Tales of Re-Entry to Adult High School Programs: A Rhizomatic (De)(Re)Tangling

Date
2020-03
Authors
Kokorudz, Shelly Marie
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Publisher
Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina
Abstract

This rhizomatic research is an experimental wondering and wandering with a Deleuzian- Guattarian mindset. The purpose of this study is to de-re-territorialize affective adults who have been dropping out and dropping back in to high school. Adults who are dropping out and dropping in often find themselves placed at society’s margins. These margins occur outside of the (ir)rational system of education that purposes to shape its body of students, its product, its graduates, through the attainment of a high school diploma. The re-entry (dropping in) process is the focus in this study. Thus, attention is given to possible (re)consideration of re-entry high school programs by (dis)(re)tracting the territorialized views of these adult learners. The concepts offered by Deleuze and Guattari enable a range of potentiality found in the rhizomatic connections becoming produced in the intra-relational assemblage among participants and researcher. In viewing the adult learners as affective, their own subjectivities are continually becoming, but the researcher is also impacted by the becoming possibilities of the emerging assemblages. Rhizomatic (non)methodology informs rhizo intra-relational (non)method referred to as intra-view (St. Pierre, 2019; Masny, 2016) and facilitates the unfolding of the discussions that occur among participants and researcher. The researcher’s memories, personal teaching diary, relevant reading throughout the writing, and former teacherstudent relationships with the participants inform the emerging rhizome. Rhizomatics intra-weave cartographies in creation of the dissertation and challenges the researcher/the reader in becoming (dis)(re)tracted to think something new within reentry programming that is contingent upon openings created by thinking frames of post qualitative research. Rhizoanalysis in this dissertation raises questions, not conclusions Shelley Kokorudz TALES OF RE-ENTRY (Honan & Bright, 2016; Waterhouse & Arnott, 2016; Masny, 2017; Reinertsen, 2017; St. Pierre, 2019), about high school re-entry programs. The cartographies (dis)(re)tract the researcher to think about the striated constitutions of re-entry programs that seem to ignore the life experiences of re-entry adult learners and fail to consider other curricula that may be more reflective of adult learner interests and needs. Why do they drop back into a system that looks so similar to the one from which they dropped out? The only thing different is the physical setting and the age of learners. Are they not merely encountering the same requirements of a system which they once exited? What are the merging possibilities that might affect re-entry high school programs to be experienced/designed differently than those which exists for teen-aged students? The assemblages emerging among the participants and the researcher in this study (dis)(re)tract the researcher to think more about the potential possibilities for re-entry high school programs, including (re)consideration of the curricula and required number of credits necessary for completion. In addition to the (dis)(re)tractions dwelling around the topic of re-entry, the assemblages and processes continually produce the transforming researcher in her own becoming as a post qualitative/post human philosopher. Her experiences as an educator, her re-entry to a doctoral degree in Philosophy later in life, and her becoming journey in academia become entangled in the rhizome. These entanglements wind and unwind as the rhizome moves and fills the blank pages of the experimenting dissertation.

Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education, University of Regina. vii, 305 p.
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