This mixed-methods study investigated the relationship between Advanced Placement (AP) social studies teachers' utilization of academic course blogs and student achievement. Simultaneously, the study examined the participating teachers' perceptions on the use of course blogs and other social media as supplemental learning resources. The study further explored a possible moderating effect of the social studies subject on student achievement and a possible moderating effect of students' previous academic blog usage on student achievement within the study. Quantitative data were collected from students' pre-tests and unit tests scores and analyzed for statistical significance. Qualitative data were collected through teacher-generated notes during the blogs, individual interviews, and a follow-up focus group interview. The results of this study indicated that there was no overall significant difference in student achievement between the blogging and non-blogging groups. On the contrary , a significant interaction between the social studies subject area and the use of academic course blogs was found when examining student achievement. However, this practical interaction was revealed to be a weak one. Further findings indicated that there was no significant interaction between students' previous blog usage and academic achievement during the study. From the qualitative data, participating teachers perceived the course blogs to be potentially advantageous for students and themselves, yet expressed frustration when implementing the course blogs with their students. Instead, they endorsed the academic use of Facebook, a resource that some students from two participating courses separately utilized instead of (or in addition to) the course blogs during the study. Teachers further expressed concern about relinquishing their subject knowledge and AP expertise to readily available course content on the Internet. Implications and suggestions for future f or AP social studi / teachers' promising use of Facebook and for researchers investigating the use of socail media at the high school level. / by Seth Alper. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine “pockets of success” through the voices of participant stakeholders in low socio-economic status urban high schools and communities to identify opportunities and structures that can improve postsecondary outcomes for students. Examining those pockets of success to rise above the dynamics that obstruct pathways to success, and identifying opportunities for students to transcend their social, economic, and human condition, are the impetuses for the study. The study design is grounded in portraiture, created by Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffman-Davis (1997), to detail the intricate dynamics and relationships that exist in high schools. Portraiture steps outside of the traditional boundaries of quantitative and qualitative research to converge narrative analysis with public discourse in a search for authenticity. Identifying what the participants value, how they create and promote opportunities for students, the school’s role in rebuilding the surrounding community, and the community’s priority for graduates, provided the groundwork. The review of the literature reconstructs the term “opportunity” in the context of the urban high school, aligning it with the moral purposes of education. It traces the history of educational and social justice barriers for minority students, outlines the impact of leadership decision-making on the evolution of the urban high school, and addresses increasing the capacity of schools to create opportunities for students to succeed. Participants revealed the foundations for success, challenges and goals toward success, conduits to facilitate that success, and collaborations required to build an agenda to couple school-based stakeholders, civic groups, and national organizations to the creation of a national platform to improve outcomes for urban public high school students in disenfranchised communities. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

This dissertation explores the perspectives of culturally and linguistically diverse learners and English learners on school conditions that enable them to share their heritage languages and cultures, as well as the ways that these learners propose that their heritage languages and cultures could be more recognized in an English-only middle school setting. This study focused specifically on the role that culturally and linguistically diverse learners and English learners perceived that they played in the process of their own social empowerment, a role that could be achieved through the development of their voices by becoming critically involved in creating spaces for their heritage languages and cultures in English-only settings. In this study, student voice is the means for the culturally and linguistically diverse and English learners' voices to emerge: the voices that are frequently oppressed because of the lack of power. This framework provides guidance to integrate the excluded learners' voices in a school milieu that habitually muffles these voices. Listening to the bicultural and bilingual voices is important but not sufficient to challenge the power structure of U.S. schools. In this study, culturally and linguistically diverse learners and English learners conceptualized ways that their heritage languages and cultures could be (more) recognized in their school settings. The voices of the students are important; they should be respected and valued. Hearing the students in this study reminds us and validates the assertion that students from diverse languages and cultures are not monolith. They have different and unique experiences and this study gave voice to some of those. Leaders from state level, district level, and school level could open the doors for students to share their experiences in the schools; in the case of this study, to learn from these students what a school milieu that authentically recognizes their cultures and languages is. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This study explores the normative frameworks through which selected parents, students, teachers, and education activists in three villages in rural Pakistan understand and articulate the value of girls' schooling. It argues that within the dominant analytical paradigms of human capital theory and neoliberalism, researchers and policymakers have tended to conceptualise 'demand' for schooling in terms that are narrowly focused upon measuring and boosting enrolment, and thus have failed to capture whether and how shifting enrolments correspond to shifting norms and to the broader imaginative regimes through which differently located actors experience and produce the gendered value of schooling. Typical analyses of 'demand' for girls' schooling have mostly focused upon what factors of schooling provision are most likely to increase parents' willingness to send their daughters to school, and thus inadvertently conflate 'demand' with 'supply' and reveal very little about whether or how such factors influence normative evaluations of girls' schooling by parents, children, teachers, and others across various contexts where enrolment is on the rise. This oversight hinders efforts at comparison that are critical for planning and interpreting transnational initiatives for achieving gender equality in and through schooling. To improve upon this trend, this study illustrates a) the normative evaluations that underpin selected instances of 'demand' for girls' schooling in three villages in rural Pakistan, and b) how these normative evaluations have changed over time and in relation to particular interventions. Using data from seventeen weeks of fieldwork spanning two villages in the southern Punjab and one in Gilgit-Baltistan, the study explores perspectives about the value of girls' schooling in relation to the key themes of marriage, employment, and purdah. By bringing this data into comparison with mainstream discouses about 'demand,' the study highlights the limitations of those discourses and charts a path for further comparative inquiry. Findings illustrate how normative perspectives about girls' schooling are differentially contested and transformed over time even as enrolment trends converge across contexts, and suggest that researchers and practitioners concerned with promoting gender equality in and through schooling should lend greater attention to the social interactions through which 'norm-making' occurs. This sort of attention to 'norm-making' can reveal new opportunities for intervention, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it inspires humility by demonstrating that all normative evaluations of schooling - whether emerging from education 'experts' or from farmers in rural villages - reflect socially and historically situated notions of personhood, none of which is more 'natural' than any other.

