This qualitative study explores how knowledge and concepts of knowledge are experienced in an undergraduate teacher education course that employs a community of enquiry pedagogy. As designer and facilitator of the course I engaged students in enquiries and enquiry-based activities to learn about art. Using an action-research approach I made changes to the course design in response to how it played out. The art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa was the focus of our study and students developed structured and logical ‘frameworks’ for analysing artworks as well as playing with laterally extending concepts such as art, justice, equality and humanity. The findings suggest that the dialogical and embodied practice of a community of enquiry pedagogy strongly influenced my students’ and my own awareness of knowledge as a creative and experiential opening up and as a companion to the equally valuable experience of not knowing. Teaching within this epistemological framework demands democratic and reflexive pedagogies such as the community of enquiry.

Thesis advisor: G. Michael Barnett / Many stakeholders emphasize the importance of diverse populations’ participation in the sciences, though the motivations for this vary. Some reference an economic standpoint by emphasizing the importance of either recruiting more science workers to compete in a global economy, or of individual financial success for people from historically marginalized groups. However, a growing body of researchers and educators has emphasized the importance of increasing representation from historically marginalized communities in science because their exclusion from discussions about science funding, research, and implications has resulted in widespread harm to communities. The goal of this research is to broaden science participation for the purposes of democracy and strong equity. This work expands on the Democratic Science Teaching (DST) framework, articulated by Basu & Calabrese Barton in 2010. While the original work articulated a theory by identifying goals and practices in existing science classrooms, this work explores the possibilities of using DST as a framework for teacher learning.This dissertation consists of three papers. Paper 1 details the development of an instrument to measure teaching practices aligned with democratic science teaching. The instrument could be used and built on by researchers, teacher educators, and school leaders who wish to use tools to develop democratic accountability in their systems. Paper 2 is a case study exploring how teacher beliefs and actions are activated through interaction with the DST framework. The study follows one novice physics teacher who participated in a DST-aligned professional learning fellowship for one academic year. Paper 3 is a practitioner-facing piece that functions as a starting point for teachers who are interested in developing democratic teaching practices in their own classrooms. The paper outlines the DST framework for teachers, explores how a photo-journal project supported students in making connections between their personal lives and science content, and presents other strategies used by teachers to bolster student voice, shared authority, and critical science literacy. Altogether, these papers offer understanding of teachers’ experiences as they work with the DST framework as learners, and provide tools for science teachers, teacher educators, and other education leaders to develop DST-aligned programming, and more broadly consider democratic and holistic systems of accountability for teachers. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This study investigated the conflict resolution abilities employed by 3-4 year old children within an Israeli kindergarten that was inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach in Italy. Conflict resolution is a significant phenomenon worldwide and the subject of considerable research, due to potential negative outcomes from involvement in conflict, and escalation of the conflict to a stage of violence. Nevertheless, a gap in knowledge was identified, regarding the Reggio Emilia educational approach, as an intervention to support the development of children‘s social-emotional competence to enable them to resolve interpersonal conflicts using pro-social strategies. An in-depth case study was conducted using grounded theory principles to develop a model to answer the question: To what extent might a Reggio Emilia inspired approach support resolution of interpersonal conflicts between 3-4 year old children in an Israeli kindergarten class? The rich qualitative data were gathered through video filmed observations, teacher's semi-structured interviews, children's interviews, documents, and field notes. A four-phase content analysis of the data enabled conceptualisation of the characteristics of the educational setting and the children's conflict resolution strategies. The findings allowed the emergence of a model evidencing that both direct and indirect intervention strategies were used to support the conflict resolution among the children. Teachers responded in a range of ways to children's request for direct intervention, and most especially used a clarification-mediation conversation. Indirectly, they promoted democratic pedagogy with children through participation, listening and dialogue. The findings reveal the children's development in their conflict resolution, which indicate a significant advancement in their pro-social negotiation abilities. Additionally, the findings show a significant increase in the children's spontaneous intervention as peer observers of the conflict and a decrease in their request of teacher intervention. The research suggests that over time, no extra-curricular intervention is needed within a supportive and democratic educational approach, such as the Reggio Emilia inspired approach provides. It illuminates strategies to support teachers, teacher trainers and policy makers for enabling children resolving conflicts independently using pro-social strategies. The research contributes to knowledge regarding selecting an intervention for improving kindergarten children's conflict resolution strategies.

Thirty-two students worked together for eight weeks to write nearly fifty short plays from which thirty were selected, produced and performed in a production titled Warning May Cause Irritation, inspired by the Neo-Futurists' signature show: Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Nineteen students were also involved in the concurrent case study of the project and kept journals, participated in focus group sessions, developed scripts and filled out worksheets. Data generated was analyzed for evidence of student empowerment, relevancy of the work to student's lives, and their ability to work democratically.In the end, it seems the students enjoyed and felt empowered by the democratic process used to generate the final production and the result was an educative, relevant and fulfilling experience that may inspire some to continue working in the theatre and the students seemed open to continuing to explore nontraditional theatre projects in the future.