Digital Commons Network^™

Practicing Engagement, Isabella Powers Yannoni

Senior Projects Spring 2018

For this project I lead two rehearsal processes with peers, and a movement class for middle schoolers, all of which centered around engagement. I have investigated how my own and others’ engagement can contribute to a rich experience for participants and observers, using collaborative games and storytelling as a means of working with these ideas. I believe in the power of questioning together, as opposed to determining alone. Throughout these processes, we, the participants, have learned from each other and have had to re-negotiate our roles and responsibilities to the work as well as to each other.

Dancing with people …

Transition On The Han: The Agricultural Roots Of Development On The Korean Peninsula, Ivan Glinski

Senior Projects Spring 2018

One of the crucial preconditions for growth in the East Asian Economic Miracle were high levels of human capital, yet an explanation for their origin has not been forthcoming in the economic literature. This project investigates the origin of these high levels of human capital in South Korea through the frameworks of induced development and labor-intensive growth. By examining both long-term processes and the effect of policies during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) in the Korean countryside, it's argued that labor-intensive modes of production, particularly in the case of rice cultivation, induced changes in economic preferences and behaviors. These shifts …

Girls' Education: A Behavioral Analysis, Syeda Zahra Ahmed

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Universal education has been an international development goal for a very long time, and gaps still exist in gender parity in developing countries. This project aims to address the fact that while the provision of affordable and accessible education in- stitutions have seen great successes in the past, perhaps the way forward now is to analyze the demand side issues. Due to cultural norms, demand for girls’ education in developing countries is lacking. The first part of the paper explores the psychological constraints of present bias, role model effect and stereotype threat in the context of girls’ educational demands. The …

Two Concepts Of Education, Vikramaditya H. Joshi

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The foundation of the current discourse on education is grounded in the funding and distribution of a ‘good’ called education. The Common Core State Standards, as a set of shared goals stipulated by the federal government, considers education to be a “stepping stone” towards joining the workforce in a competitive global marketplace. The lexicon of economic commodities instrumentalizes education due to its tacit assumption that education is a means to an occupational end. It treats education as an individual possession deposited by a school, via its teachers, into …