<p> This dissertation was a case study of student perceptions in two history classrooms in a large suburban high school. In each classroom examined for this study the teacher was committed to using social studies inquiry and mobile technology in their instruction. Students were also expected to complete assignments and conduct inquiry with mobile technology. The purpose of this study was to examine the voice and experiences of high school students, and how high school students construct meaning through inquiry and mobile technology in the social studies classroom. 109 students participated in observations, focus groups, personal interviews and submitted completed examples of inquiry with technology. There were four general themes uncovered in the data for this study. The four themes that generated the findings for this study are that students engaged in inquiry using mobile technology (a) embraced the availability of resources and information when planning and conducting inquiries (b) reflected on communication with teachers and peers during the inquiry process (c) expressed that mobile technology provided opportunities to engage in learning and enhance knowledge outside of prescribed assignments (d) and used various creative outlets of mobile technology to communicate outcomes. </p><p>

<p> Racial injustice in U. S. society cannot be separated from that which happens in U.S. classrooms. Indeed, many battles between white supremacy and antiracism are waged in the public school arena&mdash;such as, the whitewashing of slavery in textbooks, and the Supreme Court decision to ban Mexican American Studies in Arizona. Thus, this dissertation took into account teacher learning and classroom practice around race, racism, and social justice through professional development. Specifically, among teachers committed to social justice, this dissertation investigated the role professional development plays in shaping how their commitment translates into classroom practice. I designed &lsquo;race space&rsquo; Critical Professional Development (CPD) (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, &amp; Ortiz, 2015) to support in-service urban teachers in learning about race, racism, and what it means to engage in social justice teaching. I employ the term &lsquo;race space&rsquo; to describe an aim to engender transformational, reflective, real talk and action around race and racism, through collective effort. With the theoretical groundings of critical race theory (CRT) in education, ideological becoming, and Third Space, I asked: What is the nature of &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD? Specifically, among urban in-service teachers committed to social justice, how does a &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivate: a) racial literacy; b) social justice teaching, and; c) ideological becoming? </p><p> Methodologically, this research project consisted of an ethnographic case study of the &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD. During the 2016-2017 academic year, three in-service, social justice-oriented public school teachers, who teach mostly students of color, participated in twelve &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD sessions over the course of eight months. I facilitated the sessions, completed 1-2 classroom observations of each teacher every week, and interviewed teachers and two of their students. Shay is a Black female Academic Intervention Services (AIS) and English Language Learners (ELL) teacher. Josh, a white male sixth grade special education teacher, teaches in a self-contained classroom. Gigi, a white female secondary biology teacher, teaches in a nontraditional high school. Primary data sources included: a) audio and video of &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD sessions and classroom interactions, b) field notes, c) teacher and student interviews, and d) pre- and post-questionnaires of teachers. I transcribed audio of &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD sessions and teacher and student interviews. Employing descriptive and process coding, I analyzed 591 pages of session transcriptions for narratives and dialogic exchanges around racial literacy, social justice understandings, meaning-making around social justice teaching, classroom practice, curriculum planning, and social justice ideological becoming. I then conducted a critical discourse analysis of focal dialogic exchanges to understand collective and individual racial literacy cultivation, social justice ideological becoming, and social justice teaching engagements. </p><p> Data analysis revealed three major findings. First, &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivated racial literacy by being responsive to the racial literacy teachers already displayed while providing support in responding to the racial consciousness of students of color. Second, &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivated social justice teaching among teachers through dialogic exchanges that pushed thoughtful and meaningful social justice curriculum planning that co-exists with the organic social justice teachable moments that arise. Third, &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivated social justice ideological becoming among teachers, through dialogic exchanges that advanced and critiqued the oppressive nature of school. Through the actualization of a Third Space within &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD, participant and facilitator ways of knowing/acting were both welcomed and called into question, for the purposes of interrupting and revising their performances of the present. Implications include extended time and space in professional development initiatives for learning around race, racism, and social justice.</p><p>

