Other"

    Over the last two years Dear Habermas has focused increasingly on the theoretical and practical experience of the "Other." This was particularly heightened during and after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Winning, "success," dominance of some by others, with consequent exploitation, permeates our society and our institutions. The following theoretical perspectives have pulled together much of our work on Dear Habermas, helping us to delineate our focus and provide an impetus for further study of the most pressing social and economic problems of the Twenty-First Century.

  • Empire Theory

  • Critical Race Theory

  • Colonial Studies

  • Liberation Theology

  • Constitutive Theory

  • Peacemaking Theory

  • Thomas Szas' Rejection of Normative Psychiatry