This dissertation critically examines the life and teaching experiences of four teachers who use multicultural participatory video projects (PVP) to enrich the learning opportunities of their students. Colleagues and former students recommended the teachers for their experience using PVP and multicultural perspectives. The study is based on a theoretical framework grounded in multicultural education as it relates to teacher transformation, technologically assisted learning, and participatory learning theory. A review of the literature of multicultural education makes evident the need for teachers to transform their cultural awareness and perspectives before our schools can become effective multicultural learning environments. This study seeks to document this need, and to highlight PVP as a tool with the potential to catalyze teachers toward this transformation. The major findings of this study are that the use of participatory video project enriches the life-long development of multicultural perspectives for teachers who actively confirm self-identity through expressive life arts. The findings suggest that PVP taps into many aspects of a teacher's life and teaching experience to increase multicultural awareness and provide "fuel" for the transformation process. They also suggest that teacher education and support programs that advocate for issues of diversity and against issues of injustice and inequity in schools advance the use of PVP in their programs and communities to insure increased multicultural awareness through policy and procedural changes. Transforming schools into multicultural learning environments requires education reform that includes supporting teachers to develop multicultural perspectives.

This ethnographic study focuses on a small group of Iranian young adults, four brothers and recent immigrants living in a small city in New England. I used North American popular texts from a variety of sources as content to assist them in developing English language proficiency. For the purpose of this study, I had a dual role of both facilitator and researcher. I collected data throughout an intensive language course I taught over a summer. In this course, the participants negotiated meanings of signs and texts embedded within broader discourses. These interpretations and negotiations of meanings of texts are the focus of the analysis. Through the sharing of texts and discourses, joint discourses were constructed, which became part of the analysis and findings. In addition, the analysis reflects ways participation structure(s) changed during the course, particularly when participant texts or discourses were related to their sociocultural worlds as opposed to North American texts and discourses. Data was collected for this study using ethnographic field notes, audiotapes of the classes, audiotapes of personal interviews with participants, course materials, handouts, written assignments done by the participants during the course, and reflective evaluations. Analytical tools or constructs---specifically, intertextuality, interdiscoursivity, and identity---were the focus of the analysis of the data (Bloome, et al., 2005). The findings in this study indicate that the use of popular texts as schematically accessible content can be an important strategy for developing language skills of young adults from another culture. The findings also indicate that for meaningful discourse to develop it is important for the participants to be able to make intertextual and interdiscursive connections to their sociocultural backgrounds. When this happens, the findings indicate that the participation structure tended to change to learner-centered as the participants became 'knowledgeable cultural authorities.' When this occurs, interaction increases, and more meaningful texts and discourse(s) are constructed.

Bloom (1981) argued that English has a salient counterfactual marker--the subjunctive to express hypothetical and implicational meanings whereas Chinese has no distinct lexical, grammatical or intonational device to signal entry into the counterfactual realm. He suggested that the lack of a linguistic means to mark counterfactuality in Chinese influences the cognitive behavior of speakers of Chinese: they are less likely to reason counterfactually. To test his hypothesis, he presented stories featured by counterfactuality to both English and Chinese speakers and compared their responses to counterfactual questions. The overall result of his experiment was that his American English subjects scored significantly higher than Chinese subjects. Bloom interpreted his findings as evidence for the weak form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: language influences thought and linguistic differences entail corresponding cognitive differences. This dissertation intends to demonstrate, through a survey of literature and interviewing of native Chinese informants, that although Chinese does not have a syntactic means equivalent to the subjunctive in English to mark counterfactuality, it does have lexical devices to express hypothetical and implicational meanings. In addition, there are contextualization cues such as stress, pitch and intonation that make counterfactuality explicit. The fact that some Chinese were reluctant to respond to Bloom's hypothetical questions as he had expected may not be a reflection of differences in cognitive processes, but rather a reflection of differences in cultural values. Data collected for this dissertation also indicate that differences in linguistic categorization are not necessarily paralleled by cognitive differences. The educational implication of this dissertation is: to be a competent speaker in any language it is not sufficient only to learn linguistic forms. It is essential to learn the culture and social norms of a particular society and the use of language in contexts: topic, setting and participants in order to communicate appropriately and effectively.

This dissertation describes a qualitative, participatory action research study conducted in western Massachusetts from the spring of 1997 through the spring of 2000. The study investigated the educational experiences of a group of fifty-five low-income female students in one western Massachusetts community using interviews, focus groups, writing activities, and surveys. The study examined how participants were affected by contemporary social and economic issues, particularly by the policies commonly known as “welfare reform” that were legislated in the United States in 1996. Welfare reform created new challenges in the lives of many low-income women and their families by severely limiting the amount of assistance recipients are eligible to receive in their lifetimes and restricting their access to education and to the supports needed in order to pursue education. All of the study participants were raising families, were current or former welfare recipients, were either enrolled in graduates of Adult Basic Education programs, and the majority were Puerto Rican women who spoke Spanish as their first language. Thus, the main contexts framing this study were welfare reform and adult literacy, as well as the implications of race, language, gender, and class on low-income women's educational experiences. Because the study employed a participatory action research approach, participants were full partners in all aspects of the research, including its design, methodology, analysis, and a variety of presentation activities. The study described in this dissertation explored three key topics in order to understand the educational experiences of participants: the wide range of meanings participants associate with education; the impact of welfare reform on their learning and achievement; and the variety of ways they made use of and created support systems in order to reach their goals as parents and learners. Finally, an important aspect of the study was that it employed metaphor analysis in two ways: (1) as the study's main tool for analyzing data and (2) as an innovative pedagogical strategy for the writing classrooms in which much of the data was generated. Thus, in addition to the study's findings related to participants' educational experiences, the study also generated findings related to educational practice.