This research estimates the consequences of socioeconomic residential segregation on educational outcomes in the context of the Chilean voucher system used for education. It is found that the combination of school and socioeconomic residential segregation creates challenges to social mobility and social inclusion of the most vulnerable population. Poverty concentration is understood as the clustering dimension of socioeconomic residential segregation. Its effects are measured by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative methods measure the magnitude of two spatial processes: spatial heterogeneity--the contextual differences between neighborhoods--and spatial dependence--by which educational outcomes of one neighborhood depend upon those of adjacent neighborhoods. Spatial processes are tested with multilevel and spatial models implemented in a two step procedure that approximates a hierarchical spatial model. This methodological innovation creates the opportunity for new analytical understanding of the mechanisms driving these spatial processes. A collective case study method of educational communities in three segregated neighborhoods is applied in order to understand the mechanisms driving these spatial processes. More than 16% of the variation in 4th graders' math test scores in Santiago is found to be explained by the characteristics of the neighborhood where the school is located. The effects of concentrated poverty are perceived through the actions of certain social mediators. Whether a student lives with both parents and the strength of the family-school bonds are particularly key factors in predicting educational outcomes in poor and segregated areas. Families in these neighborhoods lack exposure to the middle and upper classes' attitude toward education, which is dominant in formal school settings; thus, a strong school-family bond is a way of bridging this difference in attitude. On the other hand, in poor and segregated areas, teacher job satisfaction is negatively associated with test scores. Some schools adjust their expectations downward about their students' potential outcomes; furthermore, some teachers see themselves as successful social workers but with diminished expectations of students' educational outcomes, which explains this negative correlation. Concentrated poverty affects educational outcomes, but this effect is not deterministic. In fact, some families show successful coping strategies, while others do not. Although further research is needed to explain these differences, this research suggests that the school plays an important role in counterbalancing the negative effects of socioeconomic residential segregation on educational outcomes. Thus, besides neighborhood and school socioeconomic integration, policies aimed at strengthening the mediating role of the school are relevant ways of preventing the negative effects of spatial concentration of poverty on educational outcomes. / text

Teachers and others who are not representative participants in the authorized governance structure often find they must make decisions concerning the legitimacy of attempts to influence public education. These "evaluators-at-the-fringe' of the formal policy-formation structure find themselves being 'gate-keepers' for what will be considered legitimate attempts to influence public education. Having defensible criteria for determining the legitimacy of attempts to influence public education policy is important. Without such criteria, resources will be wasted on the implementation of inappropriate attempts to influence public education. Or, just as important, influences which could be beneficial for the students, or for the society as a whole, may never be seriously considered. In this paper it is argued that criteria for evaluating attempts to influence public education can be derived from the obligation to participate in the promotion of the public good, the right of individuals to self-preservation, the obligations associated with justice as fairness, and the duty to acknowledge the insights of the `marketplace of ideas.' It is argued that there is an underlying tension between the rights of citizens to influence public policy and the rights of children being raised. It is established that the right of citizens to participate in the debate concerning the nature of public education policy follows necessarily from the conditions for a satisfactory democratic social arrangement. The legitimacy of individual attempts to influence public education policy is evaluated using a two part process. The first step in the process is to categorize the attempt to influence according to the kind of interests that appear to be motivating the attempt. The second step is to evaluate critical aspects of the attempt in terms of the criteria. Only attempts which are judged legitimate in terms of these criteria are eligible for any consideration as a possible influence on public education policy. The paper concludes with an application of the framework to several examples of attempts to influence public education policy.

