Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Professional Learning Cultures At Work: How Principals Serve As Catalysts For Learning, Christopher J. Tranberg

Doctoral Dissertations

Principals are an influential factor in a child’s academic success (Manna, 2015; Louis et al., 2010; Waters et al., 2003). Although the path of influence is often indirect, principals affect student learning by developing and sustaining strong professional learning cultures (Hattie, 2009; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2012). As a result of the complexities surrounding principalship, a desire to understand the attributes, skills, and leadership actions of successful principals persists as an international focus of educational research. This study examines principalship through the experiences of various stakeholders within a school system utilizing a descriptive single case study ethnographic qualitative approach. This approach …

Alt-Education: Gender, Language, And Education Across The Right, Catherine Tebaldi

Doctoral Dissertations

I explore the ideologies of gender, language and education in conservative, Christian Nationalist, and White nationalist mothers groups. I draw on my own family history, as well as on two years of blended ethnographic research in online right wing communities and one year of fieldwork in New Orleans, Louisiana, to look at homeschooling, online schools, and public teachers’ social, linguistic, and educational practices -- what I call Alt-Education. Alt-education is of course a play on alt-right, and refers to the far-right ideology; but it also refers to an alternative to mainstream education, and to education through a broader range of …

The Dean’S Racial Justice Curriculum Challenge, S Civjan, Erin Baker, Samantha Wojda, Promise Mchenga, Nick Tooker, Esha Uddin, Hannah Wharton, Sophia Chang, Lia Ciemny, Jacqueline Thornton, Wayne Burleson, Paula Rees

Publications

This Work in Progress paper will present the College of Engineering Dean’s Racial Justice Curriculum Challenge. This challenge tasks all faculty in the college to use their engineering problem-solving skills to develop creative ways to incorporate issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and racial justice in every class we teach. The challenge was inspired by our students, who requested a greater connection between the technical content of classes and real world issues, in particular the role engineers play in either fostering inclusive solutions or contributing to the propagation of inequities. The intent is to engage faculty in the development of new …

Future Proofing: Changing Tourism Education To Change Business Practices, Maria Della Lucia Ph.D., Frederic Dimanche Ph.D.

TTRA Canada 2021 Conference

Introduction: This paper addresses the TTRA Canada conference sub-theme “Future-Proofing: Learning from Today to Build Back Tomorrow.” The pandemic has accelerated discussion about the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of tourism, social equity, workers’ dignity, as well as the long-term climate crisis. Tourism and the pandemic have led to a series of discussions about whether tourism can indeed be sustainable (e.g., Benjamin et al., 2020). The fact that the tourism industry has been the economic activity that was the most affected by the pandemic feeds this discussion (Della Lucia, Giudici, & Dimanche, 2021) . The sector has shown that it …

Raising Global Elites From A Distance: Transnational Parenting Of South Korean Students, Juyeon Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Drawing on interviews with 74 South Korean (hereafter Korean) students and 34 parents at ten elite U.S. colleges, I examine how elite Korean parents seek to reproduce and extend their family privilege through children’s transnational education. I analyze how each group – children, mothers, and fathers – interprets and represents their views of the elite transnational parenting they experienced or practiced. By triangulating the narratives of three groups, I explore the family dynamics of the transnational families of high-achieving Korean students abroad. Well-educated yet opt-out mothers intensively managed their children’s early education, often relying on gender-segregated networks. In contrast, cosmopolitan …

Essays On Women And Work In India And On Other-Regarding Preferences, Sai Madhurika Mamunuru

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of three essays. In Essay I, I explore declining female workforce participation in India and propose the following explanation: Traditionally, Brahmin (upper caste) women were more secluded and did not work outside the house, while non-Brahmin, often poorer, women did. With increased income, non-Brahmin families withdraw women from the workforce in order to signal their enhanced social status. This is a part of a larger process of cultural emulation referred to as the Sanskritization of non-Brahmin families. Using a nationally representative panel dataset, I show, in favor of this hypothesis, that while Brahmin women’s participation …

Three Essays On The Economics And Political Economy Of The “School-To-Prison Pipeline”, Anastasia C. Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the political economy and economics of the school-to- prison pipeline (STPP). In my first essay, I interrogate approaches to the economics of the STPP. I then situate my analysis within the theoretical lens of Robinson (2000)’s racial capitalism, to show a political economy approach for understanding the nexus of public schooling and the carceral state. Building on the concept of enclosure as presented by Sojoyner (2013, 2016), I describe the emergence and impacts of the STPP to show how this dynamic functions as a racialized economic enclosure, through punitive discipline, exclusion, and criminalization. Next, I examine the …

