In 1986, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy published A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century in which it recommended that a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) be established to ascertain and institute criteria for teacher excellence (Steiner, 1995). No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) mandated that every classroom employ a "highly qualified teacher" (No Child Left Behind, 2001a); moreover, NCLB articulated the relationship between improving student achievement and higher standards for qualifying classroom teachers (Rotberg, Futrell & Lieberman, 1998). Research conducted in Miami-Dade County supports Florida's use of National Board Certification (NBC) as an "effective signal of teacher quality"(CNA Corporation, 2004, p.1). Critical theorist, Michael Apple, emphasized the role of education as an agent for the maintenance of hegemony (Apple, 2004). However, Apple further posited that the actual bureaucracy of school - the institution of education itself - is reflective of the same consumerist ideology of society, thus making the hegemony even more complete. Using the aforementioned theoretical construct, the researcher examined the development of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), the distribution of Nationally Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in a central Florida school district, and their professional responsibilities as a means of examining whether this mechanism for identifying "highly qualified teachers" achieves its stated aim of providing every student with access to a "highly qualified" teacher, as is legislated and funded per NCLB.

This thesis examines the three most popular and acclaimed live-action versions of The AddamsFamily, those being the 1964-1966 sitcom The Addams Family, the 1993 film Addams FamilyValues, and Netflix’s 2022 series Wednesday, to understand how these popular culture textsnegotiate dominant norms and culture in American society. These iterations cover sixty years of cultural negotiation on non-conformity and each attend to a specific politics of conformity in their time. Drawing from Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Dick Hebdige among others understandings of culture, power, hegemony, and resistance, I form a theoretical basis through which the techniques these iterations use to negotiate aspects of the dominant culture can be analyzed. For each production, paratextual evidence is located to identify the specific negotiatory aims. The different genres, aesthetics, and references made to contemporary political discourses, are then explored and dismantled to ascertain how this negotiation occurs and what the implications are. This thesis concludes with a discussion comparing the iterations and exploring the role that experience of marginalization potentially played in how the creators chose to create negotiatory texts. This thesis ultimately finds that specific genres and techniques of negotiation, particularly satire and camp, facilitate the capacity for popular culture material to critique, transform and unsettle dominant norms.