This study explores the hitherto unexamined phenomenon of queer-care in higher education from the teacher educators' perspectives. While care in education has been the subject of scholarly interest for many years and demonstrating caring for the wellbeing of students is an important component of teaching, the lack of attention to queer-care is a significant oversight in the body of care research and teacher education. Pertinent to this study is the investigation of how well Noddings' enactments of care (modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation) address the care needs of queer students. / Four teacher educators shared stories of their efforts to care for the emotional wellbeing of their queer students. As the fifth teacher educator in this work, I investigate my journey to becoming a queer-care practitioner, and my own practice of queer-care. The theoretical frameworks of qualitative and phenomenological research and feminist theory undergird this study. Two processes of analysis were employed, the first being the key sensitizing concepts of Noddings' enactments of care as points of entry into an understanding of the teacher educators' narratives of queer-care. The second level of analysis used the insights so gleaned to guide the focus of the self-study undertaken in this work. / Analysis of the teacher educators' narratives indicates that the practice of queer-care, while sharing certain similarities, is idiosyncratic, complicated, lonely, and often exhausting work. Alongside these findings are indicators that queer-care as practiced by these teacher educators is welcomed by queer students as being all too rare in their university experience, and of benefit to their sense of wellbeing. Findings also reveal that Noddings' enactments of care neither include nor address the particular care needs of queer students. This led me to identify particular care needs of queer students as being those of unwavering discretion, absolute safety, full social membership, and unstinting succour. This necessary awareness expands Noddings' model of care allowing it to include and be responsive to queer students. / This research has implications for teacher educators and any educators concerned with the wellbeing of queer students. It provides suggestions to enrich caring practice in teacher education programs and field experience.

Most research on medical professional socialization was conducted when medical students were almost uniformly white, upper- to upper-middle class, young men. Today 50% of medical students in Canada are women, and significant numbers are members of racialized minority groups, come from working class backgrounds, identify as gay or lesbian, and/ or are older. This research examined the impact of such social diversity on processes of corriing to identify as a medical professional, drawing on a survey of medical students in one third-year class, interviews with 25 third-year students, and interviews with 23 medical school faculty members. Almost all of the traits and processes noted by classic studies of medical professional socialization were found to still apply in the late 1990s. Students learn to negotiate complex hierarchies; develop greater self-confidence, but lowered idealism; learn a new language, but lose some of their communication skills with patients. They begin playing a role that becomes more real as responses from others confirm their new identity. Students going through this training process achieve varying degrees of integration between their medical-student selves and the other parts of themselves. There is a strong impetus toward homogeneity in medical education. It emphasizes the production of neutral, undifferentiated physicians - physicians whose gender, 'race/ sexual orientation, and social class background do not make any difference. While there is some recognition that patients bring social baggage with them into doctor-patient encounters, there is very little recognition that doctors do too, and that this may affect the encounter. Instances of blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia are not common. Nonetheless, students describe an overall climate in the medical school in which some women, students from racialized minority groups, gays and lesbians, and students from working class backgrounds seem to 'fif less well. The subtlety of these micro-level experiences of gendering, racialization and so on allows them to co-exist with a prevalent individual and institutional denial that social differences make any difference. I critique this denial as (unintentionally) oppressive, rooted in a liberal individualist notion of equality that demands assimilation or suppression of difference.

In this dissertation I provide the results of research on this topic. The struggles of African learners over the years are traced from apartheid to the post-apartheid era by establishing the gap between policy formulation and implementation. The study contrasts the challenges faced by African learners under apartheid education and those faced by learners in the new educational dispensation due to difficulties associated with non mother tongue education and those due to the monocultural schools that have little or no experience with diverse cultures. The findings are that learners who are not taught in the medium of their mother tongue do experience several forms of discrimination, racism and can lead to learners not maximize their academic potential. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2005.

Contrary to many efforts by the new South African government in its commitment to widen access to educational opportunities and the provision of a free education for all, dropping out of school episodes remain a major threat to the gains of the past nines years in the new South Africa. Using the second wave of 'Transitions to Adulthood in the Context of Aids in South Africa' dataset, this dissertation investigates dropping out of school episodes. A dropout refers to an adolescent who discontinued his/her education before completing grade 12. In particular the study investigates the major determinants of dropouts. Reasons cited for dropping out of school varies from economic, individual, social and school based. It was found that the major contributor to the dropping out of school episodes in KwaZulu-Natal is poverty. Hence the impact of poverty is widely acknowledged as being among the most serious problems facing post-apartheid South Africa. It is against this backdrop that this dissertation seeks an immediate response by government to invest in human capital, particularly in education, as means to alleviate poverty. The government among others therefore should recommit itself in providing and funding education for all. Both access and opportunities to schooling need to be widened. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 2003.