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Full-Text Articles in Sociology of Culture

For The Love Of Teaching: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experience Of Moral Education, Anne Marie Foley Ruiz Aug 2023

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

Doctoral Dissertations

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 …


Understanding China’S Discourse On South-South Cooperation And China-Africa Higher Education Exchange: A Field Research Study At Zhejiang Normal University’S China-Africa International Business School, Yi Sun Oct 2019

Understanding China’S Discourse On South-South Cooperation And China-Africa Higher Education Exchange: A Field Research Study At Zhejiang Normal University’S China-Africa International Business School, Yi Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research attempts to distinguish China’s model from that of the traditional North-South relationship, with a focus on how China’s philosophy articulates its foreign policy and the nation’s higher education engagement with African countries. It examines the China-Africa higher education partnership in response to China’s discourse on South-South Cooperation (SSC), Africa’s human resource flows, and the benefits and constraints of current China-Africa cooperation. In order to achieve these goals, the dissertation uses one of the China-Africa partnership universities in China, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU) as a site for its field research. The fieldwork looks at both a student level …


When Healing And High-Stakes Meet: Restorative Justice In An Era Of Racial Neoliberalism, Dani O'Brien Jul 2019

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

Doctoral Dissertations

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?


Stigma In Class: Mental Illness, Social Status, And Tokenism In Elite College Culture, Katie R. Billings Jul 2019

Stigma In Class: Mental Illness, Social Status, And Tokenism In Elite College Culture, Katie R. Billings

Masters Theses

The majority of mental illness on college campuses remains untreated, and mental illness stigma is the most cited explanation for not seeking mental health treatment. Working-class college students are not only at greater risk of mental illness, but also are less likely to seek mental health treatment and hold more stigmatized views toward people with mental illness compared to affluent college students. Research on college culture suggests that elite college contexts may be associated with greater stigmatization of mental illness. This study bridges the social status and college culture literatures by asking—does social status and college context together predict students’ …


Unequally Adrift: How Social Class And Institutional Context Shape College Academic Experiences, Mary Scherer Jul 2018

Unequally Adrift: How Social Class And Institutional Context Shape College Academic Experiences, Mary Scherer

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on how class background and institutional context shape students’ experiences of faculty mentorship, academic success strategies, and the relationship of college values and academic decision-making. In this comparative study, I draw from 68 interviews with working- and upper-middle-class students at a regional and flagship university to identify how institutional variation matters across moderately-selective public universities, the kind where the majority of four-year college students matriculate. Mentorship, often informal, is a resource most easily accessed by students with preexisting cultural capital—specifically, the knowledge that mentoring relationships are available and advantageous, and the skills for cross-status interaction with professors. …


Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott Mar 2017

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

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, …