MIAMI UNIVERSITY the Graduate School
MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Daniel J. Ciamarra Candidate for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ______________________________ Director (Tom S. Poetter) ______________________________ Reader (Richard A. Quantz) ______________________________ Reader (Denise Baszile) _____________________________ Graduate School Representative (Bob Burke) ABSTRACT SPEAKING UP: USING A PEDAGOGY OF LOVE TO DEBUNK TECHNICAL TEACHING AND LEARNING PRACTICES by Daniel J. Ciamarra At present, our students are valued for their capacities to thoughtlessly absorb and regurgitate standardized facts and figures. Meanwhile, the affective facets of schooling, such as love, relationality, compassion, acceptance, integrity, and altruism are overlooked by politicians and educational decision makers, who claim these elements lack academic rigor. In this study, I use the dominant views of the educational elect to accentuate the current push for a more standardized, accountable, and scientific approach to schooling. Then, I employ the counternarrative as a methodological tool for talking back, offering up personal stories and experiences that frame the power of agapic love to demystify the normative views of schooling. More specifically, I employ personal narrative as means for providing teachers a voice, one which aims to debunk confounding generalizations or refute common claims about what education is or ought to be. Finally, I analyze the divergent stories through multiple theoretic and practical lenses in order to make meaning of my experiences. Moreover, the counternarratives in this study focus on how agapic love can be utilized in pedagogical and curricular efforts to transcend the present conditions that hinder many students and teachers from being and becoming who they really are.
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