This study explores the concept of partnership in community development programs. The purpose of this study is to investigate the concept of partnership, and acquire a comprehensive understanding of community development programs called partnership programs. In the past few years the international development community, especially the nongovernment organization (NGO) community, has been discussing the importance of establishing partnerships between organizations and people from the developed countries with organizations and people from the emerging nations. Also, during the past fifty years community development programs have become the dominant type of development program for communities working together to improve the living condition of the community members. In the last few years a new concept called, "partnerships and community partnerships" is being heard as a new type of development program. What are these partnerships? How are they different from community development programs? Are these partnerships worthwhile? And if they are, how, and to whom? These questions need to be answered in order to decide if and how development organizations should implement partnership programs. The following research hopes to answer these questions. Six programs have been studied, five short cases and one longer case study. The issue of power and empowerment have been examined in detail because it is important to understand exactly how partnership members empower themselves to improve their lives for themselves. Three other dimensions used in this dissertation to understand partnerships are: different types of teaching pedagogies, participation, and different types of community development organizations. By examining partnership programs through these four dimensions the author was able to better understand and explain why and how partnership programs are different from community development partnership programs of the past. The study concludes with a description of what partnership pedagogy is, and how the author believes that creating partnerships in development is one way of transforming our institutions into more effective systems for human beings to work and live together.

This study posits that as an academic discipline, Black Studies has as its historical antecedent more than a century of vigorous struggle for interpretive power and definitional control of the Black experience. The demands of Black students on black and white campuses for an education relevant to the needs and aspirations of the Black community shook the foundations of the Academy. Yet the thrust of angry Black students during the late 1960s was not the first serious intellectual offensive launched against white-controlled education. Though distinguished by its passion and polemics, Black Studies was not new. Rather, the Black Studies movement represented a resurgence of Black nationalist sentiment inextricably linked with the quest for the redemption of Black history and its meaningful interpretation. At least a century prior, Dr. Edward W. Blyden of St. Thomas and Liberia devoted his life to challenging the West's racist, ahistorical image of Blacks. An educator, Blyden was profoundly committed to the development of what he termed "the African personality" and politically espoused repatriation of Disasporan Africans. A generation later, his "disciple", Joseph E. Casely-Hayford of the former Gold Coast was equally concerned with the "African nationality" and the appropriate role for the emerging Western-educated elite. In the United States a decade later, Carter G. Woodson, "the father of Black history" grappled with the same issue, charging the West with the deliberate "miseducation of the Negro". This study examines the politics of knowledge in the context of these three Black responses to the West's distortion of Black history and Black humanity. Their indictment of Western education as a retarding factor in racial uplift and the complicity of Western academicians in the perpetuation of racism is central to the focus of this study. It is argued that Afrocentric Black Studies create a constant tension in the Academy due to inherent ideological differences.

This study explored metacognition of sixteen adult learners enrolled in an advanced level community college ESL writing course. The ESL participants reflected on three topics concerning thoughts and feelings about writing and themselves as writers: attitude towards writing (feelings and motivations), writing identity, and self-direction (self-evaluation and planning). Using a participatory research approach, data were collected from three semi-structured interviews and numerous written responses during one semester. Participants were from the Hispanic and Korean cultures with a majority Puerto Rican (75%) and female (81%). Overall, feelings towards writing were complex (both positive and negative) and changed throughout the semester. Positive feelings energized and appeared related to an individual awareness of progress rather than an outside measure of proficiency. Motivations for learning to write were also complex (including both external and internal orientations) and changed over the semester. External utilitarian motivations seemed to be primary initially. Internal motivations such as expression of feelings, joy in self-expression, and expansion of cognition surfaced as the semester progressed. Participants' descriptions of themselves as writers changed from incredulity, negativity, and denial to a relatively positive and distinct sense of writing identity. Self-direction changed from global (or very general) self-evaluations and planning to more specific and empowering self-evaluations and planning. Encouraging interviewing language and subsequent dialogue fostered self-direction. Both positive and negative global self-evaluations indicated powerlessness while increased specificity (either positive or negative) indicated potential for improvement through concrete planning. Suggestions for modifications to a traditional ESL writing class include acknowledgement of strengths, focus on progress in a noncompetitive workshop environment, and inclusion of metacognitive topics that acknowledge the affective or emotional component to learning to write. Student-participants reported benefits of the metacognitive approach: clarification, opportunity for verbal expression, time for thinking and understanding, awareness of progress through comparison of work, and increased awareness of the instructor (or researcher). The researcher also reported benefits of the metacognitive approach: a harmony of student-centered methods and goals, data for researchers and curriculum developers, "encouraging" and "enabling" of participants, and growth of self-awareness and autonomy of participants.

