The purpose of this interdisciplinary study was to explore the experiences of al-rihla of International Muslim Graduate Students and to compare them to those of the Medieval Muslim Travelers. This qualitative study expands on the sparse existing literature by providing a new perspective for International Muslim Graduate Students' experiences of al-rihla and their role as cultural agents through an autoethnographic account and in-depth interviews with international Muslim graduate students. The study also makes a comparison of al-rihla in search of knowledge between International Muslim Graduate Students and Medieval Muslim Travelers. The naturalistic paradigm of inquiry was used in this study to acquire and analyze data. The data were collected from three resources: the auto-ethnographic account of the researcher, in-depth interviews with seven international Muslim graduate students, and the al-rihla accounts of three Medieval Muslim Travelers. Data analysis showed that educational experiences of Muslim travelers, over time, have been strongly influenced by three major factors: 1) religious beliefs about knowledge and the search for knowledge, 2) culture and cultural identity, and 3) issues of political power and positionality. Discussions of the al-rihla of international Muslim graduate students include the role of institutions of higher education as places and spaces for public pedagogy that can eliminate cultural differences and bridge cultural gaps by raising awareness of Islam as a culture and the empowerment of international Muslim graduate students as cultural agents of peace.

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This qualitative study defined the hermeneutic approach as a strategy for developing museum education programs, and examined its implementation in two museum settings. A hermeneutic research methodology was used to design, interpret, and explain the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development and its implementation by two museum educator research participants, a codeveloper and an implementer. Four sequential stages comprised the study that addressed the following questions: What is the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development? How does the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development work? What does the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development offer to museum educators? In Stage One, elements of hermeneutics, curriculum theory, pedagogy, and museology were drawn from a review of the literature to define the hermeneutic approach. The hermeneutic approach was aligned to an interpretive curriculum theory paradigm. After establishing its theoretical foundation, the hermeneutic approach was diagrammed as a template for guiding the development of museum education programs that included the following components: curriculum topic, museum's mandate, storyline, themes, artifacts, and program: pre-understanding, meaning in-context, connectedness, process, experience, and communication. Stage Two continued with the introduction of the co-developer, a seasoned museum educator who assisted in refining the hermeneutic approach template by piloting its implementation in the development of a museum education program. Insights gained from this stage were used to modify the hermeneutic approach for Stages Three and Four of the study. The hermeneutic principles of pre-understanding, meaning-in-context, connectedness, process, experience, and communication were used as a format for conducting a workshop to teach the hermeneutic approach to seasoned and novice museum educators in Stage Three. According to the study's design, the Stage Four museum educator implementer autonomously developed a museum education program using the hermeneutic approach. A back and forth interplay between the experiences of the co-developer in Stage One and the implementer in Stage Four was mediated by the researcher to examine the template and its components. Results of the study indicate that the hermeneutic approach forces museum educators to move away from an objectives-based program planning strategy, thus redefining the role of artifact interpretation.

Thesis advisor: Andrew Hargreaves / Music teachers occupy a conflicted and contested position in many secondary schools, and music teacher education programs have been given the task of preparing students to enter this challenging environment. This qualitative dissertation study examined the explicit, implicit, and null curricula of music teacher preparation programs in Massachusetts, the processes involved in determining those curricula and the consequences of selecting certain music education content over others. Degree requirements and course descriptions were analyzed across all undergraduate music teacher preparation programs. In addition, a survey was administered to music and education faculty in all programs and members of five institutions participated in interviews. The explicit curriculum in most music teacher preparation programs emphasized the knowledge and skills of performance, specifically the performance of Western art music, as well as the isolation of music content knowledge from pedagogical knowledge. The implicit message delivered by the explicit curriculum was that advanced musical study was intended for the few, and that popular music, world music, and other genres that deviated from the western art music tradition (i.e. - the null curriculum) were of less value. Using Bernstein's and Young's theories from the sociology of knowledge, Goodson's theory of the status and evolution of school subjects, and Siskin's and Ball and Lacey's work in the culture of secondary school subjects as the theoretical framework, the position of music education was explained as a conflicted content area that demonstrated traits of both high- and low-status subjects. Music education's geographic isolation from general education faculty was magnified by the conflicting views that music educators held when compared with their music performance counterparts. The knowledge boundaries of music content had been defended for centuries, and music education's attempt to redefine what counts as valid music and music education knowledge was met with resistance from those who benefited from the familiarity offered by the conservatory-style model of postsecondary musical study. One outlier was identified, a program whose performance emphasis was not based on western art music. Tradition and reform proved to be challenging dual goals for music educators. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Talking about spirituality can be uncomfortable. The topic is especially precarious within the sphere of education. Despite the discomfort and precarity, many scholars argue that there may be room in the postmodern curriculum for safe, open, and generative dialogue about religion and spirituality as cultural phenomena. These curriculum theorists (see Slattery, 2013; Doll, 2002; Huebner, 1991; Noddings, 2005; Whitehead, 1967a/1929; Wang, 2002) propose a sensitive critique of spirituality and religion that can lead to cultural healing, re-membering, re-integration and re-collection (Huebner, 1991). In an increasingly fractured world (Slattery, 2013), where spiritual and religious underpinnings cause an array of conflict, this study works toward critical dialogue in a secondary level public school art classroom. Through art-making, writing, and class discussions, the teacher and student researchers explored, critiqued, and de/constructed their own spirituality<&mdash> with the aim of aggregating, accommodating (Rolling, 2011) and appreciating ways of thinking, being, and practicing that were different from their own. The project adopted A/r/tography as a qualitative research methodology, which views art-making, writing, and conversations as generative pools of data that can produce new understandings, meanings, and potentialities (Irwin et al., 2006; Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Irwin & Springgay, 2008).