<p> There is growing interest in teaching K-16 students where food comes from and how it is grown, as evidenced by school gardens, farm-to-school programs, majors related to food systems, student farms on college campuses, and campus sustainable food projects. Many of these programs, however, do not necessarily highlight social inequities embedded in food systems or engage with the people who feed us, including slaughterhouse workers and restaurant workers. Moreover, there is currently little documentation and analysis of the few programs that highlight food workers and their experiences. Given the dearth of research on the practice of critical food systems education, I designed and researched a 10-week, seminar-style undergraduate course titled &ldquo;Making Visible the People Who Feed Us: Labor in the Food System&rdquo; that I taught over three academic quarters. Using teacher research methodology, this qualitative study explores how three cohorts of 18 students in the course responded to multicultural texts that reflect diverse, marginalized perspectives of food workers, many of whom are people of color, women, and/or undocumented. Following the reflective and reflexive tradition of teacher research, I also reflect on my teaching practices, consider how my biases affected my teaching, and elaborate on tensions that emerged as I taught the course. Data sources included student work, field notes of each class session, post-course and 6-11-month follow-up interviews, and entries in my reflection journal.</p><p> Findings from this study indicated a wide range in terms of how students responded to multicultural texts about food workers, depending on students&rsquo; prior knowledge and experiences. Some students showed a variety of emotions, from frustration to sadness, or expressed appreciation or respect toward the workers, especially if the workers&rsquo; experiences resonated with the students in some way. Other students took a critical, analytical stance, drawing on their prior knowledge of structural inequities. Still other students, especially those who had prior knowledge of the food system, showed resistance, whether by questioning the actions of the people in the texts or questioning the content and authors of the texts. In addition, some students showed evidence of taking on different perspectives that conflicted with their prior beliefs, whether with respect to immigration or the American Dream.</p><p> Ultimately, I advance three arguments in this dissertation. One is that multicultural texts about food workers have the potential to encourage students to make a wide range of connections with their prior knowledge or experiences and to try on or entertain multiple perspectives that underlie labor and social justice issues more broadly. Another is that the food system is a rich context for inviting students to think critically about a variety of social justice issues embedded in society. And a third is that educators who teach about labor and social justice issues in the food system need to be both reflective and reflexive with respect to their own teaching practices and grapple with pedagogical questions that have ethical implications.</p><p>

<p> This study examined the effects of a school improvement project involving Distributed leadership (DL), a perspective for studying or developing organization leadership through the interaction of organizational members and activities. This research was part of a larger DL Project taking place in York City School District, PA, which sought to improve school leadership to enhance student achievement as a final end. While recent studies provided significant findings about DL&rsquo;s contribution to school improvement, the literature begs for more research about the effects of distributed leadership. One of the effects the DL Project wished to accomplish was the development of trust among the DL teams. According to the literature, trust has a direct link to academic achievement and school improvement respectively. Similarly, it was expected that this effect would improve the implementation of the DL Project. This smaller study sought to answer how, if at all, the DL Project implementation changed trust on the teams and in the schools; and how the experience of doing an evidence-based project, within the DL Project, contributed to the changes in trust in the teams over time. The two-month study took place in York City schools and involved the first-year of the DL Project, and as participants, DL team members and members from the staff. An embedded mixed methods approach was used to collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data from project archives, surveys and interviews. The analysis suggests that trust changed positively or negatively within the first year of the Distributed Leadership (DL) intervention; The DL Project mainly improved respect and integrity (two dimension of trust) among the teams and in the school; The other two dimensions of trust were highly affected during the first year of the DL Project implementation: Competence and personal regard; Improvements in trust are less evident in the first year; The context can greatly affect trust changes; and the evidence-based project proved to catalyze changes in trust during the first year.</p><p>

<p> There has been very limited research on the possible role religion has in its influence on teacher choices, especially within a Social Science classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine how secondary Social Studies teachers explicitly and implicitly treat religion as a factor in the teaching of history and how their own affinity with/to a religion and beliefs about religious institutions influence their curricular choices. The following research question informed the study: How are teachers&rsquo; religious identities, affinities and positionality revealed in their curricular choices? </p><p> Through the use of the multiple case study model using interviews, observations and artifacts, this dissertation examined how secondary Social Studies teachers explicitly and implicitly treat religion as a factor in the teaching of history and how their own affinity with/to a religion and beliefs about religious institutions influence their curricular choices. Using the lenses of positionality and presence, while explicitly being aware of American Civil Religion, religious hierarchies and Christian Privilege, this study examined two Atheist/Agnostic teachers in a comprehensive urban high school settings. </p><p> The findings are presented as single case studies with a cross case analysis. The analysis of findings found that both teachers did not include religion as a significant factor of history and therefore, did not privilege religion as a topic in their classes. The data showed that both teachers, despite their religious identifications, had internalized Civil American Religion and its alignment with Christianity.</p><p>

<p> The ultimate goal of teaching history to young people is to create effective, responsible citizens (Fallace, 2009). Despite such ambitious goals, the traditional teacher-centered method of instruction has not proven to have engaged students. As a result, students often rank history as their least-liked subject, particularly at the secondary level. One instructional strategy that may ameliorate this problem is the incorporation of primary sources. Identifying the inhibitors and inducers of primary sources, the researcher in this study explored and described the elements of successful primary source use in the secondary American and world history classrooms of three teacher participants in a qualitative, semester-long case study. Student and teacher perspectives of the impact of primary sources were also considered. In contrast to some of the existing literature, primary sources can be employed successfully and consistently in the secondary history classroom as demonstrated by the three teacher participants in this semester-long study in a large suburban Atlanta, Georgia, school district.</p>

