Digital Commons Network^™

Improving Education, Population Council

Momentum

IN THIS ISSUE: Teaching young people in South Africa to manage economic, social, and health challenges | Improving education and the future of Egypt's young people | Confronting high rates of absenteeism in Malawi's schools | Improving school-to-work transitions for girls in Bangladesh | Solutions to increase girls' education in Pakistan

Pass The Roles Please, Dana Christy Klopping

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis project is a study of the process and development of a Career Development Creative Drama unit for first grade students which any teacher can reapply in their own classroom. The goal of this project was to create and polish a program which teachers may use in the classroom to benefit their students. This interactive and creative platform enhanced a career development program for early education students.

Fostering Critical Thinking About Climate Change: Applying Community Psychology To An Environmental Education Project With Youth, Livia D. Dittmer, Manuel Riemer

Centre for Community Research Learning and Action

This article argues for the participation of community psychology in issues of global climate change. The knowledge accumulated and experience gained in the discipline of community psychology have great relevance to many topics related to the environment. Practitioners of community psychology could therefore make significant contributions to climate change mitigation. To illustrate this assertion, we describe an education project conducted with youth engaged in a community-based environmental organization. This initiative was motivated by the idea that engaged and critically aware youth often become change agents for social movements. Towards this purpose, rather than using mass marketing strategies to motivate small …

Quality After-School Programming And Its Relationship To Achievement-Related Behaviors And Academic Performance, Annemarie M. Grassi

ETD Archive

The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between quality social support networks developed through high quality afterschool programming and achievement amongst middle school and high school aged youth. This study seeks to develop a deeper understanding of how quality after-school programs influence a youth's developmental assets, how quality after-school programs influence achievement-related behaviors amongst youth, and how quality after-school programs influence academic performance amongst youth. The study measured academic performance, as well as, hope, wellbeing, and engagement amongst youth who participate in high quality after-school programming, in comparison with youth who are not currently participating in after-school …

Art As Method: Complicating Tales Of Visual Stenography And Implications For Urban Education And Research, Vanessa M. Jones

ETD Archive

How Black artists-othered and positioned at the margins of "civilization" in the United States-construct knowledge, context, and historical memory is informative to urban education research and policy. The exploration of this reflects the wisdom of an African proverb that others will tell the story of the struggle should it not first be told by those who live it. To create reciprocity between participants and the researcher, this study employed participatory methods and critical analysis of data from interview sessions, observation, works of art, journal reflections, and information from existing studies and artist documentaries. The study uncovers an approach to the …

The Effect Of A Dropout Prevention Program For Black High School Males In The Cleveland Metropolitan School District, RenéE T. Willis

ETD Archive

There is a new endangered species in this country - the black male. The education of the black male in the United States has recently garnered much-needed national attention. Two national reports in 2010 have heightened the awareness of the fact that the black male student is not successfully navigating our public school systems, often dropping out. Unfortunately, it now appears that this chorus of pessimism has entrenched itself in the minds of black boys, teachers, and even parents. At the very least, there are economic and moral reasons as to why we must help our black male students graduate …

Defying Borders: Transforming Learning Through Collaborative Feminist Organizing And Interdisciplinary, Transnational Pedagogy, Terri Carney, Margaretha Geertsema Sligh, Ann M. Savage, Ageeth Sluis

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The authors provide a case study of how a group of faculty members was able to initiate a transformation in student learning and institutional structures at a small university in the Midwestern U.S. through the introduction of collaborative feminist organizing and pedagogy. It details faculty-led initiatives that set the stage for innovative teaching and learning, and it describes the authors' experience in the face of resistance when introducing a global women's human rights course into the university's new core curriculum. Because of its divers, interdisciplinary and transnational content, this course challenged deeply ingrained disciplinary and pedagogical borders of both traditional …

The Moral Dimension Of Teaching, Affectionate Schools And The Student Drop Out: The Case Study Of A Mountainous Community In Pakistan, Zeenat Shah, Sultan Alam, Sharifullah Baig

