This study emerged from an awareness of the critical role that learning plays within social movements and from a belief that adult education can learn much from examining the learning activities of the Women's Movement. Using a comparative approach, the similarities and differences between feminist consciousness raising and Freire's conscientization method were explored. The process of analysis involved studying Freire's written works available in English and the literature resources available through the University of British Columbia library on feminist consciousness raising. The comparison began with presentation of the historical, political, social, and economic factors which led to the development of consciousness raising and conscientization. This included an examination of the historical background of Brazil, of biographical information on Freire, and of the events which led to the development of Freire's conscientization method. In a similar way, this study explored the historical background of the Women's Movement, with particular emphasis on its re-emergence during the sixties and those factors which led to the creation of consciousness raising groups. The next step in the analysis was the comparison of consciousness raising and conscientization using the following categories: the themes or content within each process, the nature of the interaction, the presence and role of teachers or coordinators, the phases in each process, and the changes in consciousness expected as a result of each process. The study concluded with discussion of the differences between these two processes, which appear to be closely linked to the different contexts and factors, such as the different kinds of oppression being fought against, which led to the development of each learning activity. As the similarities were identified, it became evident that a number of important elements were common to both learning activities despite the very different contexts. These common elements were presented as principles of the consciousness raising method found within liberating social movements. Comparing these two learning activities indicated the liberating power of allowing people to tell their own story. Implications for practice focused on the need for a contextual sensitivity when working with or studying the learning activities of social movements. It was argued that awareness of the similarities (suggested principles) and differences between consciousness raising and conscientization could prevent application of either method as simply recipes for liberation. Many recommendations were made for further research which stressed the utility of comparative analysis for continuing examination of learning within social movements. Recommendations were made for examination of the relationship between the nature of learning activities and the kind of oppression, either gender-based or class-based. Further collaboration between the Women's Movement and adult education was suggested. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Upon entering the male domain of higher education in the late nineteenth-century, college women challenged not only conservative beliefs about women's minds but also restrictive notions about the female body. By the 1920s, attending college had "become the thing to do." Using extensive primary research in college archives, this work examines female students' attitudes toward their bodies in the midst of this cultural transformation This social history makes clear that young women's attitudes toward their bodies developed in relation to a set of cultural discourses that were contested, historically specific, and continually mediated. To explore the impact of ideas about race, class, educational mission, and coeducation on women's attitudes toward their bodies, I analyzed Smith College, Spelman College, and Cornell University. Students' specific experiences were then compared to popular ideals of health, femininity, and female beauty. Prior to the early 1900s, local campus cultures shaped students' ideas about their bodies. At Smith and Cornell, in response to the feared effects of "mental work" on women's femininity and reproductive organs, efforts to prove female health included vigorous exercise, weight gain, and hearty eating. At Cornell, its controversial coeducational design compelled "coeds" to also demonstrate female propriety. For African American students at Spelman Seminary, post-Civil War efforts to counter racist stereotypes dominated bodily concerns. Spelman students resided outside the "protective," race-specific concerns that dominated discussions about white, middle-class women's reproductive health. Beginning in the 1910s, an emergent national student culture rooted in mass consumerism and the idealization of modern youth recast female students' body images. On all three campuses, students donned flapper fashions, bobbed their hair, conducted active mixed-sex social lives, and memorized new nutrition and home economics standards. Yet, even as campus cultures converged, students continued to mediate popular discourses, particularly in regard to dieting practices. While white women joined the "dieting craze," African American women at Spelman College did not.

This study investigates the prevailing epistemological and cultural conditions that underlie educational research in Palestine. Using a case study of a major Palestinian University that awards Masters Degrees in Education, the study analyzes the assumptions and the methodology that characterizes current educational research. Using an analysis of approximately one hundred recent Masters Theses, interviews with current faculty members in Education, and an analysis of research articles published by those faculty members, the study reveals that the approach to research is strongly inclined toward positivist/postpositivist, quantitative paradigm. This inclination is supported by the presence of certain societal cultural values that facilitate the acceptance of many tenets found in the positivist/postpositivist epistemologies. Overcoming such inclination in this context or in any similar context will require opening a space for a better representation for alternative epistemologies and approaches to educational research. This study argues that changing such prevailing conditions must start by critically reviewing and challenging the basic epistemological assumptions that underpin the dominant positivist/postpositivist epistemologies. The study concludes with recommendations that all the parties involved in the conduct, representation, and funding of educational research should seek to promote epistemological diversity while remaining sensitive to the cultural values of the society.

