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Ferraro, Tonya

College of Education and Social Services

2014

M. Ed.

Interdisciplinary integration and practice through meaning making and context can contribute to the reconsideration and revolution of research by supporting narratives and creating space for public discourse. In researching my heritage as a Korean adoptee, I found that the literature has been predominantly from adoptive parents' perspective, focusing primarily on child and adolescent development. Lacking in the literature is the adult adoptee perspective, and specifically their experiential voices.
This interdisciplinary thesis has three major purposes (1) to explore how transracial transnational Korean adoption affects identity formation, (2) to illustrate how mentoring relationships can be a means to address and reframe the theme of loss as experienced by an adoptee, and (3) to.use interdisciplinary inquiry as a means of expression to make meaning and illuminate adoptee identity formation. Drawing from my personal experience as an adoptee, an artist, a researcher, and as an educational mentee I integrate past research findings, Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN: storytelling), epistolary Scholarly Personal Narrative (eSPN: epistolary storytelling), and visual artistic research through jewelry/sculpture to describe constructing my adoptee identity. Images of the jewelry/sculpture are provided, while a public art opening displayed the series of work.