“I Missed A Lot Of Childhood Memories”: Trauma And Its Impact On Learning For Formerly Incarcerated Adolescents In The Age Of Zero Tolerance Policies, Alberto Guerrero

Doctoral Dissertations

The literature makes abundantly clear that trauma has a detrimental impact on students’ academic and behavioral efforts. It also challenges the notion of zero tolerance disciplinary practices being effective in redirecting student behaviors, making schools safer, and creating an environment that is conducive to learning. Yet, our current school climate consists of educators who have not been exposed to trauma-informed learning, while also incorporating disciplinary practices that are both draconian in nature and push students out of their learning spaces. This unfortunate reality is felt even more harshly by students who return to schools following an incarceration. This phenomenological study …

Adolescent Mental Health Training For Middle School Educators, Sarah Minton

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Abstract

Background: Adolescent mental health disorders are an increasing concern in the United States. School systems, specifically educators, are in the unique role to aid in early identification of mental health disorders, as well to intervene in mental health distress. However, mental health training for educators is lacking, leaving educators unprepared to manage mental health concerns within their classroom.

Purpose: The purpose was to utilize an evidence-based training, the “Teacher Knowledge Update Guide” from TeenMentalHealth.org to train middle school educators on the signs and symptoms of mental health conditions in the adolescent population with the intent to increase awareness, knowledge, …

Too Taboo For You? - Questions, Lessons, And Strategies For Engaging Students With Challenging Materials, Blake Spitz

University Libraries Presentations Series

This talk will briefly present experiences of, and strategies for, teaching with challenging topics and materials in archives. In recognizing that our collections include (or have archival silences around) challenging, controversial, and even disturbing topics, when and why do we decide to share and prioritize these records, and how do we present and contextualize them for students? I will present a few case studies from my work presenting difficult records and topics to undergraduates, and some of my professional training and growth in these areas. I would love to start a dialogue, and hear from others in reaction to my, …

An Examination Of The Properties, Uses And Interpretations Of First Grade Reading Screening Tools In One School District, Amadee Meyer

Doctoral Dissertations

Early identification of children who are likely to struggle to achieve reading proficiency is essential to providing them timely access to effective interventions. Thus, universal screening is a critical feature of preventative service delivery models that identify students at risk and provide early support for reading difficulties. As schools choose assessment tools for this purpose, three aspects of universal screening tools are especially important to consider: appropriateness for the intended use, technical adequacy, and usability. Using these standards for assessment review, this study investigated two screening tools commonly used to identify first-graders at risk for reading failure: the Aimsweb Tests …

Complicating Gender: Gender Inequality In Education And Employment, Skylar Davidson

Doctoral Dissertations

Sociologists have always acknowledged the complexity of gender, but despite acknowledging this complexity, much sociological research does not put this knowledge into practice; indeed, a great deal of research focuses on distinctions between men and women with regard to some other variable, reinforcing a narrow and binary understanding of gender. This tendency has two limitations: (1) it does not recognize the variability in men's and women's expression of masculinity and femininity; and (2) it does not recognize gender identities other than those of cisgender man and cisgender woman (i.e., transgender people). This study mitigates this limitation through telling a story …

Mothering In A Era Of Choice: Race And Gender In Schooling Decisions Of Homeschool And Public School Families, Mahala Stewart

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation draws from in-depth interview data to compare the schooling choices of 95 mothers living in United States. The sample is split between white and black mothers. Within each racial group, one set teaches their children at home and a second set sends them to public schools. School choice, which places the responsibility of selection on individual families, is central to current U.S. education debates. Yet homeschooling, an option that transfers labor from schools to home, is often overlooked in these debates. To date no research has compared homeschoolers to other schooling families in the same region, or examined …

Educating 21st Century Geospatial Technology Industryworkers With Open Source Software, Phillip Davis

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings

The global geospatial technology industry, in a study by UK-based Oxera commissioned by Google in January 2013, has been estimated at $150 USD billion to $270 USD billion per year ($110 billion euro to $199 billion euro). In a similar US-focused study, also commissioned by Google in 2013, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found the geospatial services industry employs approximately 500,000 people and generates around $75 (USD) billion in annual revenue ($55 billion euro). By any measure, the geospatial industry is large one, in both the US and globally. With this explosive growth, combined with the current generation of geospatial …

Social Reproduction In The New England Community College System: A Critical Cultural Studies Perspective, Sarah Marmon

Masters Theses

Statistical data on community colleges confirms how vast the community college institution is: Serving 46% of all undergraduates in the country, or 12.4 million students. A large body of literature exists on the specifics of social reproduction in four-year universities; as well as the specifics of social reproduction in racially and economically segregated high schools. However, there exists a blind spot in this literature when it comes to social reproduction at the community college.

