Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons^™

Pedagogy Of Care: Exploring Climate Justice Frameworks In Cuny Undergraduate Courses, Ismerlyn Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Climate justice centers the human rights of communities most impacted by the climate crisis rather than solely focusing on the scientific aspects of environmental challenges and disasters. Higher education institutions play a key role in advancing climate justice education, but research shows that frameworks are not consistently defined across institutions. The IRB-approved study that produced the findings in this capstone sought to explore how climate justice frameworks are implemented at the CUNY undergraduate level and learn more about the instructors delivering these courses. From February to April 2026, instructors from different CUNY undergraduate campuses were surveyed, interviewed, and asked to …

The Role Of White Racial Identity Development In Leadership Practices: An Interpretive Phenomenological Study In White Educational Leaders, Kaitlyn Ryan

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined how white educational leaders experience and make meaning of their racial identity development as they lead adult professional learning focused on racial equity and culturally responsive practice. Grounded in Helms’s White Racial Identity Development (WRID) model and guided by Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the study explored the lived experiences of ten white leaders across PK–12 and Institution of Higher Education (IHE). Data were collected through three semi‑structured interviews per participant and analyzed using IPA’s six‑step process. Five major themes emerged: transformational experiences that shifted leaders’ understanding of race and privilege; the critical role of white affinity …

Finding Black Joy: Understanding How Black Students Are Seen, Affirmed, And Nourished In Expanded Learning Opportunities., Jamila Mosley

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Black students experience Black joy within expanded learning opportunity (ELO) programs and how those programs are structured to nurture that joy. It is guided by the central research question: How do Black students describe the ways in which an expanded learning opportunity program fosters their joy through experiences of being seen, affirmed, and nourished? Using an instrumental case study design at two secondary schools, the study draws on semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and observations of students participating in robotics, debate, Sister Circle, cheer, basketball, and creative writing. Data were analyzed through multiple cycles of coding, first …

Liberated Learning Spaces: A Visual Playlist, Tarilyn R. Little

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Liberation can be defined as “the act of setting free” or “being free from limits on thoughts and behavior.” Both an action and a state of being, liberation has long been centered as a key function of education, particularly for those who live in historically and systemically marginalized identities. Despite the long-standing existence of liberation-focused pedagogies and activism aimed at transforming schools and students’ lived experiences, educational institutions in the United States have struggled to live out these ideals, often sustaining and replicating systems and practices of oppression. Drawing on historical and contemporary conversations in education and psychology, Liberated Learning …

"Chatgpt Told Me To Say It": Ai Chatbots And Class Participation Apprehension In University Students, Daisuke Akiba

Publications and Research

The growing prevalence of AI chatbots in everyday life has prompted educators to explore their potential applications in promoting student success, including support for classroom engagement and communication. This exploratory study emerged from semester-long observations of class participation apprehensions in an introductory educational psychology course, examining how chatbots might scaffold students toward active and independent classroom contribution. Four students experiencing situational participation anxiety voluntarily participated in a pilot intervention using AI chatbots as virtual peer partners. Following comprehensive training in AI use and prompt design given to the entire class, participants employed systematic consultation frameworks for managing classroom discourse trepidations. …

Living Heritage, Resilience And Ethically Informed Infrastructures In Malawi, Martha B. Lerski, Frank Puluputu Mwale

Publications and Research

Rooted in a rural community’s needs, this paper explores how historically, and ethically informed infrastructures can support community engagement towards identification, documentation, and dissemination of local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge relating to climate change. The paper examines climate adaptation and sustainability issues through the lenses of community organizing and Library & Information Science best practices. It draws on a growing body of literature identifying a role for expanded epistemological and subject discipline perspectives. While the impacts of climate on material culture are increasingly recognized, intangible, and biocultural heritage have not received as much attention. Living heritage traditions and knowledge systems …

Arts-Based Sustainability: From New York To Malawi, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Recognizing that libraries serve multiple constituencies and subject areas, this chapter documents and advocates for development of transdisciplinary arts-based research (ABR) and culture-related projects linked to environmental challenges. Libraries contribute collections and spaces, as well as the research of library and information scientists. Libraries are currently among invisible contributors to sustainability planning and services. The chapter will link this invisibility to the value of what visual arts refer to as negative space elements in subjects ranging from traditional ecological knowledge to environmental science. Library collections, projects, and research contribute to education for sustainable development (ESD) as required to achieve the …

Historical, Philosophical, And Social Foundations Of Education, Ashraf A. Shady

Open Educational Resources

This course is designed to examine the historical, philosophical, and sociological foundations of American education. Attention will be paid to comparative analysis of past and contemporary historical, philosophical, and sociological factors that continue to influence and shape education decision-making. Theoretical analysis of major educational ideas and practices in the United States will be explored. 3hr.; 3cr.; 25 hr. field experience.

