The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

5-2026

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Styleguide

mla

Degree Name

English: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

James Heiman

Second Advisor

Mattew Barton

Third Advisor

Michael Dando

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

Pedagogy, reflection, theory, critical, binary-thinking

Abstract

This thesis examines the prevalence of binary thinking in educational contexts, particularly in how traditional classroom settings encourage students’ reliance on right-wrong, either-or frameworks. This work is situated within the field of English Studies and draws from rhetoric and composition theory, critical pedagogy, and reflective teaching practices as a means of illustrating student experience defined by instructional models that emphasize fixed outcomes. Through a combined analysis of scholarship, personal instructional and educational experience, this thesis traces how binary thinking manifests in classroom practices and is sustained by hierarchical power. Ultimately, this thesis proposes reflective pedagogy as a remedy to binary thinking. Not as a solution, but as an individualized practice that makes instructors aware of their unexamined habits, helps them learn from their students’ perspectives, and promotes both-and thinking over the either-or paradigm encouraged by the academy.

Comments/Acknowledgements

Dedicated to Deborah and James “Jim” Schaaf

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