Browsing by Subject "Storytelling"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Does it matter how you tell it? On how entrepreneurial storytelling affects the opportunity evaluations of early-stage investors
    (2012-12) Villanueva, Jaume
    This research examines whether and how entrepreneurial storytelling can influence early-stage investors' evaluations of new venture opportunities, by articulating and empirically testing a theoretical model that specifies a set of potential mechanisms by which this influence could be exerted. The theoretical model is tested with a field experiment involving 188 active business angel investors across different regions in the United States. Results from the experiment suggest that storytelling exerts a number of specific indirect effects on investors' evaluations, but that these effects operate in opposite directions, effectively cancelling each other out, so that the final outcome of the manipulation on investors' evaluative judgments is unobservable. The findings of the experiment thus suggest that entrepreneurial storytelling does affect investors' evaluative judgment, but that it does so in an inconsistent manner, which implies that entrepreneurs seeking to influence investors' evaluations by communicating their opportunities in the form of a story will have to find ways of capitalizing on the positive effects that storytelling seems to provide, while avoiding some of its pitfalls. The balance of this research shows that entrepreneurial stories can influence the evaluative judgments of early-stage investors, and opens the door for further research on the role of communication strategies in the entrepreneurial resource acquisition process.
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    The Storied Lives of New Teachers: Sociocultural Enactments of Professional Identities During New Teacher Induction
    (2019-05) Fisher, Lee
    Using narrative inquiry (Chase, 2011; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), this dissertation investigates the stories new teachers encounter during their licensure program and first years of teaching, how those stories work on the identities of new teachers, and the ways these teachers engage with those stories as they construct, revise, and/or smooth their teacher identities. This exploration is framed by key concepts from sociocultural theory: figured worlds (Holland, Skinner, Lachicotte Jr., & Cain, 1998), communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Tustig, 2005), and signs (Bakhtin & Holquist, 1983; Vygotsky, 1978). I also utilize critical sociocultural theory (Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007) in recognition of the way broader systems of hierarchy, hegemony, and power intersect with identity and agency. Fifteen early career teachers educated in the same licensure program participated in one-on-one interviews where they shared stories from student teaching and their first years as a teacher. Nine of the fifteen teachers then participated in a series of workshops that utilized story circles (Cohen-Cruz, 2010; O’Neal, 2011) and Theatre of the Oppressed games (Boal, 1993; 2002) to collectively explore stories around specific themes including caring, relationships, power, and race. Analysis includes the use of ethnodrama (Denzin, 2015; Mienczakowski, 2003; Saldaña, 2005) as an arts-based method to explore aesthetic, embodied constructions of understanding in recognition that knowledge is always contextual, experienced, and mediated (Bresler, 2004; Dewey, 1934; hooks, 1994). I argue that the stories new teachers tell have practical and material consequences that contribute to a new teacher’s sense of belonging and capability for success. Further, new teachers should be aware of the ideological positioning that occurs in storytelling and the agentic moves they can make during storytelling. More specifically, these stories show how teachers of color must work within the cultural world of teaching and are unequally put in a position to use their limited cultural capital as new teachers to critique what it means to be seen and valued within a system that was built upon and furthers white supremacy (Ladson-Billings, 2014; Thandeka, 1999). It is the perspectives of new teachers engaging in an induction process that will help the teaching profession and educational researchers understand the cultural world of teaching, the cultural ideologies that are enacted in the practice of teaching, and the stories that get told about that practice. The sociocultural landscape that new teachers navigate as inductees reveals the importance of storying their own identities in efforts to address power and declare agency that supports professional growth within local and grand narratives of teachers and teaching.
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    Storying Multilingual Family School Involvement and Resistance To White-Centering and Monolingual Policies
    (2023-05) Perez, Gabriella
    This study uses storying and fiction-based research to uplift the voices and experiences of multilingual students and families marginalized and silenced in public schools. How do the experiences of multilingual parents and students in public schools affect their school involvement, and how do parental engagement challenge White-centering and monolingual policies and dominant discourses? To address these questions, I analyze data from the Youth Participatory Evaluation Program at Minneapolis Public Schools and the parent survey led by the Latino Youth Development Collaborative Minneapolis Public Schools parents. Next, I expand on school policies' implications on the experiences of multilingual families by creating a story using the data gathered from the surveys. Finally, I advocate for policy changes grounded in cultural equity and social justice.
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    Well-being performances in Botswana: centering women's roles in popular theatre
    (2013-12) Tshane, Pabalelo Gaolatlhe
    Through choreographic ethnography, archival research and performance analysis, my study seeks to examine the role of rural women as cultural producers in areas of popular theatre and storytelling in post-colonial Botswana. I investigate how popular theater operates as a tool for both top-down communications about state-identified concerns as well as community mobilization for marginalized members of society such as women in rural areas.I critically examine the Vision 2016 Program, which informs some of the Botswana government's aspirations, including the protection of women, health issues and funding theatre. The government often funds popular theatre companies to communicate the Vision. I therefore use the Vision to highlight connections and contradictions between policies on the proclaimed community development and the actual practice on the ground. The question I ask is: who benefits from these collaborations; the government, the theatre companies or the communities themselves? I argue that since the 1970s, the use of popular theatre has gained popularity in Botswana and Africa in general. Grounded in Freire and Boal's theorizations and traditional African (and Tswana) performance practices, African theatre scholars and practitioners have hailed popular theatre as a response to a history that has undermined people's genuine participation in development processes. Yet I claim that in some instances communities are not in control of this medium as their concerns are lost within homogenizing national discourses of state-funded popular theatre intervention projects. Through participant observations on and off stage, emphasizing attunement to social interactions of three companies - Youth Health Organization (YOHO) headquarters theatre group, Mama Theatre group and Moremogolo Extension Theatre Trust - I maintain that by turning oppressed communities into passive objects of superficial, one-dimensional messages infused with colonial and patriarchal formations, some Batswana theatre practitioners undermine the very goals of popular theatre. The study points to alternative sites within and outside the confines of popular theatre where subversive discourses of oppressed communities (groups and individuals) are located. As the first study to locate the role of women in popular theatre, the dissertation contests dominant narratives and questions how women in rural areas still manage to tactically engage in issues of importance to them.