This study examines the writing requirements and structures for administering writing at 54 small, selective liberal arts college. After a brief introduction to the theory and practice of writing across the curriculum, I place writing in the context of these small colleges. I base my research on these colleges' primary documents as well as data from an extensive qualitative survey in which all 54 schools participated. I define three of the most common types of writing requirements at these institutions: (1) Composition Courses in their different forms; (2) First-Year Seminars; and, (3) Writing Intensive Courses. I discuss the self-reported advantages and challenges of each approach. I focus on the role of writing in a liberal arts education and the distributed nature of teaching writing at such schools. I then offer an overall view of writing requirements and administrative structures at these schools, noting the advantages and challenges of teaching and administering writing in these distinctive institutional settings. Finally, I move towards developing a theory and practice of writing at the small liberal arts college and propose a framework for thinking about writing that helps cultivate an overall culture of writing. I suggest some "best practices" for writing at such colleges, and include recommendations for the structure of student writing experiences, support for faculty in the teaching of writing, and the administration and oversight of writing. I end with a vision of writing across the curriculum at the small liberal arts college that integrates teaching, writing, and learning.

Many people believe folk and fairy tales convey a set of universal truths and beliefs; however, scholars, researchers, and folklorists have questioned or challenged this supposition. There are many versions of traditional tales and reworked tales that provide different points of view. Tale Type 500: The Name of the Helper, classified by Aarne-Thompson, is one tale that has a number of counter perspectives. While there are many variations of this tale, the Grimms' Rumpelstiltskin is the most well known. There is a lack of scholarly investigation of both the original tale and its manifestations and reconstructions. Reconstructed versions of Tale Type 500 provide more information about characters' motives with the intent of providing a different ideology. The methodology of this dissertation applies a critical multicultural analysis (Rudman & Botelho, forthcoming) to examine power in adaptations of Tale Type 500 written for children and young adults. Critical multicultural analysis is an approach that helps readers identify and analyze power relations in literature. Specifically, this study examines the fluidity of the power that characters exercise on a continuum: domination, collusion, resistance, and agency. First, this study examines characters' actions regarding how power is exercised by identifying the power on a continuum of domination through agency. Second, this study examines which characters benefit from the power exercised, and how they benefit. Third, this study identifies which characters are disadvantaged from power and how. Following each analysis is a discussion about the implications for children in America's society today. The findings of this study, indicate that power relationships are a prominent theme in the reconstructed versions of Tale Type 500. Three general themes emerged in this study: (1) readers can look at power relations in children's literature and see how the texts reflect critical theory about power relations, (2) some authors of children's literature consciously apply critical literacy practices, and (3) few texts portray characters exercising the power of agency. By identifying social implications of text ideologies and questioning the issues of power in children's literature, critical readers can consider how texts counteract, maintain, or promote alternative systemic power structures.

The geographic landscape of this study is the Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic, also known by its French name Laos. Located in Southeast Asia, the Lao PDR is one of the six remaining socialist countries in the world. During my fieldwork in the Lao PDR, I facilitated a process of action research with a group of Lao INGO workers. I used qualitative research methods to capture the perceptions of the Lao development workers who collaborated with this study. This dissertation is primarily based on the data documented through interviews, participant observation, focus group discussion and reflective story writing. The core educational problem is to examine the historical reasons for the modest educational infrastructure in the Lao PDR and its impact on the growth of the development sector. The other related issues I explored include the limitations of mainstream development and educational models as well as the opportunities emerging as a result of the country's integration with the globalization process. Within the backdrop of the problem mentioned, the main purpose of this study is to explore an alternative strategy that has potential to facilitate the growth of local human resource capacity. The rationale for this exploratory endeavor is to generate functional knowledge that will potentially assist the policy makers and practitioners to develop an appropriate approach for the local human resource capacity building process. The research method I adapted in the field was a combination of action research and phenomenological inquiry. The key question that I pursued was “What is the process of collaborative capacity building that includes an alternative educational approach and model which have the potential to help Lao INGO staff to increase their capacity as development workers and, in the longer term, develop skills for self-management?”. I employed four techniques of data collection, which included interviewing 26 individuals, documenting action research process through the participant observation method, assisting Lao INGO staff to write reflective stories and conducting three focus group discussions. During the data analysis stage, I tried to incorporate the voices of the participants of the action research project to allow them constructing their way of knowing.

