This study investigates the effects that enrollment in a year’s social studies teacher training program emphasizing global education has on preservice social studies teachers’ teaching behaviors. A qualitative research effort supported by quantitative approaches was employed. A researcher-made questionnaire, the Social Studies Internship Inventory (SSII), was utilized along with classroom observations by a participant-observer. Subjects taking the SSII included all student teachers completing their internships in secondary social studies education during the 1988-1989 academic year. For the observational portion of this study, six subjects were selected from among the aforementioned group. Their student teaching placements were in a mixture of urban, suburban, and inner-city schools at both the junior and senior high school levels. Findings include: much of global education relies on the ability of the teacher to recognize a "critical teaching moment"; a curriculum that emphasizes a global perspective may depend more on the teacher than other curriculums; daily newspaper reading increased significantly between the beginning of the academic year and the end of the internship; a reversal occurred in the popularity of the television and newspaper as the main source of information over the course of the academic year (television news was watched more at the beginning? newspapers consulted more by the end); at the beginning of the study, 20% of the future teachers belonged to a professional organization; by the end of the program, 96% had memberships; though both the discrete and infusion approaches to global perspectives in education have their respective merits, a blending of the two was most effective; the role of the cooperating teacher seems to be crucial in imparting global perspectives to the student teacher; the university supervisor, who was trained in global perspectives, had an effect on the interns’ teaching; an unexpected finding was the great amount of student-talk observed; teachers who were most successful in teaching from a global perspective emphasized critical thinking skills and civic responsibility.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the relationship between second language (L2) writing development and the ways we can help growing populations of L2 writers successfully integrate within academic communities. Much of this interest stems from increasingly diverse local populations and the continued internationalization of higher education. This dissertation explored the implications for curriculum resulting from this growing presence of L2 writers in academic content areas. To achieve this goal, this research reports on an eight-month longitudinal ethnographic case study of five international Japanese undergraduate students at a large Canadian university. Focusing on the central role of writing in university courses as the dominant mode of knowledge construction and dissemination, as well as student assessment, the study documents focal students’ and focal instructors’ perspectives of the various factors affecting their writing in ‘regular’ content courses, with particular attention paid to the impact of feedback practices and their role in both the short-term and long-term development of students’ skills and their investments in different types of writing. Drawing on a language socialization framework, data analysis focused on expectations and practices with respect to feedback, and explored the impact of these practices on conveying both explicit and implicit norms linked to students’ access to, and successful participation in, their chosen content areas. Drawing on both students’ and instructors’ perspectives of this literacy event and discourse analysis of relevant documents, findings offer unique insights into the role of feedback practices not only for students’ writing development but also in indexing complex negotiations of positions, identities, and institutional forces. The dissertation concludes by highlighting the need to play closer attention to the multidimensional functions of feedback practices in order to understand their power to shape the socialization trajectories of L2 writers and universities’ responses to multilingual students who no longer fit traditional profiles. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

This study is a follow-up to a study completed by Dr. Thomas Barker in 1994 entitled The Status of the Implementation of International Education in Texas Four-year Colleges and Universities: A Comprehensive Study. A survey of 35 Texas universities and 6 out-of-state benchmark universities revealed information regarding the international programs at these universities in four areas. The four areas surveyed include: (a) administrative, (b) instructional, (c) international student support services, and (d) outreach. A summary of the survey results includes 34 tables detailing the university responses for the 2004 survey compared with the responses obtained from the original, Barker (1994). The results from the 2004 participating benchmark institutions were also reviewed. Texas universities continue to work toward the internationalization of the curriculum with increased numbers supporting an international focus in their mission statements and staffing patterns. Benchmark institutions continue to lead Texas institutions in a majority of areas surveyed. Funding for international education continues to be an issue for both the benchmark and Texas institutions. Changes in attitudes and immigration policies continue to affect the implementation of international programs on the university level. While universities continue to provide support to community and businesses in the area of international education, the extent of this support has decreased in the ten years since the Barker (1994) survey.

Thesis advisor: Ina V.S. Mullis / More than ever before, countries are relying on their experts in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields to find solutions to serious global problems, such as climate change, hunger, and disease. Unfortunately, the growing demand for these experts is outpacing supply. At each stage in the educational pipeline from the primary grades through university, there is substantial attrition in the number of students studying STEM subjects.From the early grades, students’ home environment has a powerful influence on their science achievement. However, there has been little research into the factors that have the most influence on inspiring young students to continue studying science. This dissertation extended investigations by Swedish researchers who used TIMSS and PIRLS 2011 data and structural equation modeling to show that that fourth grade students with higher achievement in science had well-educated parents who had many books at home, and spent time engaging their child in early learning activities, such that the child began school with basic skills already developed. After replicating the Swedish TIMSS and PIRLS 2011 Common Model with TIMSS 2015 data and finding good agreement, additional variables were systematically examined with a focus on the role of attitudes. Extending the explanation of the influence of parents’ education to include their educational expectations for their child and updating the model to include home digital resources elaborated on this Base Model. However, the hypothesis that parents’ attitudes toward mathematics and science would have a role in explaining science achievement was not supported. Analyzed either as a second independent variable with parents’ education or as a mediating variable, the effect was negligible. Finally, parents’ education levels had little or no relationship with the degree to which students like learning science, but a notable relationship with students’ confidence in their ability to do science. Clearly, more research into how parents’ attitudes and other home factors can influence students’ to study science throughout their academic careers is warranted. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation.

