Master of Science / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / F. Todd Goodson / This study analyzes the power of rhetorical forms from a historical perspective. Ronald Reagan's presidency (1981-1989) will serve as the historical time period used for analysis. By looking at President Ronald Reagan‘s ―War on Drugs, this study provides historical research on the legislative initiatives leading up to this war, as well as on the various aspects of Reagan‘s drug policies. In addition, this study also outlines concurrent educational policies respectively. This background information provides a foundation for examining the role of education within the -War on Drugs, as well as how rhetorical similarities between Reagan‘s drug and education policies are indicative of his administration‘s larger aims and beliefs.

This dissertation is a qualitative inquiry into the politics and practice of feminist teaching. While much literature exists which discusses feminist teaching, the majority of the literature is written from a personal perspective, or lacks empirical data. This study addresses that absence by weaving together theoretical feminist writings with empirical data on the lives of feminist women teachers. Taking a grounded theory approach, nine feminist women teachers were interviewed intensively about their lives, education, work, and feminist beliefs and practices. Of the nine teachers, five are high school teachers and four are university teachers, enabling comparative work across these two structures. The study reveals a complex interplay among feminist identity and practice and the social structures and social organizational features of both the high school and the university. A key dimension is the interplay of power between teachers and administrators and teachers and students, a politic which varies by location and by structure. Feminist practice for these women is more clearly a content than a process issue, and feminist teaching is location--as well as person-specific. In high schools, these teachers overtly and deliberately add feminist content, while carefully maintaining a balance between multiple viewpoints and their own, which I have termed the dilemma of disclosure and disaster. In universities, where content is more flexible, teachers' feminist practices extend to non-classroom locations and to both content and process issues within their classrooms. Connections are drawn to mentoring, the school as a workplace, feminist theory, censorship, and pedagogical practice. Additionally, feminist identity is problematized and located specifically within institutions and with individuals. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-08, Section: A, page: 2269. / Major Professor: Catherine Emihovich. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

This study attempts to explain Taiwan's democratic transition in the mid-1980s by looking at its macro historical-developmental processes and micro shifts in mass democratic values and voting behavior. / It is found that democratization has been delayed but not denied as it has remained one of the fundamental goals in Taiwan's postwar development. Democracy was postponed in the interest of achieving political stability in the 1950s and economic growth in the 1960s. However, by the late 1970s tangible progress towards the goals of democratization had become indispensable for both continued sociopolitical stability and economic growth. / Two macro trends of liberalizing changes associated with socioeconomic development are identified, which converged and resulted in Taiwan's democratic transition in the mid-1980s. Top-down liberalization as Taiwanization was introduced by the ruling KMT to revitalize the political system beginning in the early 1970s. Paralleling postwar socioeconomic development, a bottom-up democratizing movement emerged along with the extension of elections and finally gave rise to an organized opposition. When the first meaningful opposition party was formed, Taiwan experienced a democratic transition with the lifting of martial law and the legitimizing of opposition parties in the mid-1980s. / Findings at the micro level show an emerging democratic sub-culture characterizing Taiwan's changing political culture. Shifts in democratic values increased one's likelihood of opposition voting. Education has been identified as the most important predictor for democratic values and other civic orientations. In turn, an individual's opposition voting is mainly a product of democratic values. In addition ethnicity, education, and political efficacy are shown to have significant effects on voting for the opposition. / In sum, Taiwan's socioeconomic development provided the necessary macro trends that encouraged democratic development. Education is found to be the major link between socioeconomic change and democratization, while the shift in democratic values was the dynamics. As a result, a democratic value cleavage emerged as the basis of opposition politics. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-07, Section: A, page: 2513. / Major Professor: Scott C. Flanagan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