SEYS 201W is aligned with the core values of the education unit, which promote equity, excellence, and ethics in urban schools and communities. More specifically, the Education Unit is committed to preparing teachers and other school professionals who:

• Build …

Sociology: Culture, Marcia Morrison

Open Educational Resources

This work examine culture. It begins by examining the foundations of culture to include norms, values, language, symbols and knowledge. In looking at each, it breaks down the implication of each to the development of ourselves as well as the person in the environment. It moves on to look at contexts of culture such as dominant cultures juxtapose to competing cultural systems, and how the various elements of culture can serve to either promote or minimize the various cultural constructs within society.

A Seat At The Schoolhouse Table: Reimagining Education Through Afrofuturist And Womanist Theory, Natasha M. Capers

Student Theses

“A Seat at the Schoolhouse Table: Reimagining Education Through Afrofuturist and Womanist Theory” critically examines how curriculum, even when well-intentioned, can perpetuate harm by excluding the lived experiences of marginalized communities—especially Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ students. Using a real middle school immigration assignment given to the author's son as a case study, this capstone deconstructs the structural biases embedded in curriculum design and proposes a radical reimagining through the liberatory lenses of Afrofuturism and Womanism. Blending scholarly inquiry, personal narrative, and community-based interviews, this project offers a restructured assignment that centers joy, identity, and speculative storytelling as tools for educational …

Freedom Pedagogy: Black Educators In The Urban North During The Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries, Milagros Seraus-Roache

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black educational history has been told through a predominantly Southern lens. This dissertation highlights the experiences of Black educators in the urban North during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Northern Black educators confronted the challenges of freedom—including the constant need to protect it—using a set of approaches influenced by the various intersecting social movements and intellectual currents of their day. While these educators represented a small minority of African Americans, their contributions were profound, leaving legacies that provide a lens for understanding and improving issues facing urban Black youth and their communities today.

In the absence of a comprehensive …

Navigating Climate Action: The River As Teacher For Eco-Literacy, Educational Regeneration And Creative Participation, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cultures' engagements with land and its more-than-human elements reveal their attitudes toward these dimensions, spanning a spectrum from reciprocal to transactional practices. In time, these engagements form a body of knowledges that nurtures the culture and its land, or arrests their vital and diverse qualities. This research project aims to bring to light how the different ways of engaging with and relating to land are embedded in knowledge production, distribution and communication—in short, in general educational endeavors and their philosophies—to promote a better understanding of the principles of eco-literacy. Additionally, a purpose of this project is to provide insights into …

Identifying Intangible And Biocultural Heritage Elements Toward Environmental Understanding: Engaging Stakeholders Through Art, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Grounded in a case study in Barbuda in the Caribbean, this research examines sustainability from the perspective of what arts and heritage can contribute to community engagement and local and broader understandings about the environment. This article documents a growing body of literature recognizing the role of arts and culture, including local knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in climate change endeavors. Art and TEK present expansive world views. Contextual information situates research done on the island of Barbuda pre- and post-Hurricane Irma. Visual arts workshops engaged community members in mixed methods research. Results documented cultural elements, particularly intangible and …

Syllabus For Social Foundations Of Education, Laura Kates

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

A Praxis Of Radical Collectivity: Centering Justice And The Poetics Of Racialized Progressive Leadership, Alisa Algava

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Educational research that effectively addresses larger sociopolitical and sociohistorical contexts must interrogate macro-level decision-making and policies and prioritize the lived experiences of those who directly affect and are affected by social structures. This project explores racial and economic justice work in schools by centering the perspectives of those progressive educational leaders who strive, work and grapple to center all adults and children within our larger unjust education systems. As individual leaders share their stories through one-on-one recollections and in critical collaborative inquiry groups, they illuminate spaces of contestation, continuity and liberation. The context of both continuous and unfolding pandemics along …