Decision-based learning (DBL; Plummer, Swan, & Lush, 2017) addresses the difficulty that professors may have when teaching their expertise to their students. The purpose of this study was to understand the perspectives of professors and students implementing DBL in a Peruvian university. Professors at a Peruvian university implemented the DBL pedagogy in their classes. The research questions were (a) how effectively can professors in a Peruvian university implement DBL, (b) what benefits and challenges do professors perceive from implementing DBL, and (c) how did using DBL as a homework strategy affect student learning? We collected 74 implementation videos, 42 professor surveys, 5 professor interviews, 34 student surveys, 2 student interviews, and we performed an independent samples t test to explore if DBL influenced student academic achievement. Professors implemented the pedagogy at a 72% fidelity level. Professor benefited from the pedagogy for its practicality and struggled with the amount of preparation required. Students benefited from the ability to correct their mistakes and struggled with needing to put more effort into their DBL homework. The p value of the independent samples t test was 0.002. The students who used DBL outperformed the students who didn’t use DBL on the quiz. In conclusion, DBL seems beneficial but some aspects of the pedagogy should be adjusted to make it easier for professors to prepare and students to experience. Future research should include how DBL affects professors and students when implemented for longer periods of time.

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For several decades, the institutionalizing of pilot projects has been part of school reform designs in many countries. In the context of developing countries, this reform design accumulated into the establishment of so-called International Standard Schools (ISS). ISS are not traditional private international schools but public institutions drawing on private sector initiatives. ISS are typically national projects based on borrowing educational innovations that have been long-standing practices and ideas in the private education sector and adapting them to the public education sector. The exploratory case study focuses on the design of a scale-up reform wherein national actors involved international service providers in order to adapt and disseminate curricular innovations from the autonomous system of Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) to the system of regular public schools. The study applies the notion of international standards as broadly defined international best practices and global education policies (e.g., competency-based education, outcomes-based education, and English as a medium of instruction) that national governments endeavor to adopt in their public school systems. The study seeks to understand the national school system’s attraction to certain international standards and borrowing ideas and policies offered by international education providers in Kazakhstan. The study explores how and why the selection, local adaptation and scale-up of international standards occurred in Kazakhstan’s public school system. The study draws on case study methodology and combines an embedded single case-study approach with mixed methods research design. The application of this methodological strategy is explained by the complex nature of the scale-up phenomenon that requires the researcher to examine perspectives of heterogeneous actors involved in the development and implementation of the scale-up reform. The study found that the design and establishment of NIS occurred due to the long-standing reforms characterized by a protracted policy conflict and the socially constructed modern school system based on the projections of various countries and regions as ‘world-class school’ systems. Avoiding the reduction of the state to one unitary actor, this embedded single case study found country-specific and sociological reasons for the establishment of NIS as a school reform modality in Kazakhstan from the perspectives of various policy actors including schoolteachers. The scale-up of curricular innovations had different meanings for different stakeholders of the same reform.

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This dissertation examines the nexus of complexity theory and peace education and its implications for developing educational praxis that engages with the demands of global complexity. In this thesis, I argue that as societies become more globalized and complex (global complexity) there is an onus upon education to adapt its methods so people can understand the workings of these processes better and further develop the ethical and creative resources needed for responding to system dynamics effectively. My central thesis is that the most appropriate way to do this is to use methods that are congruent with the subject matter of global complexity¿that is to align ones pedagogy with one¿s subject area. This dissertation therefore investigates the situated and contingent responses of peace educators working in the field to the challenges and opportunities that arise when attempting to adapt to local/global dynamics. It utilizes ethnography, narrative inquiry, and autoethnography and draws its data from interviews with over 50 educators in India, Japan, and the US. This research demonstrates that when engaging with global complexity, peace educators adapt both their ontological understanding and methodological orientation in ways congruent at times with the insights of complexity theory. While this understanding can be at odds with mass educational methodologies, this tension also is a touchstone for peace educator¿s creative formulation of novel praxis in response to the demands of global complexity. This dissertation thus examines some of the possibilities for learning within complex knowledge production systems and highlights the need for further research into the dynamics and processes at play within global educational ¿networks.¿

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