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

This study explored the perceptions, perspectives and viewpoints of the students about the reasons for turning the schools into uninteresting and unaffectionate places for the students eventually leading to the increased drop out ratio. This qualitative study was conducted in four secondary schools, which provide education to the children in four different educational systems of Gilgit- Baltistan, Pakistan. A number of six students from each school and altogether twenty four students were selected as the primary participants of this research. Semi structured interviews were the main tools of data collection. The findings highlighted the ethical, moral and behavioral aspect of …

Women, Men And Education In Azerbaijan, Kifayat Aghayeva

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

There is a very popular saying in my country, “science is for a man, a woman’s place is at home.” Many talented women have struggled for a doctoral degree and most of them could not complete it because of one reason, a “violence rule of the main gatekeepers” of academia who are inclined to preserve the ideals to authorize their positions. As my research and teaching focus is gender, I always raise gender inequality problems in my scientific works. I have some articles dealing with marginalization of women within academia or slow inclusion of women into the National Academia of …

Towards Public Professionalism: A Pentadic Intervention In Debate Between The Common Core Standards Initiative (Ccsi) And The National Council Of Teachers Of English (Ncte), Jim Webber

Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I propose an alternate rhetorical strategy for literacy educators (K-16) seeking to enter debates over common standards for "college- and career-readiness" in literacy. I argue that the NCTE's current strategy fails to invite public participation in debate, and to remedy this situation, I suggest educators employ Kenneth Burke's pentad to sponsor public inquiry into the standards. When the CCSI claims its standards will ensure that all students "demonstrate independence as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners," I suggest educators ask: in what situations do students demonstrate independence? With whom or for whom? For what purposes? Using what methods? …

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Eunice Soriano de Alencar, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Brasília, Brazil. For the last forty years, she has published numerous books and articles, especially on giftedness and creativity. She is on the editorial board of several journals in Brazil and abroad and is an honorary member of the Brazilian Council for Giftedness.

Lessons In Loyalty: American Patriotism And Education In The Progressive Era, Cody Dodge Ewert

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Beginning in the late-nineteenth century an assortment of actors, alongside school administrators and teachers, pressed for the inclusion of national symbols, myths, and rituals in American schools. Amid a flurry of educational reform in the half-century following the Civil War, a nascent patriotic education movement recast schools’ relationship with the nation’s past in an attempt to shape its future. This mobilization began at the local and state levels, but through aggressive promotion patriotic education was a nationwide force by 1920, with several states adopting legal standards requiring outward expressions of patriotism in schools. Promoters of patriotic education sought to entrench …

Access To Higher Education In Colombia : An Assessment Of Public Policy And Outcomes, Lina Uribe Correa

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This research analyzes a set of national policy initiatives, 2002-2010, regularly

Utilizing Social Networks In Times Of Crisis : Understanding, Exploring And Analyzing Critical Incident Management At Institutions Of Higher Education, Martha Jo Asselin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

crises

Challenges Facing The Egyptian Education System: Access, Quality, And Inequality [Arabic], Caroline Krafft

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This brief analyzes and summarizes young people's responses to the 2009 Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE) to identify the greatest challenges facing the Egyptian educational system, focusing specifically on primary through secondary schooling. Results show that access to school has improved, but some youth, especially females in rural Upper Egypt, remain outside the school system and are increasingly marginalized. The Egyptian school system is delivering low-quality education that is irrelevant to the labor market and has problems with repetition, absenteeism, and drop out which reduce the efficiency of the education system. Unequal distribution of resources in the education …

Priorities For Adolescent Girls' Education, Cynthia B. Lloyd

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Adolescence is a time of rapid growth and development physically, emotionally, and cognitively. For girls it is a stage of life during which education, when effectively provided, can be transformative. One of the most significant problems in most developing countries is the failure of education systems to realize their potential for empowering adolescent girls by providing economically productive skills. Education during adolescence can protect girls from the risks of premature sexual initiation and allow them to postpone marriage and childbearing and experience a childhood without the burden of excessive domestic work. Schools have the potential to fully empower girls to …