In response to the current educational reform movement that has ensued as a result of the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983), the Massachusetts legislature passed the Educational Reform Act in 1993. From this Act, an educational reform plan was developed for all public schools, and curriculum frameworks were written for the major academic areas. The frameworks recommend what should be taught, and they encourage teachers to align their curriculum with the frameworks. This dissertation describes a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 15 teachers throughout the state of Massachusetts, from the fall of 1999 through the fall of 2001. The study investigated the experiences these teachers had with the Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum framework . The teachers who were interviewed represent a cross-section of teachers diverse in geographic location, number of years teaching, gender, ethnicity, and experience with curriculum development. The extensive responses to the interviews were analyzed in light of the research questions in this study. Through the literature review, documents, and the interviews, I was able to analyze teachers' experiences working specifically with the history and social science framework, and to assess the impact that the framework was having on their teaching, curriculum development, and student learning. This analysis revealed consistent patterns and themes. These included teachers' common school experiences of not having an organized school curriculum prior to the framework; their perception of the lack of multiculturalism in the framework; and their concerns about the exclusion of teachers from the framework process. The information analyzed from the interviews can be used to guide school systems in the development of educational policies, as well as in the creation of curriculum. This study has the potential to assist those interested in both professional development and teacher education.

The composition of classrooms in higher education is rapidly becoming more diverse, presenting new challenges to faculty regarding their teaching and curricular practices. One response in higher education has been the emergence of development programs aimed at helping faculty provide successful, quality education to diverse students. This study describes how faculty who participated in the Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom (TLDC) Faculty and TA Partnership Project (1994–2000) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, reflected on their experiences and pedagogical practices as instructors in diverse classrooms. Participants were faculty members who exhibited variety across academic disciplines, levels of faculty rank, gender, race, and ethnicity. The procedure for this investigation employed quantitative and qualitative research methods. There were 29 responses to the mailed surveys and 10 interviews with participants, some of whom also responded to the mailed survey. The surveys were analyzed for possible correlations between gender and race in participants' responses; the interviews were analyzed for the possible relationships of gender in participants' responses. Whereas participants provided many different accounts of what diversity meant to them as instructors, they unanimously agreed that considerations of diversity were important to their teaching in diverse classrooms. This study's surveys and interviews generated strategies for improving faculty teaching and curricular practices—including the use of student-focused methods, multiple methods, course readings, and considerations of the teaching self—identified by faculty as components central to their perceptions of their experiences and teaching practices with diverse students. Additional strategies, such as fostering community in the diverse classroom and student-focused assessment, emerged from the interview data. Survey responses focused on a personal approach to faculty's sense of their growth as educators in diverse classrooms, whereas interview findings highlighted the need for further institutional support. This research may help development programs, such as the TLDC Project, provide continuing support for faculty to offer successful, quality education to multicultural classrooms.

Secondary physics education in the United States has been shown to be sub-standard, and not even offered in many high schools. National assessment results have suggested that changes in secondary physics education are greatly needed and are slow in coming. One attempt to enhance physics instruction is the UPDATE program. UPDATE is a physics teacher enhancement program offered by the University of Massachusetts. The program is primarily designed to enhance physics teacher knowledge in topical and important areas of contemporary physics that are not always well represented in secondary classrooms. This study assesses the impact of participation in the UPDATE program on the high school physics instruction of the 1995-96 program participants. Focus group interviews, individual interviews, and a questionnaire are methods used to collect data. This document includes transcriptions from both focus group and individual interviews, as well as quantitative results from a questionnaire. Commonalities are drawn from the three sources of data to illustrate the impact of the UPDATE program on participants' high school physics instruction. Aspects of the program which have contributed to enhancement of instruction are also identified and recommendations are made for subsequent teacher enhancement programs. The findings generally indicate that participants became more confident, enthusiastic, gained more physics knowledge, and changed their teaching practices to include more UPDATE related topics. In addition, laboratory experiences as well as laboratory equipment offered to participants during the program contributed significantly to their perceived instructional enhancement.

Many adult literacy program, especially those seeking to address issues of equity and empowerment, invite their clients to become authors by articulating their life experiences, ideas, and opinions in talk and in writing that is published. Recent theorizing about identity raises issues about the empowering capacity of this widespread practice. To address these issues, I borrowed theoretical perspectives from feminist poststructuralism that allowed me to see what happened when clients were positioned as authors in light of positionings leading to salient identities other than author. These positionings were shaped by discourses, local ideologies, and speech acts. The study focused on a small group of literacy clients who interacted with each other and with tutors in adult basic education tutoring sessions and Authors Workshops sited in a public elementary school in a New England city. I used an ethnographic approach to collect and analyze my data which was complemented by conversation analysis techniques borrowed from sociolinguistics. The theoretical perspective and the methodology enabled me to trace the moment-by-moment construction and interaction, through talk, of the various identities that became salient for participants. Identities from three categories, Authorship, School, and Family, became salient and interacted with each other. These identities were linked to the five cultural discourses operating at the research site: the Traditional Education, Liberal Empowerment, Therapeutic, Welfare Reform, and Traditional Marriage and Family discourses. School identities, linked to the Traditional Education discourse, most often interacted with Authorship identities; however, it was not always in tutors' talk that the Traditional Education discourse expressed itself. Clients sometimes chose the student identity. Both the Welfare Reform and Traditional Education discourses interrupted the author identity as clients, lacking a high school diploma, felt thwarted in their job searches. Implications of the study for research include the power of feminist poststructuralist theory as an heuristic and a justification for researching liberatory classroom practices. Implications for practice include the advisability of siting Authors Workshops in a community rather than school context and the use of feminist poststructuralist theory to reveal how clients and practitioners are “discoursed” so they can, together, help make practices such as Authors Workshops actually, not just potentially liberatory.

