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Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / In 2002, voters in Massachusetts passed a referendum, commonly referred to as "Question 2," requiring that, "All children in Massachusetts public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English and all children shall be placed in English language classrooms" (M.G.L.c.71A§4). This dissertation investigates the system of education for secondary bilingual learners and their teachers resulting from the passage of Question 2 by examining assumptions and ideologies about race, culture, and language across policy and practice. Drawing on critical race theory (CRT) and the construct of majoritarian stories, two distinct and complimentary analyses were conducted: a critical policy analysis of state level laws, regulations, and policy tools, and a critically conscious longitudinal case study of one teacher candidate who was prepared to work with bilingual learners and then taught bilingual learners during her first three years of teaching. The critical policy analysis, conducted as a frame analysis, exposes that legally sanctioned racism and linguicism are institutionalized and codified through Massachusetts state policy. Additionally, Massachusetts state policy consistently and strongly promotes four common majoritarian stories regarding the education of secondary bilingual learners and their teachers: there is no story about race, difference is deficit, meritocracy is appropriate, and English is all that matters. The longitudinal case study demonstrates the power of these majoritarian stories in classroom practice and how they limit the opportunities of bilingual learners and their teachers while also perpetuating institutionalized racism and linguicism. Taken together, the two analyses that make up this dissertation reveal a problematic system deeply affected by majoritarian stories that obscure the role white privilege and white normativity play in perpetuating issues of inequity for secondary bilingual learners and teachers. This dissertation argues that in order to disrupt institutionalized racism and linguicism, these stories must be consistently, proactively, and powerfully challenged across all levels of policy and practice. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The extant entrepreneurship literature is replete with competing narratives about the concept of informal sector (IS). Also, IS’ potential as a source of income and the behavioural tendencies of operators in the sector remain highly contested but under-researched. In particular, not much is known about the incentives and the motivations for engaging in informal economic activity from the perspective of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) context where a significant proportion of all economic activities are informal. Thus, the lack of conceptual clarity and consensus about the underlying factors driving individuals into informal economic activity constitutes a major knowledge gap. To fill this gap, this study seeks to clarify the domain of IS from a SSA viewpoint, and through this paves the way for a more holistic understanding of the behavioural tendencies and motivations of IS operators in SSA. Specifically relying on the institutional, social exclusion, and personality trait theoretical frameworks, the study demonstrates how a combination of separate yet related phenomena of personality traits, institutional factors, and more importantly, situational factors that manifest as perceptions of social exclusion serve as the incentives and the motivations to engage in informal economic activity in SSA. To achieve its goal, qualitative primary data obtained through thirty-eight semi-structured interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using Nvivo. Firstly, the study found that institutional ambiguity, institutional delinquency, institutional passivity, and institutional incongruence are sources of voids in Nigeria's institutional framework that influence an individual to enter the IS. Secondly, social exclusion regarding lack of access to requirements such as finance and formal education to start and sustainably operate a business influences people to enter into the IS. Lastly, the findings indicate that personality traits’ influence regarding the decision to engage in informal economic activities is dependent on individual circumstances. These are valuable contributions to the stock of knowledge about the IS. Particularly, the identification and categorisation of four specific institutional voids and partitioning of the sources of exclusion; the finding that in adverse economic circumstances personality traits could influence potential opportunity-entrepreneurs to start-up in the IS; the finding about the role of trade associations; and the new understanding about the collaborative dimension of corruption in the context of IS practice, represent a significant contribution of this study. These contributions are valuable not just in terms of creating new windows of research opportunities, but also for evidence-based policy relating to the IS that is appropriately targeted at relevant groups. This is in addition to facilitating collaborations for business support, enlightenment, improved business practice, and inclusive growth.

This case study explored the lived experiences of 8 participants in a microfinance sewing program in El Salvador. Numerous studies focused on empowering women by employing microfinance projects or programs in many countries; however, a lack of empirical data exists regarding Salvadoran women's perceptions about how a sewing program with teamwork affects women's empowerment. The purpose of this case study was to understand the women's personal stories, their obstacles as well as any factors they saw as empowering them. Guided by a constructionist framework, a sample of 8 participants: 5 who were sewing students and 3 who were employees, who shared their administrative perspectives about participants' skills, data collection and data analysis methods gained. Five themes emerged from the women's interviews about their sewing program experience: (a) program effect on women's well-being; (b) gained a means of income; (c) increased self-efficacy, confidence, and security; (d) worked in groups or teams; and (e) the teacher's positive influence. The 5 sewing student participants reported they developed self-efficacy and self-fulfillment in the sewing program. The women attributed their success to the teacher, who taught them sewing skills and provided guidance and encouragement. This study contributes to social change by providing insight for additional women's studies on women's empowerment, social work with families and children, and for MSW social work students.