Priorités Pour L'Éducation Des Adolescentes, Cynthia B. Lloyd

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

L’adolescence marque une période de croissance et de développement rapides sur le plan physique, affectif, et cognitif. Côté féminin, il s’agit d’une étape de la vie durant laquelle l’éducation, si elle est efficace, peut être transformatrice. Un problème majeur, dans la plupart des pays en développement, est que les systèmes d’éducation en place ne cernent et ne réalisent pas leur potentiel d’autonomisation des adolescentes en les dotant de compétences économiquement productives. L’éducation des filles durant l’adolescence peut les tenir à l’abri des risques d’une initiation sexuelle précoce, différer le mariage et la maternité et leur permettre de vivre une enfance …

Is Early Childhood Care And Education A Good Investment For Egypt? Estimates Of Educational Impacts, Costs, And Benefits, Caroline Krafft

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This brief examines Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in Egypt. Findings suggest that expansion of ECCE is a good investment. Providing kindergarten to all Egyptian children, and particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, could be an important step toward greater equality, efficiency, and attainment in the education system.

The Art Of Going Beyond In Hossana, Ethiopia, Megan Elizabeth Flowers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine what education as development means for the men and women who live in Hossana town, Ethiopia. The ethnographic focus of this study is on understanding how education as development evokes different meanings for socio-political participation by rural students at a teacher training college and townspeople respectively. I discuss these conceptual differentiations in relation to the changes in beliefs and strategies that have occurred in Hossana and greater Ethiopia elsewhere over the course of several decades of local and global changes in the social order. I use the emic category of yilhunnta, as the social recognition …

Nurse Educators' Perceptions About The Culture Of Nursing And Their Role In Bringing Students Into That Culture: A Focused Ethnography, Susan Maria Strouse

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to discover nurse educators' perceptions about the culture of nursing and how they bring students into that culture.

Background: Although the extant literature addresses the process of socialization to the profession, literature exploring socialization as enculturation is scant. Nurse educators' perspectives on the culture of nursing needed further exploration, as their voice on this topic is relatively silent and they provide the first formal enculturation to the profession. Viewing nursing as a professional culture may more effectively enable faculty to clarify and explicate for students the values, behaviors, symbols, and beliefs inherent in …

Exploiting Globalization While Being Exploited By It: Insights From Post-Soviet Education Reforms In Central Asia, Sarfaroz Niyozov, Nazarkhudo Dastambuev

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

Building on an examination of comparative and international literature and their research and development experiences, the authors highlight a number of continuities, changes, and issues between Soviet and post-Soviet, international and Central Asian experiences of borrowing and lending of education reforms. Even though Central Asian actors and institutions are not totally helpless victims and though international experts and NGOs appear well-meaning in these globalizing education transfers, the processes are leading toward reproducing global and local dependencies and inequalities.The trajectory of education reforms in Central Asia echo those of other developing countries. In response, the authors urge local policy makers and …

Watching Children: A History Of America's Race To Educate Kids And The Creation Of The 'Slow-Learner' Subject, Jeffrey C. Frenkiewich

Doctoral Dissertations

On January 25, 2011, United States President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address to Congress and to the nation. As part of that address, President Obama articulated his vision for American education and stated that America had "to win the race to educate our kids" (Obama, 2011, state of the union). Mr. Obama's speech and his "Race to the Top" policy stand as statements in a discourse that expects fast-paced education based on universal standards and quantitative measures. Tracing a history of American schooling, one sees that this discourse has been dominant in this society for most …

How Porous Are The Walls That Separate Us?: Transformative Service-Learning, Women’S Incarceration, And The Unsettled Self, Coralynn V. Davis, Carol Wayne White

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, we refine a politics of thinking from the margins by exploring a pedagogical model that advances transformative notions of service learning as social justice teaching. Drawing on a recent course we taught involving both incarcerated women and traditional college students, we contend that when communication among differentiated and stratified parties occurs, one possible result is not just a view of the other but also a transformation of the self and other. More specifically, we suggest that an engaged feminist praxis of teaching incarcerated women together with college students helps illuminate the porous nature of fixed markers that …