The purpose of this study was an exploration of the process(es) of Jewish American Identity Development in Conservative Jewish women. It sought to explore the development of Jewish identity among women of the Conservative sect. Since there were no known studies on the process of Jewish American identity development, this study was considered exploratory research in this area. Therefore, instead of specific hypothesis testing, the present study sought answers to a set of general research questions: How do women describe their Jewish experience? Do or did Jewish women try to hide their Jewishness? How do women resolve the fact that they are Jewish? What precipitated the decision to accept/reject their Jewishness? Are there any specific patterns and/or sequential stages of development that appear with regard to the Jewish identity development process for this sample? Methodology. A qualitative research method was used since this was an exploratory study aimed at generating a theory of the process of Jewish American identity development. As its methodological framework, the study utilized the work of Glaser and Strauss (1968) in The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Twelve Conservative (second or third generation Ashkenazim) Jewish women made up the sample. Results and Conclusions. Findings from this study did not reveal a sequential model of Jewish American identity development within this population. What did emerge was a picture of a continuum of responses related to racial identity development issues. Further analysis also seemed to indicate that exposure to diversity increased the likelihood of a different pattern of responses than if one remains closely and consistently associated and identified with members of one's own group. This pattern of response was typified by a higher degree of acceptance of people who are different, an awareness of the oppression of one's own group, a realization that one's oppression connects with the oppression of other groups and there appeared a certain level of political consciousness.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to examine the impact of Spanish as a Second Language instruction within a bilingual setting. The first chapter provides an overview of those issues which must be considered when developing and implementing a second language program. These issues are too often addressed in isolation by foreign language, English as a Second Language and bilingual educators. All three disciplines are concerned with language acquisition and literacy development. To date, not enough has been done to bring about collaboration among the three disciplines. The sharing of ideas and resources can only help to promote language development for all students. The second chapter reviews the literature in four specific areas: theories of second language acquisition, methodology and techniques used in the study of a second language, attitudes towards foreign language teaching and learning, and foreign language study within a bilingual setting. The exploration of these four areas provides information about theoretical frameworks on which many second language programs are based. It also emphasizes the value of integrating a second language into the overall education of youngsters. In addition, it provides one example of an educational schema which shows promise in promoting bilingualism for all children. The third chapter provides an analysis of the process followed in this study to arrive at some conclusions about the benefits of an SSL Program within a bilingual setting. The findings of the study are reported in chapter four. Results indicated that children participating in SSL made important gains in the acquisition of oral proficiency. Also, educators who were surveyed favored the approach that was used in the SSL Program because it considered the following characteristics: (1) The value of learning a second language; (2) Curriculum; (3) Methods and techniques; (4) Assessment; (5) Support for SSL instruction; (6) SSL instruction within a bilingual setting. Chapter V offers a summary of the study, the conclusions, the recommendations for applications of the findings and possible further research.

This study was designed to explore through two surveys and interviews the question of confidence levels of practicing professional nurses in giving quality care to ethnically diverse client populations. One questionnaire to nursing faculty in 170 colleges and universities across the United States was concerned with the transcultural educational preparation of students, and the second questionnaire to 40 community health agency and inpatient (hospital) facility nurses pertained to their present level of confidence. The comments on situations encountered by practicing professional nurses and how they handled the situation were sought. These nurses also discussed how transcultural education would have helped them to either prevent or solve the problems. Faculty were surveyed regarding the inclusion of transcultural nursing concepts in their nursing curricula, their transcultural education background, and the ethnic background of their student and client populations. The practicing professional nurses were surveyed as to their personal and professional backgrounds and their knowledge of and perceived confidence levels in giving holistic nursing care to three different ethnic groups--Asians, Blacks, Southeast Asians and Spanish-speaking people. Three variables were assessed; namely, family organization, health care beliefs and lifestyles. Results indicated that in the surveys of the colleges and universities 96.3% of the nursing programs included some general transcultural nursing concepts in their courses and 31,5% offered them in theory, seminar and clinical components of the program. Only 26% of those who responded offered specific courses or certification classes. In order to assist students in developing cultural awareness 74.1% of the colleges and universities offer clinical experiences with ethnically diverse populations. The second part of the survey (Self-efficacy) illustrated a definite lack of confidence in giving holistic nursing care to Asian/Southeast Asian clients. Although there appears to be no significant relationship between the three major ethnic minorities and the inclusion of transcultural nursing concepts or the number of years since graduation, there are definite levels of significance between the variables of family organization, health care beliefs, and lifestyles and background information as to the type of nursing program, length and place of employment, and past clinical experiences with ethnic minorities.