Through conducting interviews with students, faculty and staff at three local community colleges, this ethnographic study explores this theoretical and empirical blind spot by using a …

Three Essays On The Social Determinants Of Early Childhood Health And Development, Andrew Barenberg

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-paper dissertation examines the social determinants of early childhood and in-utero health. The first chapter examines the impact of early childhood stunting on educational outcome in Tanzania. Using the extent of third-trimester overlap with the Tanzania hunger season to create an exogenous variation in stunting, I find that a one standard deviation stunting decreases educational achievement by .88 school years compared to a child's siblings. A placebo group not affected by the hunger season is used to confirm that in-utero nutrition deprivation is the cause of the education differences. The second paper utilizes the food price shocks and price …

Reading Queerly In The High School Classroom: Exploring A Gay And Lesbian Literature Course, Kirsten Helmer

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how teaching an English literature curriculum centered on the stories, experiences, cultures, histories, and politics of LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex) people constitutes a meaningful site for teaching and learning in a high school classroom. The dissertation offers insights on how the teaching of LGBTQI-themed texts in English language arts classes can be reframed by bridging the goals, practices and conceptual tools of queer theory to critical literacies teaching. The project follows principles of critical qualitative research and employs an ethnographic case study approach with the purpose of transforming educational …

Growing Our Vision Together: Forming A Sustainability Community Within The American Library Association, Beth Filar Williams, Madeleine K. Charney, Bonnie Smith

University Libraries Publication Series

As long-standing keepers of democracy and information stewardship, library professionals are a natural fit for advocating and promoting sustainability within their communities. From seed libraries to Occupy Wall Street libraries, their view of sustainability extends beyond environmental concerns to include community activism, economic development, and social equity. Empowering people, facilitating dialogue, and providing resources for a more resilient future are at the center of librarians’ vital and changing roles. These visionary professionals have powered libraries’ work as outspoken advocates with well-founded initiatives. For a long time, however, there was no cohesive sustainability-focused venue for sharing best practices, collaborating, and contributing …

"For A Future Tomorrow": The Figured Worlds Of Schoolgirls In Kono, Sierra Leone, Jordene Hale

Doctoral Dissertations

Current research in Sub-Sahara Africa suggests that young women face challenges in accessing and completing schooling, due among other things to gender related school based violence (Bruce & Hallman, 2008; Dunne, Humphreys, & Leach, 2006; Lloyd, Kaufman, & Hewett, 2000). These studies, while valuable in providing documentation on school enrollment and school leaving, do not explore the motivational framework where young women remain in school. The purpose of this dissertation is to trace how schoolgirls’ identities or “figured worlds” (Gee, 2011) are co-constructed in particular contexts by the same cohort of schoolgirls, their teachers, households, and communities through an ethnographic …

Good Intentions, Limited Impact: The Technical Assistance For Student Assignment Plans Program, Kathryn A. Mcdermott, Elizabeth Debray, Erica Frankenberg, Anna Fung-Morley, Ann E. Blankenship

Kathryn A. McDermott

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (PICS), invalidated the student assignment policies of Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County, Kentucky. The Court ruled that the government has a compelling interest to promote diversity, while simultaneously arguing that racial balance and diversity should be considered different and separate goals. Thus, the PICS decision sent mixed messages to school districts across the country. To help school districts navigate the legally uncertain environment, the federal government created a small, one-time competitive grant called the Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plan (TASAP) grant. …

Impact Of Sectoral Allocation Of Foreign Aid On Gender Equity And Human Development, Léonce Ndikumana

Léonce Ndikumana

While developing countries have made some progress in achieving human development since the turn of the century, many are still lagging behind in important human development goals such as education, health, nutrition and access to clean drinking water and improved sanitation. Moreover, gender equity remains a major challenge in most countries. In this paper, we examine the role that foreign aid plays in generating these outcomes, using panel data from OECD-DAC on the sectoral allocation of development aid, in conjunction with country-level data on public expenditures, human development outcomes and other economic, social and political indicators. Specifically, the paper attempts …

Policy Alternatives To Increase Access To Early Childhood Education And Care In Massachusetts, Meghan Lemay

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Access to early childhood education not only leads to improved social, academic, and health outcomes for children, but can also carry the same benefits into adulthood. Early education and care programs can work against some of the negative effects of social factors such as socioeconomic status, discrimination, social support, and work demands which have been linked to physical and mental health outcomes. Early education programs could intervene not only in the life of a child, but also impact parents, families, and populations. This thesis will review the research showing early childhood education leads to better social and health outcomes and …

Contemplative Education: How Contemplative Practices Can Support And Improve Education, Judith Johannes

Master's Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is to explore how contemplative education can have a viable role in education. In the first part of this thesis I will share my own personal experience with contemplative practices and how they led to my personal growth and transformation.