Ce projet de recherche met en dialogue Antonio Gramsci et Michel Foucault autour du thème du Pouvoir. Les deux philosophes sont arrivés, chacun à leur manière et selon leur parcours spécifique, à méditer la tendance du pouvoir – entendu comme instrument polyvalent de coercition – à pénétrer presque toutes les sphères de l'existence humaine. Mon approche historique et comparatiste permettra de creuser la pensée humaniste du second Gramsci et de montrer comment lui et Foucault retravaillent les thèses de Machiavel, en focalisant sur l'exercice de la force active à des fins de consolidation du pouvoir et ce, au-delà des limites de la politique ordinaire ou quotidienne. Si, depuis la Révolution française, les rapports de force sont « traduits » en termes idéologiques, reste qu'il faut comprendre la manière historique dont l'idéologie forme les imaginaires sociaux. Gramsci s'intéressait, comme Georges Sorel avant lui, aux effets institutionnels (civiques surtout) sur les mentalités dites populaires. Foucault, à son tour, étudie le processus de subjectivation selon les grandes structures socio-économiques et selon « l'éthos pastoral », qu’il identifie comme le paradigme de la « gouvernementalité ». Les questions soulevées par les auteurs, et la lecture qui en sera faite, nous permettront de comprendre comment se construit le consensus et surtout comment sont mises en œuvre les pratiques discriminatoires qui permettent de consolider un certain type de consensus. Ce projet veut donc servir d’outil d'interprétation des dynamiques politico-économiques de notre temps. Gramsci et Foucault concourent en ce sens à tirer au clair le fonctionnement de l'idéologie et de la vérité dans la consolidation des rapports de force, et donc dans la perpétuation du Pouvoir. / This research project puts Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault in dialogue around the theme of Power. Each in his way, these philosophers pondered the significant tendency of power to penetrate, as a versatile instrument of coercion, into almost all spheres of human existence. My approach delves into the humanist thought of the second Gramsci and shows how he (and Foucault) reworks Machiavelli's theses, focusing on the exercise of active force for the purpose of power consolidation and this, beyond the limits of ‘everyday’ politics. If power relations, since the French Revolution, have been “translated” into ideological language, it remains necessary to understand historically how ideology shapes social imaginaries. Like Georges Sorel before him, Gramsci was interested in the institutional (notably, civic) effects on so-called popular mentalities. Foucault, in his turn, studied the process of subjectivation according to vast socio-economic structures and to the evolution of the “pastoral ethos”, a paradigm of “governmentality”. The questions raised by the authors, and the reading of them here, will allow us to understand how consensus is constructed and how practices of discrimination are implemented, allowing a certain type of consensus to be consolidated. This project, therefore, aims to provide a tool for interpreting the political and economic dynamics of our time. In that sense, Gramsci and Foucault can be used to show how ideology and truth function in the consolidation of power relationships, and thus in the perpetuation of Power itself.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate men in equality organisations view on toxic masculinity and equality. Starting from a gender perspective with focus on masculinity I have used Raewyn Connell's concept hegemonic masculinity in combination with Bob Pease and Jeff Hearn's the hegemony of men to see how masculinity norms are created, secured, and sustained and how hegemonic masculinity can be connected to toxic masculinity manifested in violence, sexism, and mental illness. Seeing men as carriers of hegemonic masculinity - including the potentially toxic part - opens for possibilities of renegotiation and change. The logic perspective by Jason Glynos and David Howarth has enabled me to dig deeper into the work of the male equality workers to find which political standpoints are at hand and what future aims these men see as important in their pursuit of gender equality. I have also used Bourdieu's concept of field and positioning to be able to further analyse possible ambivalence in the pursuit of gender equality as my informants after all are men working against their own masculinity within a feminist field. Nine interviews have been made: seven with men working in equality organisations and two individual men. By lectures, workshops, and visibility in social media the equality workers teach other men about the destructive effects of masculinity norms and provide them with new knowledge of how to renegotiate toxic masculinity. The idea is that the equality work will offer new knowledge that can turn men as carriers of hegemonic masculinity into empathic, humble, and listening beings. In a wider perspective the eradication of violence, sexism, and mental illness is the key to create new masculinity norms leading to a healthier and happier society for all individuals.

Endangered languages are those that are spoken by a very small percentage of the population and are at risk of disappearing with all the knowledge and diversity they contain. Endangered languages often become endangered because the speakers and the society perceive the language as low status or of little use, and a positive change in perception of the language could aid in revitalizing the language. Institutions such as governments, businesses, and universities have recently begun supporting endangered languages in several areas, and this support could greatly affect language ideologies, perceptions of and attitudes about the language. In this research project, I intend to explore the effects on how an endangered language is viewed by both speakers and non-speakers when it is supported by linguistically dominant institutions such as business and higher education. This research was conducted in various areas of Scotland and Ireland and consists of survey data, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation. Specifically, this research aims to answer the following research questions: 1) What is the relationship between institutional support and language ideologies? 2) How do different forms of institutional support affect language ideologies? Institutional support of endangered languages could provide these languages with validity and recognition as a language, as well as offer economic and status advantages to speakers, creating positive attitudes about speaking and learning the languages. This positive change in the way these languages are perceived could be a crucial step in revitalizing endangered languages and preserving the linguistic diversity of the world.

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The Asian renaissance in the twentieth first century, constituted by astronomical economic growth combined with the ambitious and authoritarian leadership of Xi Jinping's reign, has led China in the direction of proactive international policies. The South China Sea is one of the major arenas where such policies are taking place. This paper seeks to explain the case of  the Chinese expansionist initiative in the South China Sea through a case study with the structure of a systematic textual analysis. The study will further adopt the international political theory of realism as an explanatory model, which is commonly referred to as the most suited international political theory in explaining expansionist state behavior. Further concepts within the theoretical lens consist of; balance of power, regional hegemony and elements of national power. This paper finds that China seeks to militarize the South China Sea as an act of power-balancing towards the military presence of the U.S. The end-goal of the Chinese initiative is to establish regional hegemony in the region, where China seeks to dominate the waters in competitions with ASEAN states through the means of their maritime militia. Towards the United States, the effort of regional hegemony is mostly in the phase of verbal prompts and to some extent threatening. The initiative in the waters further serves to extract national elements of power, such as oil, natural gas and fishery to secure maintenance and growth of the Chinese nation.