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of Tibetan women at various higher educational institutions in the Western Massachusetts area after the US Congress passed the 1990 Immigration Act (Comprehensive Immigration Action of 1990, Sec 134) that granted 1,000 visas to displaced Tibetans from exiled communities in India and Nepal to the United States. The research study was guided by the following five main questions: (1) What does it mean for Tibetan women to pursue higher education in the United States? (2) What motivates the Tibetan women to study? (3) What professional careers do these Tibetan women aspire to in the United States? (4) To what extent are these women intending to serve Tibetan communities? If so, how? If not, why not? (5) How did the concept of a Tibetan egalitarian society help these women to pursue higher education in the United States? Case study was the approach used for the study with a research design focusing on qualitative rather than quantitative techniques. Due to the paucity of existing literature and research on the Tibetan population in the United States, this was an exploratory study. This study does not represent educational experiences of all Tibetan women in higher education. Twelve Tibetan women participants were interviewed using in-depth interviews as a data collection method for this study. Five common themes emerged out of this study; the meaning of higher education, educational motivation, communal responsibility, career aspirations, and gender differences in Tibetan society. Results from this study suggested that Tibetan women’s experiences in higher educational institutions are different from other minority women partly due to their stateless status and their devotion to work towards the preservation of unique Tibetan culture and language in exile. In addition, the multiple uprooted experiences clearly posed unique challenges as well. It was apparent from the study that Tibetans while adapting to the host culture, remained loyal to the cause of the Tibetan self determination and nation state.

This research examines the educational history of Blacks under apartheid, the educational philosophies of different strands of the anti-apartheid movement, and the nature of education reforms in a post-apartheid South Africa. The research analyzes the implications of these reforms for a specific group of marginalized South Africans, former student militants, that is, Black African youths who participated in the anti-apartheid struggle between 1970 to 1992. It is deeply tragic that a majority of this population do not benefit from the educational and economic policies of the new South Africa, and remain poor and unemployed. Based on interviews, surveys and focused group discussions with former student militants in the Northern Province of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, this research examines the gap between the educational vision of the anti-apartheid movement and the nature of the present reforms. My research shows that although based on principles of racial equality, the impact of the reforms can only be understood in the broader context of neoliberal economic reform. The research highlights the contradictions immanent in constructing a deracialized, egalitarian education system that can benefit the Black majority at the same time as the state prioritizes economic growth and competitiveness to succeed in a global economy. The research questions whether the goal of ‘education for liberation’ can truly be attained and the historical oppressions and inequities of the apartheid regime eradicated by education reform that is based on liberal ideals of a nonracialized equal society.

It seems a paradox that the United States, a country with a highly diverse population and a long history of immigration, has one of the poorest records of sustained public foreign language programs when compared to similar post industrial countries. In an educational system such as the one in United States that is not centralized, foreign language instruction appears not to be a real, tangible necessity. In this situation are engulfed many school districts that are left with state and/or national guidelines and an ever-changing budget, to decide who should learn what languages, if any. By framing and understanding the foreign language education in this context, this ethnographic study examines through a post-structuralist perspective, a current program in the United States and looks specifically at how issues of motivation and power get constructed by students in the foreign language classroom of an urban middle school setting. This study also examines how language policies enacted through class instruction impact student endorsement of foreign language education during the formative years in U.S. public schools that may influence learning, and may generate resistance, or lack of motivation to learn a foreign language. Critical discourse analysis is employed in this study as a tool to: (1) review and analyze specific recent legislation that is interpreted and enacted in the foreign language program of a local school system, (2) examine data collected through interviews with students and administrators, and (3) understand classroom interactions within the local political context of a school system. In examining the social, textual and discursive levels of these policies, it is possible to challenge how traditional education defines the roles of teachers and students and to envision new relations of power that could condition the existence of new learners' identities and new possibilities for teachers. This study will contribute towards the understanding of classroom practices in foreign language programs as they influence and are influenced by language planning and policy decisions, and so point to areas where change can be made. In terms of stating the practical implications for the foreign language field, the concept of student endorsement, as it is employed in this study, is examined for its potential as a viable replacement for the traditional notion of student motivation. Understanding endorsement issues in relation to the current language policies on learning situates learning not as an individual psychological factor but rather as a socially shaped response that can be changed. Furthermore, teachers' and administrators' understanding of endorsement could challenge current policies and practices that contribute to the devaluing and reduction of benefits of foreign language instruction.