Although nonprofit organization (NPO) leaders play crucial roles in society, financial distress and vulnerability are common for many NPO leaders, with some NPOs closing as a result of these conditions. The purpose of this single-case study was to explore the diversification strategies used by 10 leaders and senior staff of an NPO in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States through the conceptual lens of Markowitz's modern portfolio theory. Data were collected through in-depth semistructured interviews and analysis of organizational documents, internal archival data, social media, literature, and online databases. Through thematic analysis, 7 revenue diversification themes emerged: adding revenue streams; establishing an operating reserve; establishing positive financial performance; achieving financial stability, sustainability, organizational capacity, and organizational resilience; using transparency; achieving efficiency and organizational effectiveness; and using a marketing strategy. Additionally, 7 key themes emerged: documenting and implementing systematic processes, developing an approach to process improvement, implementing cross-department action plans, increasing transparency, reversing the adverse trend in forum participation, building a data-management system, and increasing individual and organizational capacity. These findings have implications for positive social change, in that they may offer NPO executives new insights and strategies to support revenue diversification, thereby helping them to reduce volatility in funding, decrease financial risk, avoid dependence on sole-source revenue, and identify opportunities to increase flexibility in support of organizational goals and objectives to increase services.

Public school students across the United States have been criminalized for minor youth behavior issues such as truancy, defiance, and minor fighting incidents. The presence of law enforcement is expanding in school spaces, increasing the likelihood of young students facing court systems for minor offenses. Criminalization of students is counterproductive considering schools are designed to promote student growth and development. Little is known about how students and parents experience school criminalization. The purpose of this multi-case study, based on Freire's conceptual framework of critical consciousness, was to investigate how a small group of families experienced school criminalization. Three families of youths who had been criminalized for minor school offences were recruited using community partners as referral sources. Interviews were conducted with parents using a semi-structured protocol, and data were also obtained from school and court records provided by parents. Data were triangulated, summarized as case descriptions, member checked, and then cross-theme analyzed based on Gibbs and Taylor's approach for emergent themes. Study results demonstrated that these families felt trapped between two institutions and experienced fear and frustration trying to deal with both systems. Participants also recommended ways parents and schools might improve discipline for minor offences. This study will influence social change by informing school and juvenile justice discipline policy reform about working with two systems in managing student behavior concerns. In addition, the interview protocol can be used by human services professionals to help improve understanding of clients faced with school criminalization issues.

The growing number of language minority students graduating from a U.S. high school and entering college has motivated many studies. These students are often referred to as Generation 1.5, a term that loosely indicates they arrived in this country at an early age and had most of their education in U.S. K-12 settings. The studies that have focused on this population often group refugees with other immigrants. Although refugees may not have arrived in this country at an early age, those coming from war torn countries as teenagers have often had their formal education interrupted in their home countries with the result that schooling in the U.S. comprises most, if not all, of their education. The purpose of the current study was to investigate how refugee students experience academic literacy practices in their first year of college, the challenges they face in this process, and the resources and strategies they use to cope with postsecondary reading and writing demands. In order to carry out this investigation, a qualitative year-long multiple-case study (Duff, 2008) was conducted. Participants were seven refugee students attending a small liberal arts college. Data collection involved interviews with the focal participants and faculty, class observations, and written documents. Findings revealed that all seven participants were successful completing their first year in college, passing all the classes they registered for. At the same time, the day-to-day struggle to keep up and cope with reading and writing assignments presented these students with several challenges resulting from their still developing English language proficiency, lack of background knowledge, and unfamiliarity with academic genres, to name a few sources of difficulty. These challenges were offset by the motivation showed by the seven participants and their ability in developing coping strategies and drawing upon the resources made available to them. Repeated use of resources and uncritical acceptance of support, however, sometimes yielded undesirable results. The findings indicate that many of the strategies used by the participants involved peers, tutors, and professors who, within the supportive college environment, offered these students the assistance they needed.

Fatherlessness seems to have instigated a growing political and social debate in recent years (Daniels, 1998). At the core of this debate lies the questions of whether fatherlessness today is more widespread than it has been historically, and whether the necessity and efficacy of fathers is important in the changing landscape of family paradigms (Daniels, 1998). In the last thirty years, research has defined fatherlessness in terms of parental marital status, father abandonment, and father death (Daniels, 1998; Gallagher, 1998; Popenoe, 1996). Some psychoanalysts extended the definition to include the emotional absence (Blundell, 2002), or emotional unavailability of the father (Lamb & Tamis-LeMonda, 2004). Research suggests that children raised by both biological parents have greater socio-economic success (McLanahan & Teitler, 1999), seem to have an intellectual advantage (Research Center for Minority Data, 2009), and are less prone to encounter emotional problems than single-parented children (Cockett and Tripp, 1994). These factors reflect the deficit model of fatherlessness that dominated child development research prior to the 1970s (Hawkins and Dollahite, 1997). More current research focused on the benefits of father involvement and purported that fathers who are more involved in the lives of their children (Day & Lamb, 2004; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004), and make themselves more emotionally available tend to raise children with fewer emotional problems and better overall mental health (Lum & Phares, 2005). With society producing what some refer to as a fatherless generation (Hydrate Studios, 2006), and a number of researchers attesting that fatherlessness is a devastating modern, social trend (Blackenhorn, 1995; Popenoe, 1996), current qualitative research was warranted in order to explore factors that lead fatherless individuals to assume a fatherless identity. In this exploratory case study, semi-structured interviews were conducted to better understand fatherlessness as experienced by adult male case study participants. The study focused on the experiences of men in order to manage the scope of research, and defer to the male experiences that prompted the research. Four men self-identified as fatherless with no imposed research definition by responding to the recruitment question Are You Fatherless? Results indicated that historical ways of defining fatherless were merely factors that intensify the experience; they do not define a person as fatherless. Findings suggested that the father role, family dynamics, emotionality, socio-economic and intellectual factors, disparate ideal and perceived father images, negative emotional connections with fathers, and a sons sense of masculinity all play a part in men assuming a fatherless identity.