Teachers' Perspectives On Bullying: Understanding Educational Interventions, Ryan Dennis Buch

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

During the last number of years, middle school bullying has received wide spread attention across numerous media sources. Coverage of the most troubling accounts of bullying have even led to criminal charges and the introduction of legislation against acts of bullying. A substantial body of research has shown that bullying leads to negative social and emotional outcomes for both the victims and the perpetrators of such acts. The same body of research also shows how much difficulty there is for teachers and other school personnel who attempt to control these fluid acts of aggression on a daily basis in and …

Cooperation, College Knowledge, And Strong Parent Communities In The L.A. Concrete Jungle: The Case For Family-Centered Outreach, Michael J. Smith

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban African American teens are unprepared to compete for jobs in the global marketplace, but higher education professionals could partner with parents to reverse this trend. After reviewing parent involvement literature, this paper shares findings from a study of urban African American parents involved in their children's outreach programs. It found that outreach programs empowered parents by creating "community" and strengthened cultural capital while providing social capital that made parents partners in their children's college choice process.

Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, And Urban Neighborhoods, Margaret F. Brinig, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

This paper addresses implications for urban neighborhoods of two dramatic shifts in the American educational landscape: (1) the rapid disappearance of Catholic schools from urban neighborhoods, and (2) the rise of charter schools. In previous studies, we linked Catholic school closures to increased disorder and crime, and decreased social cohesion, in Chicago neighborhoods. This paper turns to two questions unanswered in our previous investigations. First, because we focused exclusively on school closures in our previous studies, we were uncertain whether our results reflected the work that open Catholic schools do as neighborhood institutions or whether we were finding a “loss …

Is Early Childhood Care And Education A Good Investment For Egypt? Estimates Of Educational Impacts, Costs, And Benefits [Arabic], Caroline Krafft

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This summary details the impact of early childhood education in Egypt. The results show that early childhood care and education has an impact on educational attainment that is both statistically significant and sizeable. Such interventions increase overall educational attainment by approximately one year, primarily due to decreased primary and preparatory drop out. The impact on educational attainment is reflected in improved school performance, such as higher test scores, decreased grade repetition, and improvements in school tracking, during the early years. Investments in early childhood education can be a powerful approach to improving educational outcomes, and the research suggests that increases …

Challenges Facing The Egyptian Education System: Access, Quality, And Inequality, Caroline Krafft

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This brief analyzes and summarizes young people's responses to the 2009 Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE) to identify the greatest challenges facing the Egyptian educational system, focusing specifically on primary through secondary schooling. Results show that access to school has improved, but some youth, especially females in rural Upper Egypt, remain outside the school system and are increasingly marginalized. The Egyptian school system is delivering low-quality education that is irrelevant to the labor market and has problems with repetition, absenteeism, and drop out which reduce the efficiency of the education system. Unequal distribution of resources in the education …

Berhane Hewan ('Light For Eve'): Increasing Opportunities To Delay Marriage And Promote Schooling, Annabel Erulkar, Eunice N. Muthengi

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This policy brief describes the findings of a pilot study on girls’ experience of early marriage, education, and sexual behavior in rural Amhara Region, Ethiopia. The brief also discusses efforts in the region to delay marriage and promote girls’ schooling. The Amhara Bureau of Women, Children and Youth Affairs and the Population Council pilot-tested a program to delay marriage and support schooling in rural Amhara Region. The program, entitled Berhane Hewan (Amharic for “Light for Eve”), included community conversations, support for remaining in school, and conditional cash transfers if girls remained unmarried and in school for the duration of the …

(2012) "I Must Change My Life": A Review Of Mathew Lipman’S A Life Teaching Thinking, David K. Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

Born in 1923 and recently deceased after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease, Matthew Lipman wrote this brief but detailed autobiography just before his illness made it impossible to write any more. It begins with memories of earliest childhood and his preoccupation with the possibility of being able to fly, moves through the years in which his family struggled with the effects of the Great Depression, through his service in the military during World War II, his discovery of the joy and beauty of philosophy, his quick academic rise at Columbia University, his sojourn in Paris, and his early and …