When a biomedical curriculum is exported from the First World to the Third, what embedded cultural values come along? Do locally specific historical, political, religious, or socioeconomic associations of the “physician” as signifier shape the professional values students take on? Or is professional identity, like most of the rest of the curricular content, imported from the North? To date, empirical research on professional socialization has been restricted almost completely to North America. In the twenty-first century, when biomedicine is learned and practiced worldwide, the universality of socializing processes cannot be assumed. The project described here was collaboratively designed to assess the socializing function of medical education in Malawi. This cross-sectional qualitative research explores the acquisition of professional identity in students at a new medical school in Malawi, documenting changes during medical training in the values and norms that make up professional identity. I used a sequential research method involving focus group discussions, interviews and a questionnaire, moving from open-ended and general to more specific questions. This method was supplemented by archival research and “observant participation” at the university's teaching hospital. The homogenizing process of basic science education during the first two years of medical school in Malawi appears similar to that found by researchers in North America. When students reach their hospital training, however, their nascent scientist doctor identities crash into a clinical reality in which the tools of science are largely unavailable. Responding to the resulting crisis, they may preserve the Northern doctor-scientist identity by seeking a geographic or occupational location in which its execution is possible. They may also reject the identity of detached technocrat to claim instead the dual roles of political activist and loving witness to suffering. I address historical and economic conditions that shape these responses, and discuss their implications for health in Malawi, for medical pedagogy, and for anthropological research on identity in an era of globalization. I use Gramsci's notion of contradictory consciousness to show how discrepancies between hegemonic cognitive frameworks of identity and real conditions of work have the potential to create a revolutionary new consciousness among doctors working in poverty.

This critical case study explores multiple meanings of a small chapel at Concord Academy, a private secondary school in Massachusetts. The relationship between participation and empowerment is explored, as revealed through the chapel and as understood, experienced, and articulated by people involved with the chapel over time. Architecture is considered as a vehicle for democracy--an opportunity for risk, interaction, community, and encounter. Found abandoned in the 1950s, the chapel was rescued by Concord Academy women, girls, and a few men who took the building down, reassembled and refurbished it at Concord, and built huge architectural carvings, pulpit, altar, and steeple. Seniors and faculty soon addressed the school in morning "chapels," which evolved into a "central rite of passage" for students--pivotal, powerful "Who am I?" experiences described as "saying hello to adulthood and good-bye to childhood." The chapel is explored as building project, rite of passage, evolving drama, and forum for community. Questions include what is empowerment and what makes environments empowering, experientially, pedagogically, institutionally and architecturally? What does the chapel mean to those those who know and use it? Issues include: the relationship between individuality and community; what makes places meaningful; the chapel in relation to women; finding and speaking one's own voice; the separation of learning from doing; and intersections of gender, class, race and sexual orientation. Empowerment is considered both as individual self-confidence and efficacy and sociopolitical consciousness and intervention. This study also explores alternative, participatory ways of conducting research and writing a dissertation--more a weaving of stories and an evolving saga than a removed, academic treatise. For me this has been an odyssey, challenging and inviting us to be engaged as full human beings, not just thinkers. Qualitative, ethnographic, phenomenological, and participatory, this study uses interview/dialogues, participation, photography, and interaction as opportunities for participants' increasing involvement, control, and appropriation. The project should interest the public, educators, architects, environmental designers, historians, anthropologists, community activists, and participatory/action researchers. This study is not simply rational. I hope my heart, C.A.'s heart, and the rhythm of the chapel's steady pulse come through.

<p> Principals are increasingly responsible for ensuring an equitable learning environment in their schools. The development of a disposition to meet this responsibility is an under-researched area. This study was a qualitative narrative analysis of the stories of five white, female, elementary principals from the same suburban school district who were interviewed to understand where their disposition may originate and how their disposition manifests itself in their self-reported decisions and actions. The following question became the focus of the research: What do principals report are the factors that support or challenge their decision-making regarding students and families with diverse characteristics? A qualitative inquiry method with an emphasis on narrative analysis was used to identify themes. These themes were illuminated using the lens of Bourdieu's sociological theory of habitus and field. Principal narratives of equity fell into two broad thematic areas of capital and management. Principals who participated in this study build social capital, which is then used as a currency to create and support equity with the other habitus and structures on the field. According to the analysis of the data, the stances principals take to provide equity include a managerial orientation. The analyses of the narratives reveal that where principals stand for equity is evident through the stories they tell rather than their statements of what they believe and value. This study suggests that building upon the stories of personal experiences may be a good starting point for professional development around issues of equity. These opportunities could strengthen a principal's ability to both understand and articulate a concrete set of self-expectations for equity. Additionally, Bourdieu's theory of habitus and field presents a way to understand a principal's actions and intentions on their field of work. </p>