The aim with this study is to examine how students and teachers value source criticism. Partly, this regards how teachers practice this in their teaching and how students work with it during lessons – but also how students value source criticism in situations where the teacher not has pointed out that this topic is part of the actual assignment. Moreover, there is a focus on investigating how students who are critical of the sources take this into account in their daily lives; for example, when they surf on the Internet or when they discuss news articles or other media. This essay is based on interviews with students and teachers, using a qualitative method.   The results of this study show that both students and teachers find source criticism to be of major importance. However, the results show that the students relate source criticism with school, since the students feel that the perspective of criticism gets omitted in daily situations where they do not get assessed. Additionally, this study makes it clear that teachers are working with source criticism in similar ways. For example, all teachers who participated in this study seem to include a period during the students’ first year on upper secondary school with an emphasis on this particular area. Thereafter, source criticism is included frequently in the teaching through analyses in the tasks that follow. Nevertheless, the students highlighted that they would like more concrete teaching within the area of source criticism on a frequent basis during lessons, especially during the later terms of upper secondary school.

Talking about spirituality can be uncomfortable. The topic is especially precarious within the sphere of education. Despite the discomfort and precarity, many scholars argue that there may be room in the postmodern curriculum for safe, open, and generative dialogue about religion and spirituality as cultural phenomena. These curriculum theorists (see Slattery, 2013; Doll, 2002; Huebner, 1991; Noddings, 2005; Whitehead, 1967a/1929; Wang, 2002) propose a sensitive critique of spirituality and religion that can lead to cultural healing, re-membering, re-integration and re-collection (Huebner, 1991). In an increasingly fractured world (Slattery, 2013), where spiritual and religious underpinnings cause an array of conflict, this study works toward critical dialogue in a secondary level public school art classroom. Through art-making, writing, and class discussions, the teacher and student researchers explored, critiqued, and de/constructed their own spirituality—with the aim of aggregating, accommodating (Rolling, 2011) and appreciating ways of thinking, being, and practicing that were different from their own. The project adopted A/r/tography as a qualitative research methodology, which views art-making, writing, and conversations as generative pools of data that can produce new understandings, meanings, and potentialities (Irwin et al., 2006; Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Irwin & Springgay, 2008).

The aim of this study is to examine how preschool teachers conduct teaching in the preschool yard and how they implement the preschool curriculum. The idea behind this study is based on the idea that outdoor activity should be a place where children have the right to teaching and education as well as free play. Our research questions are: How do preschool teachers interpret and incorporate outdoor activity in the curriculum? Which of the elements of the curriculum are implemented in outdoor activities? How is the outdoor environment and its materials used educating preschool children in the preschool yard?  To collect the empirical data, we have chosen to use qualitative interviews that we analyzed from thematic analysis, curriculum theory and framework factor theory. The results of this study show that since the preschool curriculum is an interpretable control document the preschool teachers highlights different parts from it to implement in the yard. All of the teachers taught natural science outdoors. The results of the study suggest that learning in this environment provides the ideal setting for spontaneous curiosity and discovery as well as planned learning outcomes. Physical activity was another topic implemented at most preschools. The results also show that varying framework factors affect the preschool teachers' work. The number of children spending time together in the same setting is a critical factor affecting education and learning in the preschool yard. Another is time for reflection and planning and collaboration between different groups at the preschool. Even the design of the yard was a factor that affects the outcome and possibilities of education and teaching. Furthermore, the results implied that although free play was widely acknowledged as valuable time in the preschool yard most preschool teachers felt limited and dissatisfied with the teaching and education carried out in there.

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