Thinking Blue / Writing Red: Marxism And The (Post)Human, Stephen C. Tumino

Publications and Research

Thinking Blue/Writing Red interrogates contemporary culture across a range of texts, from the pandemic (‘Covid’ and ‘Trump Speak’) to high theory (Melville's narratives) and popular culture (Beyoncé's ‘Formation’ and Super Bowl performance, Twin Peaks , metamodern ‘cli-fi’ films). Inspired by Derrida’s idea of the secret, Tumino examines the significance of social movements (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, alter-globalization) and naïve art (Darger, Ryden) to argue that these texts speak of the secrets that capitalism cannot speak. Contending that the cultural surfaces narrate only the ‘nonsecret,’ that to see the social logic of the culture one must dig into what Bruno Latour …

Beyond The Rational: Exploring Transrational And Embodied Knowledge Through Ceremony And Nature, Dimitris A. Alexakos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores transrational and embodied knowledge gained through my experience within ceremony and nature. This thesis uses transrational to mean “information and experience that does not readily fit into standard cause and effect logical structure” (Bernstein, 2005, p. xv). By reflecting on personal experiences and embodied sensations during ceremonies in nature, the thesis outlines a framework for exploring transrational and embodied knowledge within nature. I offer heuristics, a phenomenological tool to “explore, focus, and raise awareness” (Alexakos, 2015) to provide context for my experience in nature, ceremonies and ceremonies in nature.

The research investigates transrational and embodied knowledge through …

Adaptations And Transformations: Perceptions Of Change In Academic Motivation, Resilience, And Covid-19 Stress, Ella V. Gregorio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Of concern to educators, post-COVID-19 assessments have revealed significant achievement gaps in student performance, as well as significant decreases in adolescent mental health. Less is known about changes in achievement motivation. Here we ask how students perceive their own motivation and whether it changed between “before” the pandemic to the present (Fall 2022 - Spring 2023), about three years after the beginning of the pandemic when many school routines were returning to “normal.” To understand how variance in these perceived changes might be related to pandemic-related stressors, trait resilience, and current mental health, we conducted a large survey study (N …

Applying An Intersectional And Multi-Systemic Level Approach To Adei Institutional Assessments In Social Work Higher Education, Diana A. Melendez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Institutional Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ADEI) tools and assessment models are needed to support schools of social work in demonstrating compliance with the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). This study develops a new tool and model for ADEI institutional assessment in social work higher education using a collaborative, intersectional and multi-systemic level approach. The primary aim of the project was to develop and test a new tool to gather and document experience(s) of coloniality within a social work higher education institution, from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, as a usable model of ADEI …

What Exactly Does Identity Have To Do With Teaching? Exploring The Connection Between A Teacher's Racialized Identity And Their Teacher Identity, Lizette Aguilar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the relationship between race and teacher identity, specifically understanding how the two concepts intersect and (re)present themselves within the classroom environment. This study analyzes six teachers’ narratives of identity, race, and teaching to explore themes of race and identity as they traverse from their earliest experiences with race into their experiences as teachers. Findings conclude that, first, teachers’ narrative identities are a composite of key narratives—important moments of deep impact in the process of identity building—that accumulate over time to form what Dan McAdams (1993) calls personal myths. Since key narratives are continually shaping one’s personal myth, …

Teacher Beliefs And Experiences Addressing Healthy Racial And Ethnic Identity Instructionally Through Social Emotional Learning, Juliana Gutierrez

Theses and Dissertations

Children and youth develop within an ecological context that includes family, peers, and broader social environments including school. Children’s understanding of their ethnic or racial group and the meaning they attribute to belonging in that group is also shaped by interactions in their school environment. Most research on school-based social-emotional learning (SEL) programs has focused on student behavioral and academic outcomes. However, as SEL spreads across U.S. K-12 schools, questions have emerged surrounding how children from diverse racial and cultural groups and unequal opportunity can benefit from universal SEL programs. Using a mixed-methods design, this study explores teachers’ understanding and …

Why Teach Critical Race Theory, Joni Schwartz

Publications and Research

I teach at Queensboro Correctional Facility, LaGuardia Community College and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Last year, my co-invesitigator John R, Chaney and I receive a Department of Justice grant to teach college credit-bearing classes to those behind bars. Critical Race Theory is an effective tool.