<p>Recent research has indicated a significant increase in the crystal methamphetamine abuse in the Western Cape. The study aimed to provide an understanding of the interaction of the social and historical contexts in relation to the life experiences and perceptions of a young person residing in the Cape Flats. Primarily the study aimed to explore the factors that influenced the participant to use crystal methamphetamine. It adopted a social constructionist epistemological perspective and employed Bronfenbrenner&rsquo / s ecological systems theory as the theoretical framework. The subsystems of the ecological systems theory include the individual who is influenced by the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem and the chronosystem. This was a qualitative research study that&nbsp / employed an intensive case study. Data was obtained through series intensive semi-structured interviews that were approximately 40 - 70 minutes in duration. The participant is a coloured female, aged 28 years from a high-risk community in the Cape Flats. Prior to the interview process, relevant permission was obtained from the participant, which allowed the interviews to be conducted and recorded. The data was then analysed using a narrative analysis. The themes that emerged from the research findings include: childhood trauma / sexual abuse during childhood / social milieu and norms / adolescent delinquency / the cycle of abuse / understanding crystal methamphetamine use and the consequences of crystal methamphetamine use. Findings with regard to the individual factors included psychological well-being, depression and negative affectivity, feelings of hopelessness, suicidal ideations, loneliness, past abuse of legal substances, adolescence, delinquency and childhood sexual abuse. The influential factors that emerged within the microsystem were lack of family support, dysfunctional family dynamics, childhood abandonment, uninvolved parents, several custodial parents, childhood disequilibrium, parental modelling and family drug use. Further findings within the microsystem included peer influence viz. direct persuasion of drug use, peer exposure of drugs, experimentation, delinquent behaviour, gang-related involvement and peer group acceptance. The mesosystemic findings included, lack of emotional support or attachments, social support, lack of structure as well as relocating to numerous schools and homes. Findings located in the exosystem were the availability and accessibility of drugs in all the communities in which the participant lived. Findings in the macrosystem included the social environment of the individual, including the social norms of the community and the home setting as well as the norm of violence, crime and gangsterism. The information and knowledge accumulated would optimistically contribute to addressing the paucity of qualitative literature and present knowledge to&nbsp / improve intervention and prevention strategies.</p>

Fatherlessness seems to have instigated a growing political and social debate in recent years (Daniels, 1998). At the core of this debate lies the questions of whether fatherlessness today is more widespread than it has been historically, and whether the necessity and efficacy of fathers is important in the changing landscape of family paradigms (Daniels, 1998). In the last thirty years, research has defined fatherlessness in terms of parental marital status, father abandonment, and father death (Daniels, 1998; Gallagher, 1998; Popenoe, 1996). Some psychoanalysts extended the definition to include the emotional absence (Blundell, 2002), or emotional unavailability of the father (Lamb & Tamis-LeMonda, 2004). Research suggests that children raised by both biological parents have greater socio-economic success (McLanahan & Teitler, 1999), seem to have an intellectual advantage (Research Center for Minority Data, 2009), and are less prone to encounter emotional problems than single-parented children (Cockett and Tripp, 1994). These factors reflect the deficit model of fatherlessness that dominated child development research prior to the 1970s (Hawkins and Dollahite, 1997). More current research focused on the benefits of father involvement and purported that fathers who are more involved in the lives of their children (Day & Lamb, 2004; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004), and make themselves more emotionally available tend to raise children with fewer emotional problems and better overall mental health (Lum & Phares, 2005). With society producing what some refer to as a fatherless generation (Hydrate Studios, 2006), and a number of researchers attesting that fatherlessness is a devastating modern, social trend (Blackenhorn, 1995; Popenoe, 1996), current qualitative research was warranted in order to explore factors that lead fatherless individuals to assume a fatherless identity. In this exploratory case study, semi-structured interviews were conducted to better understand fatherlessness as experienced by adult male case study participants. The study focused on the experiences of men in order to manage the scope of research, and defer to the male experiences that prompted the research. Four men self-identified as fatherless with no imposed research definition by responding to the recruitment question Are You Fatherless? Results indicated that historical ways of defining fatherless were merely factors that intensify the experience; they do not define a person as fatherless. Findings suggested that the father role, family dynamics, emotionality, socio-economic and intellectual factors, disparate ideal and perceived father images, negative emotional connections with fathers, and a sons sense of masculinity all play a part in men assuming a fatherless identity.