Eastern Arizona College

In this essay, we examine the violence of allonormativity in the communication discipline. We also provide notes on healing for asexual folks navigating an allonormative world, ultimately seeking practical tools towards ace worldmaking. This research extends Yep’s (2003) theorizing of violence against sexual minorities across dimensions of interior-exterior and individual-collective by centering interview data from 20 individuals who self-identified on the asexual-spectrum. After cataloging the various violences of allonormativity, we offer three communication strategies of ace worldmaking based on the interview data: (1) denaturalizing allonormativity, (2) depathologizing asexuality, (3) policy and legislative change. Practical implications for communication research agendas, pedagogies, and community praxes are presented in the hopes of possibilizing healing for intersectionally diverse asexual-spectrum individuals and their communities.

The chapter presents a review of the literature on Native American education and the use of culturally responsive instruction to guide the implementation of a computer-based reading program to increase engagement and reading levels for Native American secondary students for a quantitative single-case study on the effects of using Achieve3000 while using a culturally responsive model for selecting reading samples. Study findings noted though student reading levels increased and reading engagement improved in some key areas, no significant difference was found between groups. The implications of these findings are that use of a culturally responsive pedagogy to select self-relevant materials for a computer-based reading program may help Native American students to increase their reading levels and reading engagement scores, but not at a significant rate. Future research should consider whether these pedagogies and other strategies may improve Native American reading literacy.

A five-year study to determine the status of the porcupine (Erithizon dorsatum) in the state of Arizona was conducted. Letters requesting the cooperation of several agencies and requesting the public to report any sighting of porcupines were gathered by staff and students of Eastern Arizona College. The main agency supporting this study was the Arizona Game and Fish Department. During the study 61 sightings were reported and the data from each report were analyzed to compare to previous studies by Taylor in the 1930s and Brown and Babb in 2007. Mountain lions appear to continue to be a limiting factor in controlling the population. The most significant factor documented in this study is the increase in the number of road kills. Taylor reported no road kills in the 1930s, Brown and Babb reported 21% of porcupines as road kills in 2007 and this study documented 41% as road kill. It is speculated that the increase in traffic along major highways and the slow pace of porcupines has increased this cause of death.

Narrative medicine seeks to improve clinical effectiveness through narrative training in reading and writing. Stories give meaning to experience and encourage communication between doctors and patients by honoring the basic human need to recognize and be recognized. Learning how to receive and tell stories, practiced through close reading, group discussion, and written response, may also facilitate ethical reflection and inquiry.

Mathematics educators around the world have been addressing ways of using writing as a tool in mathematics classes. However there has been little systematic effort to establish a paradigm examining the effectiveness of particular activities. In this study, clinical methods were used to examine the effects of using certain writing activities. Prewriting, such as modelling or prompts, was seen to be essential. Regular, systematic writing over an extended period improved the students’ performance in, and attitude towards, mathematics. Such promising results from classrooms will need to be validated under more generalisable conditions.