Creating Common Ground: Architecture For Tactical Learning and Creative Convergence

Certain environments can inhibit learning and stifle enthusiasm, while others enhance learning or stimulate curiosity. Furthermore, in a world where technological change is accelerating we could ask how might architecture connect resource abundant and resource scarce innovation environments? Innovation environments developed out of necessity within urban villages and those developed with high intention and expectation within more institutionalized settings share a framework of opportunity for addressing change through learning and education. This thesis investigates formal and informal learning environments and how architecture can stimulate curiosity, enrich learning, create common ground, and expand access to education. The reason for this thesis exploration is to better understand how architects might design inclusive environments that bring people together to build sustainable infrastructure encouraging innovation and adaptation to change for years to come. The context of this thesis is largely based on Colin McFarlane’s theory that the “city is an assemblage for learning” The socio-spatial perspective in urbanism, considers how built infrastructure and society interact. Through the urban realm, inhabitants learn to negotiate people, space, politics, and resources affecting their daily lives. The city is therefore a dynamic field of emergent possibility. This thesis uses the city as a lens through which the boundaries between informal and formal logics as well as the public and private might be blurred. Through analytical processes I have examined the environmental devices and assemblage of factors that consistently provide conditions through which learning may thrive. These parameters that make a creative space significant can help suggest the design of common ground environments through which innovation is catalyzed.

EXAMINING SECONDARY MATHEMATICS TEACHER CANDIDATES’ LEARNING AND ENACTMENT OF MATHEMATICS TEACHING PRACTICES: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY

This qualitative case study explored three teacher candidates’ learning and enactment of discourse-focused mathematics teaching practices. Using audio and video recordings of their teaching practice this study aimed to identify the shifts in the way in which the teacher candidates enacted the following discourse practices: elicited and used evidence of student thinking, posed purposeful questions, and facilitated meaningful mathematical discourse. The teacher candidates’ written reflections from their practice-based coursework as well as interviews were examined to see how two mathematics methods courses influenced their learning and enactment of the three discourse focused mathematics teaching practices. These data sources were also used to identify tensions the teacher candidates encountered. All three candidates in the study were able to successfully enact and reflect on these discourse-focused mathematics teaching practices at various time points in their preparation programs. Consistency of use and areas of improvement differed, however, depending on various tensions experienced by each candidate. Access to quality curriculum materials as well as time to formulate and enact thoughtful lesson plans that supported classroom discourse were tensions for these teacher candidates. This study shows that teacher candidates are capable of enacting discourse-focused teaching practices early in their field placements and with the support of practice-based coursework they can analyze and reflect on their practice for improvement. This study also reveals the importance of assisting teacher candidates in accessing rich mathematical tasks and collaborating during lesson planning. More research needs to be explored to identify how specific aspects of the learning cycle impact individual teachers and how this can be used to improve practice-based teacher education courses.

Influence of Acute and Chronic Exercise on Markers of Hippocampal Plasticity

Exercise and physical activity are lifestyle behaviors associated with enriched mental health. Understanding the mechanisms by which exercise and physical activity improve mental health may provide insight for novel therapeutic approaches for numerous mental health disorders. This dissertation reports the findings from three studies investigating the influence of acute and chronic exercise on behavioral and mechanistic markers of hippocampal plasticity and delves into the potential role of noradrenergic signaling in the hippocampal adaptations with exercise. The first study assessed the effects of long-term voluntary wheel running on hippocampal expression of plasticity-associated genes and proteins in adult male and female C57BL/6J mice, highlighting sex differences in the adaptations to long-term voluntary wheel running. The second study examined the influence of acute exercise intensity on AMPA receptor phosphorylation, a mechanism essential for hippocampal plasticity, plasticity- associated gene expression, spatial learning and memory, and anxiety-like behavior. The unexpected finding that acute exercise increased anxiety-like behavior encouraged investigation into the role of central noradrenergic signaling in acute exercise-induced anxiety. The third study determined how previous exposure to voluntary wheel running modulates the response to an acute bout of exercise, focusing primarily on transcription of the important plasticity-promoting gene, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Using a pharmacological approach to compromise the locus coeruleus noradrenergic system, a system that is implicated in age-related mental health disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease, the third study also investigated the influence and interaction of the noradrenergic system and acute exercise on expression of multiple brain-derived neurotrophic factor transcripts. Together, this dissertation reports the findings from a series of experiments that explored similarities, differences, and interactions between the effects of acute and chronic exercise on markers of hippocampal plasticity and behavior. Further, this work provides insight into the role of the noradrenergic system in exercise-induced hippocampal plasticity.