In higher education today, international students from various sociocultural backgrounds have contributed to the internationalization of many colleges and universities. The factors that help them succeed academically in a different cultural environment have become an important topic of research designed to improve the quality of higher education in a globalized environment. This qualitative study adopts a sociocultural perspective to explore their conceptions of academic success and their strategies for achieving it, by analyzing cultural factors that impinge on the experience of Chinese international graduate students in the US. There were three phases in this in-depth qualitative research. In the first phase, using semi-structured interviews, the researcher investigated Chinese students' conceptions of academic success, the factors that they perceived as most influential on their attempts to achieve it, and the strategies that they adopted to optimize their chances. In the second phase, based on results from the first round, a follow-up interview was conducted to probe for further details and to understand the strategies adopted by these students according to their study-abroad experience. In the third phase, new data were collected through a focus group discussion to generate a deeper understanding of the students' perspectives on academic success and its relation to acculturation. The final results from this study indicated that the conceptions of academic success of these international students and their strategies for attaining it were not only characterized by cultural and socio-institutional values and norms , but were also shaped and reshaped by the international students' individual characteristics and personal acculturative attitudes and experiences. Chinese international graduate students have developed acculturative strategies, characterized as ─ Americanization, Globalization and Individualization ─ to achieve their visions of academic success. The findings offer possible answers to help explain how Chinese international STEM students manage to achieve academic success despite the challenges such as language barrier and acculturation process (dealing with cross-cultural barriers on cultural, institutional and personal levels). They also provide new perspectives on acculturation theories and suggest practical implications for university international student affairs work. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / July 14, 2015. / Academic success, Acculturation, American graduate education, Chinese international students, International higher education, Sociocultural perspectives / Includes bibliographical references. / Helen Boyle, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Peter Easton, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Tom Ratliffe, University Representative; Jeffrey Milligan, Committee Member.

Public education in the United States has seen many changes over the years. Some of those changes came in response to what are now recognized as clear problems with religious liberty in the common education system adopted in the mid 1800's. This dissertation reviews past and current ideas related to religious liberty and the larger issue of liberty of conscience (Nussbaum, 2008) in education and pursues a research question by considering past and current issues. Does a system of general, mass education necessarily infringe upon students' liberty of conscience? This question is pursued following a Deweyan framework of philosophy of education wherein a "felt difficulty" is identified, information is gathered to apply to the difficulty, and possible solutions to problems identified (Dewey, 1938). I begin with a discussion of liberty of conscience and a discussion of some of the conflicts included in a system of mass education. This establishes the structure of the difficulty, or problem. The history of the public education system in the United States is reviewed with a focus on the common education system adapted in the 1830's along with relevant issues related to religious intolerance. Improvements in the respect for religious diversity applied to that system over time and improvements proposed but not yet fully implemented are discussed. Ideas from religious intolerance literature is introduced to add insight and expose the larger issue of liberty of conscience including how those ideas can be applied to educational systems. The process of religious intolerance (Corrigan & Neal, 2010) is developed into an architecture of religious intolerance that can assist with identifying this type of intolerance in educational settings. I argue that while many of the strongest issues of religious intolerance in public education have been resolved, many problems still remain. I will also argue that the intolerance is not limited to religious intolerance but includes intolerance for ideas stemming from many different epistemic foundations. This will lead to a consideration of an idea I have labeled as epistemic intolerance. These arguments support an answer to the research question, which is that a system of general, mass education does necessarily infringe on students' liberty of conscience if one or more cultural majorities centrally control that system of education. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / September 17, 2014. / Choice, Conscience, Education, Liberty, Religious, School / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeffrey Ayala Milligan, Professor Directing Dissertation; Thomas Anderson, University Representative; Robert A. Schwartz, Committee Member; Patrice Iatarola, Committee Member.