We Didn't Know It Was That Bad: Unearthing Parent Perspectives On Universal Pre-K Policy, Maria S. Mavrides Calderon

Publications and Research

Families are the ultimate recipients of the effects of policy, but seldom get a seat at the policymaking table. This study investigated how parents perceive the impacts of unequal teacher compensation policies on New York City’s (NYC) Universal Pre-K (UPK) expansion. Utilizing Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological systems theory and Schneider and Ingram’s (1993) theory of social construction and policy design to create a rich conceptual framework, this qualitative study analyzed parents' voices through document and social media discourse analysis expanding from 2014 to 2021, and semi-structured interviews (n=15). Participants reflected the demographic diversity found in NYC, the largest school system in …

Culturally And Socially Responsive Teacher Professional Learning At The American Museum Of Natural History, Jessica Correa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project consists of a series of professional learning sessions to support teachers in their implementation of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CR-SE) using the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) as a resource and case study. Through the lens of Historically Responsive Literacy, the series also seeks to reestablish social science as a critical element of natural history for teachers. This series can help teachers see the museum as not only a place to explore life and physical science, but also a place to explore identity, social/emotional development, cultural studies and American History. The project includes resources and directions for …

Survivor-Shaped Specters And Gaps, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

...survivors are disappearing from academia. Our schools, our syllabi, our classrooms, our bibliographies, our campuses, our research labs, our thesis committees, our libraries, our conference panels, our departments, our programs, and our monographs are riddled through and through with survivor-shaped gaps. Each gap is a place in academia where someone has gone missing due to bullying, harassment, retaliation, predation, sexual assault, mobbing, and/or other abuses of power. Some of these gaps are shaped like allies who have left academia due to moral injury. Not every gap, moreover, is shaped like a survivor. Not every victim survives.

Education And The Epistemological Crisis In The Age Of Chatgpt, Casandra Silva Sibilin

Publications and Research

The emergence of ChatGPT and its ability to imitate student work has precipitated a crisis in education. Responses range from practical efforts to detect or prevent ChatGPT use to existential reflection about learning and assessment. However, the crisis is also epistemological, with educators struggling to determine what students know and fearing that student knowledge is diminishing. The educational philosophies of Socrates, Dewey, and Freire suggest that recognition of ignorance of different kinds (inquisitive, predictive, and practical)on the part of educators is uncomfortable but essential for improving the aims and methods of education. In this way, ChatGPT and the philosophy of …

This Little Light Of Mine: The History Of The Amalgamated Nursery School, Kimberly F. Vanderbilt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research focuses on the history of one small nursery school to analyze the factors that influenced the school: the labor unionists founders, the changing neighborhoods of the Bronx, the Progressive Education Movement and the Women's Leadership Movements that helped define and support the school. Recent policy changes have had impact on this school and on all early childhood programs in New York City.

Diversity Still Matters: School-Level Racial Diversity, Poverty And Performance Of New York City Public Schools, Byunghwa Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the last few decades, schools in New York City (NYC) have experienced great demographic changes due to the massive influx of various ethnic and racial groups. Although the race and ethnicity makeup of NYC is 42% white, 29% Hispanic or Latino, 24% Black or African American and 14% Asian, 74% of Black and Hispanic students attend a school with less than 10 percent white students, while 34% of white students attend a school with more than half white peers. Also, more than 60% of Hispanic and Black students are attending schools where more than 75% of peer students experience …

It Turned Into A Bioblitz: Urban Data Collection For Building Scientific Literacy And Environmental Connection, Kelly O'Donnell, Lisa Brundage

Publications and Research

In 2013, Macaulay Honors College redesigned its required science curriculum to focus on scientific literacy skills rather than content. Central to this shift was inclusion of a data collection event, a BioBlitz, to provide students with the basis for their own semester-long research projects. Students are teamed with naturalists in an urban green space to find as many species as they can in 24 h and to contribute to a global biodiversity database via the app iNaturalist. We have learned two important lessons: (1) developing an interdisciplinary curriculum with a high degree of experiential learning is more successful when both …

Critical Social Foundations Of Education: Advancing Human Rights And Transformative Justice Education In Teacher Preparation, Magnus O. Bassey

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.