<p> As a high percentage of substance use counselors are in recovery, using adult learning methods such as constructivism and transformational learning are needed to neutralize any preestablished views of treatment modalities that may exist, as well as combat any possible issues of countertransference. Teaching critical thinking leads to student improvement in critical thinking, and critical thinking has been positively correlated with competency level, thus teaching these skills is imperative to the field. However, these skills taught and methods utilized are typically taught in advanced education, something not necessarily required to practice substance use counseling. As the progression of the field of substance use counseling continues to mature, the separation gap between the fields of mental health and substance use counseling continues to close. This study indicates although we have not set nationwide standards for practice as substance use counselors, and the field has not kept pace with mental health counselors in terms of standardization, those in the field are aware of the need for heightened professionalism and are preparing to treat patients to the best of their ability by going above and beyond the current requirement in many cases. The unification of these separate counseling practices would aid in in preparing substance use counselors to work with the complexities of co-occurring disorders as well as streamline the licensing process, aid in resolving current substance use counseling workforce issues, and create more adherence to evidence-based practices, thereby affecting the true bottom line: treatment outcomes. A descriptive comparative research design using the survey method was utilized in this study to answer the overarching research question, is there a difference in critical thinking skills in substance use counselors based on education level as measured by two validated critical thinking skill survey instruments, the Critical Thinking Disposition Scale and the Actively Open-Minded Thinking Scale. The population for this study are professional level NAADAC members, actively working substance use counselors across the United States with varying levels and types of education. Results of the study supported the null hypothesis, there is no difference in critical thinking skills based on education. However, 73% of the population surveyed had obtained a Master&rsquo;s degree or higher, which could explain these results.</p><p>

<p> The most recent phase of curriculum reform in the era of accountability is the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) which have essentially reshaped the landscape of public education. Its objective of preparing K-12 students for college and career upon high school graduation have prioritized English language arts, mathematics, and science over social studies, which is not part of widespread high-stakes testing for elementary students. This qualitative case study investigated eleven intermediate elementary teachers&rsquo; perceptions of alignment between CCSS and the elementary social studies curriculum. Data gathering analysis included two semi-structured interviews and an archival analysis of the mandated curriculum. The data revealed that perceptions of alignment vary among teachers and were influenced by the perceived effects of inadequate instructional time and resources, lack of content knowledge, and insufficient district levels of professional support. Teachers perceived some similarities between the methods of thinking skills, such as historical thinking and higher-order thinking, and the English/Language Arts standards of the Common Core and their district social studies curriculum. Despite perceived inadequate instructional time and resources, teachers believed that elementary social studies must be an instructional priority and found ways to include social studies through interdisciplinary approaches. Recommendations include district-level professional development focused on an integration between CCSS and social studies modeled in classroom practices. These approaches may improve use of instructional time and resources and reduce the marginalization of elementary social studies.</p><p>

This thesis examines how high school Canadian history textbooks authorized for use in Ontario from 1945 to the present have represented knowledge about race, racism, and opposition to racism in relation to the nation and national identity. Through a Foucault-informed critical discourse analysis, the thesis documents how racism permeates the taken-for-granted structures of schooling, how the imagined community of Canada is reproduced, and how ideas about the nation, race, racism, and opposition to racism are put into cultural circulation as normalized regimes of truth. My findings can be summarized briefly as follows: (1) Canadian history textbooks continue to circulate the 18th century idea that humanity is divided into sets of biological or naturally occurring races, in spite of it having been recognized for some time that races are social constructions, not facts of nature; (2) Racism has consistently been reduced to irrational, abnormal, extreme, and individualized problems of psychological or moral deficit and represented as either foreign to Canada, isolated incidents within Canada, or part of a distant past and with consequences solely for the racially subjugated; and (3) Opposition to racism has been represented in these textbooks as a state-driven enterprise stressing tolerance of the Other and privileging the idea that racism can be eradicated or stopped wherever it is seen to start. I argue, moreover, that the circulation of this knowledge about race, racism, and opposition to racism helps to prop up particular nationalist mythologies, most notably the myth of Canada as a uniquely tolerant and pluralistic nation-state which has effectively resolved the problem of racism. The effect is to depict Canada as a 'better place to live,' a model for other nations to emulate, and a place with a moral responsibility to uplift apparently inferior places in the world. I conclude by discussing how the institutionalized arrogance necessary to represent Canada as a space of vanquished racism or as a place of antiracist achievement perpetuates mythologies of white settler benevolence as it at once obscures the banal racisms upon which the modern nation-state is built and re-built.

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