The second part will give some brief insights about the benefits the ancient wisdom traditions Hinduism and Buddhism attributed to contemplative practices. They claim that those practices help to reach a state of expanded awareness and stillness of the mind. Contemplative practices such as mindfulness, which is a Buddhist meditation technique, were used to better …

Rewriting The Balkans: Memory, Historiography, And The Making Of A European Citizenry, Dana N. Johnson

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis explores the work of historians, history teachers, and NGO employees engaged in regional initiatives to mitigate the influence of enduring ethnocentric national histories in the Balkans. In conducting an ethnography of the development and dissemination of such initiatives, I queried how conflict and controversy are negotiated in developing alternative educational materials, how “multiperspectivity” is understood as a pedagogical approach and a tool of reconciliation, and how the interests of civil society intersect with those of the state and supranational actors. My research sought to interrogate the field of power in which such attempts to innovate history education occur, …

Rewriting The Balkans: Memory, Historiography, And The Making Of A European Citizenry, Dana N. Johnson

Dana N. Johnson

This thesis explores the work of historians, history teachers, and NGO employees engaged in regional initiatives to mitigate the influence of enduring ethnocentric national histories in the Balkans. In conducting an ethnography of the development and dissemination of such initiatives, I queried how conflict and controversy are negotiated in developing alternative educational materials, how “multiperspectivity” is understood as a pedagogical approach and a tool of reconciliation, and how the interests of civil society intersect with those of the state and supranational actors. My research sought to interrogate the field of power in which such attempts to innovate history education occur, …

Resisting Schools, Reproducing Families: Gender And The Politics Of Homeschooling, Brian Paul Kapitulik

Open Access Dissertations

The contemporary homeschooling movement sits at the intersection of several important social trends: widespread concern about the effectiveness and safety of public schools, feminist challenges to the patriarchal family structure, anxiety about the state of the family as an institution, and challenging economic conditions. The central concern of this dissertation is to make sense of homeschooling within this broader context. Data were gathered through interviews with forty-five homeschooling parents, approximately half of whom are religious and half of whom are secular. The interviews were organized around three central questions: 1) What are the frames that parents use to justify homeschooling? …

A Classical-Marxian Model Of Education, Growth And Distribution, Amitava Krishna Dutt, Roberto Veneziani

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper develops a classical-Marxian macroeconomic model to examine the growth and distributional consequences of education. First, the role of education in skill formation is considered and it is shown that an expansion in education will promote growth and have beneficial distributional effects within the working class, but it will redistribute income from workers to capitalists. Second, the model is extended analyze the broader political economic consequences of education on class relations and class conflict. The model suggests the importance of a progressive type of education rather than one which weakens the power workers, for it allows for equitable growth …

Rethinking Reiche, Tracie J. Reed

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Part I of the study examines the differences between two environmental assessment methods for the K‐12 education sector: the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED Schools Version 3.0 and the British Research Establishment’s (BRE) BREEAM Education issue 2.0. Credit requirements are compared side‐by‐side and against recommendations from researchers in areas such as acoustics, lighting and indoor environment quality. Strengths in the two schemes and areas for improvement are highlighted, with acknowledgement that each scheme offers components and techniques from which the other could benefit. Part II of the study introduces the Howard C. Reiche Community School in Portland, Maine. …

Grounded History: A Keynote Address To The 14th Annual Massachusetts Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference, Amilcar Shabazz

Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Permanently Temporary: Roma Refugee Youth Seeking Schooling, Karen N. Binger

Master's Capstone Projects

This study investigates the experiences of education in exile from a small case study of Roma refugee male youths from Kosovo temporarily settled in Macedonia as ‘asylum seekers.’ These refugees are at an overlooked age where they have slipped through the cracks between the post-war, short-term relief and longer-term development efforts in terms of education. Many of the frustrations of this community stem from their difficulties in accessing education, and their uncertain legal limbo or ‘permanently temporary’ situations.

As adolescents, refugees, and Roma, the youth are at a triple jeopardy of marginalization and invisibility. Through conversations with four Roma refugee …