For The Love Of Teaching: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experience Of Moral Education, Anne Marie Foley Ruiz

Doctoral Dissertations

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Moral aspects of teaching arise each and every day, yet we lack information about how prepared teachers feel about this critical aspect of teaching. This multi-case study explores perceptions of five pre-service teachers in an elementary teacher education program in Western Massachusetts. A series of interviews explore their histories prior to the program and their experiences in the program as related to the pre-service teachers’ orientations to the moral work of teaching. Research questions address the awareness and self-efficacy of student teachers in implementing the moral aspects of teaching. Using Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006), this study explores beliefs …

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Education Assemblage: Tracing And Undermining Raciality In The Era Of Standardization And Accountability, Chalais Carter

Doctoral Dissertations

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While many education scholars have discussed the racist and neoliberal capitalist relations that operate through education reform with impunity, the concept and tracing of raciality illuminates ethical, juridical, and economic dimensions that shape how one comes to know and intervene in the lives of the so-called educationally disadvantaged. In this dissertation, the researcher traces how the arsenal of racial knowledge works with/in and through US neoliberal education reform by studying out of school learning contexts. Teaching for the 21st Century (T4C), as a focus of this dissertation study, is a targeted intervention summer learning program that is designed to reduce …

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Agential Schooling: Posthumanism, Ypar, And Spooky Entanglements, Thomas Albright

Doctoral Dissertations

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This yearlong ethnographic project, building upon three years of work within an Ethnic Studies program, examined schooling through a posthumanist lens to better understand the intra-actions between humans, nonhumans, and discourses in a public high school along with an afterschool youth participatory action research program in Western Massachusetts. Intra-action here refers to the way that the bodies are co-constitutive. A posthuman framing of schooling, what I label agential schooling, demonstrates how schooling is protean, and shifts as we seek to understand and challenge it. To shed light on this issue of examining agential schooling, and YPAR as a possible intervention …

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The Institutional Pillars Of China's National College Entrance Exam: A Case Study Of Gaozhong High School And Ncee Reforms, Mei Lan Frame

Doctoral Dissertations

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This dissertation is based on a case study of a Beijing high school (referred to as “Gaozhong”) during the initial wave of reforms to the National College Entrance Exam (NCEE). Using the conceptual framework of Richard Scott’s “three pillars” of institutions (2008) to analyze stake holder perception toward the NCEE (administrators, teachers, parents, and students), this study identifies and examines the regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive elements that comprise the NCEE. Congruent with Scott’s theory that these the combined strength and interdependency between institutional elements prevent institutional change, this study also analyzes the three pillars as barriers to the implementation of …

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An Examined Life Of A Language Teacher Of Chinese: An Autoethnographic Investigation Into Agency, Ying Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

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There is a paucity of research about and done by L2 Chinese educators regarding the theoretical construct of agency. It is also noted that the qualitative inquiry is marginalized in L2 Chinese research field, let alone the narrative study of the agency of experienced by L2 Chinese-teachers. In this dissertation research, I aim at filling in the gap by conducting a longitudinal autoethnography which captures over a decade (1997-2017) of my personal and professional development with an agency perspective. The highly personalized autoethnographic accounts open up my personal and professional life as an experienced, college-level, transnational, early 40’s female native …

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When Healing And High-Stakes Meet: Restorative Justice In An Era Of Racial Neoliberalism, Dani O'Brien

Doctoral Dissertations

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Based on a 3-year ethnography, this dissertation documents the story of Presente, an explicitly critical youth-led restorative justice group attempting to dismantle the school-prison nexus and create a more youth-centered culture at their high-reform high school. This dissertation addresses the questions: How does serving as a restorative justice peer leader impact students? What challenges and opportunities arise as the school tries to transition to more restorative practices? And how do the values central to restorative justice come up against, challenge, and get challenged by neoliberal education reform?

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Why Education Matters: Political Participation And Interpretive Experiences At High School, Samuel V. Stoddard

Doctoral Dissertations

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Political scientists have long recognized educational attainment as a strong predictor of voter turnout, but the mechanisms through which educational experiences lead voters to the polls remain under-explored. This research begins the process of opening the proverbial black box of education to understand the specific types of scholastic experiences that encourage voting. Grounded in previous findings by scholars of policy feedback and political socialization, I use a mix of qualitative and quantitative data analyses to reveal that nonacademic high school experiences can have powerful and lasting interpretive effects. Results show that participants in performance and service-based extracurricular activities are commonly …

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Applying Stakeholder Analysis To Lay The Groundwork For Conflict-Sensitive Education In The Somali Education Sector, Nina Aristea Papadopoulos

Doctoral Dissertations

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ABSTRACT

APPLYING STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS TO LAY THE GROUNDWORK FOR CONFLICT-SENSITIVE EDUCATION IN THE SOMALI EDUCATION SECTOR SEPTEMBER 2018 NINA ARISTEA PAPADOPOULOS B.A., University of South Carolina, Columbia M.A., American University, Washington, D.C. Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST Directed by Ash Hartwell, College of Education This research represents the growing convergence of two previously discrete fields: education in conflict and crisis, and stakeholder analysis. Momentum for an improved and more sophisticated approach to education in conflict and crisis is gaining speed. We are now engaged in a crucial analysis of the interaction between the conflict or crisis and the education system, …

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The Knowledge They Possess: Elementary Teachers' Expertise And Where It Becomes Usable Knowledge In The Ma Education System, Helen-Ann Ireland

Doctoral Dissertations

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ABSTRACT The Knowledge They Possess: Elementary Teachers’ Expertise and Where It Becomes Usable Knowledge in the Massachusetts Education System February 15, 2018 By Helen-Ann Ireland BA University of New Hampshire MEd Antioch University EdD University of Massachusetts Amherst (pending) Dr. Sharon Rallis, Dissertation Chair Elementary teachers are facing a dilemma. They are expected to uphold the Massachusetts (MA) state mandate and deliver Common Core State Standards (CCSS), use the programs their school has adopted aligned with CCSS and meet the various cognitive and behavioral needs of their students. Sometimes the teachers experience competing commitments between meeting standards, using programs, pacing, …

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Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

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Over the past forty-years, neoliberal education reform policies in the U.S. have spurred significant resistance, often galvanized by claims that such policies undermine public education as a vital institution of U.S. democracy. Within this narrative, many activists call to “save our schools” and return them to a time when public schools served the common good. With these narratives in mind, I explore the foundational and persistent power structures that characterize the U.S. as a means to reveal the fundamental purpose of its public education system. The questions that guide my research include: (1) With an understanding that capitalism, white supremacy, …

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Seguimos Luchando: Women Educators’ Trajectories In Social Movement Based Popular Education Projects In Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jennifer Lee O'Donnell

Doctoral Dissertations

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Through a multisite ethnographic investigation, I provide a look at the vision and practices of women teaching in the popular education sector, particularly those who impact social, economic, and political public spaces in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As an alternative to Freirean based education theory, which may overshadow the collective work of women in popular projects, this work highlights women’s commitments to education that contests neoliberal reform, transforming not only curriculum and pedagogies, social practices, and discourses inside classrooms, but the communities where they live as well.

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