Research shows that quality teachers are the single most significant influence on the quality of education available to students. This recognition of the importance of quality teachers on quality education is reflected in goal 6 of the EFA: Quality Education. EFA proxies for quality, however, are dubious measures of the concept......What does the concept quality mean when applied to the work of teaching or to the business of education? How do we know quality when we see it? Is it the same from culture to culture or does it differ based on the educational aims of different societies? Despite EFA's emphasis on improving the quality of education, quality education remains elusive in many developing countries. Cambodia, for instance, has enjoyed considerable international assistance for more than four decades, yet the quality of Cambodian education remains low by both Cambodian and international standards. What might explain the failure of decades of assistance to improve education in Cambodia? This study argues that before this question can be answered and more effective steps taken in the development of Cambodian education we must have a clearer understanding of the conceptualization and operationalization of the concept "quality" in the constructs "quality teachers" and "quality education" in the Cambodian context to understand whether and how it differs from that implied in the theory and practice of Cambodia's international donors. Differences may help explain the difficulty encountered in improving the quality of education in Cambodia and point to more effective strategies to achieve this elusive goal. To this end, this inquiry deployed a hybrid methodology called philosophical ethnography to discover the conceptions of quality held by Khmer teacher training instructors and administrators. This discovery is guided by the idea of dialogue expressed by Jürgen Habermas and implemented by Paolo Freire. Findings indicate that there is a tension between traditional Khmer conceptions of quality and those emphasized in modern conceptions of quality education. Traditional Cambodian conceptions of quality reflect Buddhist social virtues including of ទាន (tian, generosity), មេត្តា (mey-ta, generosity), ករុណា (garunna, compassion), មូទិតា (mutita, empathetic joy), and ឧបេក្ខា (upeka, equanimity) to be a good person in a moral sense. This differs from modern conceptions of quality that emphasize equality, individual achievement, and economic drive for education to produce a person with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do some job that supports the growth of the economic machine. The results of this study suggest that the introduction of modern ideas of quality in education beginning with the French in the 19th century and continuing today through foreign aid donations have permeated the education sector in Cambodia influence how Cambodian teacher trainers perceive quality education with respect to how day to day operations of education should function and influence contemporary policy decisions. Despite the push to change reform Cambodian education, participants indicate that being a good person (in the Buddhist sense) is still how quality should be measured and should be the primary objective of Cambodian education. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / February 24, 2016. / Cambodia, Teacher education / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeffrey Ayala Milligan, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Ruse, University Representative; Stacey Rutledge, Committee Member; Lara Perez-Felkner, Committee Member.

In the dissertation I argue for a reconception of moral education grounded in a Platonic conception of virtue and modeled on the form of spiritual practice. I argue that this education would be carried out through practices of virtue comprised of exercises designed to transform the practitioner’s modes of seeing and being in the world. These exercises would take the form of deliberate encounters with objects of interpretive resistance and would be scaffolded to hone the faculty of attention and adapt the patterns of experience to the patterns of virtue: rhythm, harmony, systematicity, and economy. I suggest that the activities that would constitute such practices are in no way alien to contemporary academic curricula; any manner of interpretive work provides an opportunity for these forms of experience. To conclude the dissertation I address literary interpretation as one example of a curricular activity that could be adapted into a practice of virtue and demonstrate how specific interpretive exercises could be extrapolated from the basic form I have developed.

The central question of my dissertation is “How can we play for our wellbeing?” followed by sub-questions, including “Why is play important to human-being?” “How shall we characterize the notion of play?” “How could play benefit philosophy, art, and education?” I investigate the questions through philosophical research that draws upon the existing literature in the fields of Hermeneutics, Cosmopolitanism, and the philosophies of education about play, philosophy, and education. I argue that play is a joyful aspect of experience that can potentially teach us an aesthetic manner of embracing differences and possibilities, especially concerning our individual growth and engagement in social interactions. To show this, I propose that play orients the player into seeing, thinking, and being differently towards a larger harmony or a fuller being. The player will be driven to respect others and accommodate differences with wonder and hospitality. Meantime, the educative play with its playful spirit can enhance the culture of justice and beauty essential to building a healthy, peaceful, and sustainable human inhabitation.

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