<p> Students who are relegated to highly stigmatized, remedial alternative education settings experience forces of school pushout and institutional neglect along their educational and life trajectories. This qualitative research study explores the ways in which former continuation high school students negotiated, made meaning of, and resisted processes of school pushout and broader experiences of institutional neglect. Through life history interviews with recent graduates of a California continuation high school, this study examines the impact of systemic injustice on students&rsquo; educational and life trajectories and highlights the ways in which these students exercise agency and engage in practices of resilient resistance along their path toward high school graduation. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of symbolic violence and Critical Race Theory constructs of student resistance, this study reveals how structures of oppression impact the lives of continuation high school students and illuminates the voices of marginalized students who are seldom heard in the existing body of research.</p>

<p> Students receiving special education services for an emotional and/or behavioral disorder (EBD) have shown minimal gains academically and behaviorally in longitudinal studies conducted since the 1980&rsquo;s (Bradley, Doolittle, &amp; Bartolotta, 2008). The purpose of this study was to investigate the functional relation of a self-monitoring strategy with a cross-aged peer-mentoring intervention on the disruptive behaviors of elementary students with EBD who struggle to regulate their behaviors in the classroom. This study used a multiple-baseline across participants and changing conditions combined design to investigate the functional relation of self-monitoring with a cross-age peer mentor component for students with EBD. The results from this study did not indicate a functional relation between the use of a self-monitoring checklist and the use of a self-monitoring checklist with a cross-age peer mentoring component. However, there were promising components to continue to build on intervention research for students with EBD.</p>

<p> This research project employs youth development and critical race theory to understand the participation gap in social media. It does this by prioritizing youth voice as the focal point of knowledge creation. It explores why this is such vital topic for academic discussion within education and youth development. It delves into previous work on the topic through a literature review. This qualitative study is based on four focus groups (6 -8 youth each) and three in-depth follow up interviews across four different high schools in the Sacramento area. An inductive grounded theory approach was used to analyze the focus groups and interviews. This paper will explain that process as well as state findings and potential implications for youth, parents, and teachers. This research will provide an examination of the online trends of youth activity and help inform strategies for healthy social media use.</p>

<p> Despite the growing population of Muslim students in U.S. public schools, few empirically grounded studies appear in the literature that have reported the opinions and viewpoints about U.S. public schools from the perspective of Muslim parents. This study deeply investigates the perceptions Muslim parents hold about U.S. public schools and focuses on how Muslim identity and other factors shape those views. <i>Q</i> Methodology, a mixed methods technique for the systematic study of subjectivity, is applied to reveal and analyze a varied set of distinct models of shared viewpoints held by Muslim parents about public schools in the U.S. Data were analyzed from 54 Muslim parents in the metropolitan New York City region. This study identified and examined 8 models of shared viewpoints held by Muslim parents. Further analysis demonstrated the relative prevalence of each of the revealed shared viewpoints about U.S. public schools and ways in which the identified models reflect disagreements, consensus, and absence of salience in views about U.S. public schools. Muslim parents&rsquo; Muslim identity, their experience attending schools in the U.S., their children&rsquo;s experience attending schools in the U.S., their experience as school teachers or administrators, their gender, and their highest level of education were examined to predict the likelihood a parent would share views with a particular <i>Q</i> model. Understanding the shared viewpoints of Muslim parents can be useful for educational policymakers, leaders, and teachers, who must ensure an effective and comfortable learning environment for all of their students.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the special issue of peer harassment of students with disabilities through a legal lens, exploring the legal standards used in cases involving three federal statutes&mdash;Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (&ldquo;Section 504&rdquo;), the Americans with Disabilities Act (&ldquo;ADA&rdquo;), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"). Using legal research methods, litigation trends regarding the number of cases and the legal standard used and applied were explored. There has been no Supreme Court case on the legal standard to be used under Section 504, the ADA, or IDEA in peer harassment of students with disabilities, and circuit courts of appeals have not reached consensus on which legal standard should apply. Instead, courts have applied several different legal standards, including the Davis standard, a modified <i>Davis</i> standard, bad faith and gross misjudgment, deliberate indifference, disability discrimination, intentional discrimination, and denial of a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). This dissertation synthesizes the relevant legal standards used in each federal circuit and identifies trends that might guide the future of this type of litigation.</p><p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Sociology, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0770. Adviser: Brian Powell.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Susan Noffke. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-231) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.