O estudo verifica como a pesquisa escolar realizada pelos alunos do sexto ano do Ensino Fundamental, contribui com a construção de conhecimento em Ciências, por meio do desenvolvimento das dimensões da Competência Informacional. Desenvolve uma pesquisa qualitativa por meio de um estudo de caso com nove alunos do Ensino Fundamental. Utiliza a observação, a entrevista semi-estruturada e a análise da produção dos alunos como instrumentos de coletas de dados. Apresenta a análise de dados por meio de dois artigos submetidos a periódicos científicos, a análise de dados traz uma análise com abordagem qualitativa sobre o desenvolvimento das dimensões da Competência Informacional. O estudo é embasado pelo referencial teórico que apresenta o conceito de informação e conhecimento na Sociedade do Conhecimento, aborda o conceito de Competência Informacional e apresenta suas quatro dimensões que são a técnica, estética, ética e política. Também apresenta o conceito de pesquisa escolar no contexto da disciplina de Ciências. Conclui que o desenvolvimento das dimensões da Competência Informacional é importante para a construção do conhecimento em Ciências e auxilia no processo de pesquisa escolar. / The study verifies how school research of students of sixth year of elementary school contributes to a construction of knowledge in Sciences, through the development of the dimensions of Informational Competence. To develop a qualitative research through a case study with nine elementary students. It uses observation, semi-structured interview and analysis of the production of students as instruments of data collection. It presents an analysis of data through two articles submitted to scientific journals, brings a qualitative analysis on the development of the dimensions of Informational Competence. The study is based on the theoretical referential that presents the concept of information and knowledge in the Knowledge Society, addresses the concept of Informative Competence and presents its four dimensions that are a technique, aesthetics, ethics and politics. Also presents the concept of school research at the context of the discipline of Sciences. It concludes that the development of the dimensions of Informative Competence is important for the construction of knowledge in Science and helps in the process of school research.

The study of achievement goals has begun to examine the underlying mechanisms that link goal orientations in order to develop a more accurate model that explains achievement outcomes. Currently, performance-approach goal orientations are inconsistently linked to affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes. Little research has considered the underlying mechanisms that sustain performance-approach goal orientations, particularly for early adolescents. This study explores the ways in which adolescents modify or regulate the emotional experiences that can interfere with or enhance the attainment of performance-approach goals and achievement. As such, this dissertation examined the role of emotion regulation as a critical process in the pursuit of performance-approach goal orientations that explains how individuals can modify their emotional experiences in order to achieve in a middle school sample (N=328). Students completed self-report measures of their goal orientations and other background variables. After taking a unit math exam, students reported on the emotions that they experienced during the exam. Structural equation modeling was used to examine associations among student goals, emotional experiences, strategies for regulating emotions, and math achievement. Results demonstrated evidence that emotion regulation strategies moderated the relation between performance-approach goals and achievement on a math test. The study found partial support for the PARE model, indicating that performance-approach goals are associated with achievement outcomes when students experience debilitating emotions and utilize emotion regulation strategies. / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Mark Dressman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 250-264) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

The purpose of this study has to describe and analyze the change processes experienced by Mexican social studies high school teachers is their classrooms after having been trained in the use of cooperative learning through small work groups. After the training, two teachers implemented this instructional method. The investigation was conducted in two urban high schools from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Mexico. The participants in the training program were made up of 14 teachers from 3 different high schools. Two of these teachers were selected by the researcher to put into practice this educational approach. The selected teachers were then observed for four weeks and analyzed in the difficulties that they faced in implementing this teaching method, the changes experienced in their teaching practices, and the changes produced in their beliefs, attitudes, and behavior with respect to their teaching practices. The data collection was gathered through teachers questionnaires after the training course and through interviews and classroom observations during the implementation of cooperative learning. Therefore, the analysis of this investigation was carried out through qualitative methods.

The purpose of this study was to explore what happened when literature and literature discussions were added to an eighth-grade history curriculum. I examined what occurred in the process of change as the teacher and researcher negotiated a new curriculum with the students, and what the effects of literature were on the historical understandings of middle school students. The theoretical framework of this study is embodied in the social constructivist theory of learning and the transactive theory of reading as explained by a reader-response perspective. It rests on the premise that approaching history through literature and encouraging an aesthetic stance toward the response to historical literature will enable students to enter into the process of historical inquiry. During this year-long classroom study the researcher, acting as a participant observer, gathered a variety of data including field notes, student journals, audio tapes of the small group literature discussions, student self-evaluations, and teacher interviews. The data were analyzed by developing and describing initial coding categories from the data, refining or adding to the categories as the analysis process continued, and counting frequencies for the various categories which emerged. The findings suggest that change is challenging and complex. There was a creative tension in the process with some factors that promoted teacher and curriculum change and other factors that acted as obstacles to change. Although each factor played an important role in the change process, the key to change was in the collaboration between teacher and researcher. It was in the conversations and collaboration between teacher and researcher that change was invented. In addition, the findings suggest that reading the historical literature, writing in their journals, and working out their understandings in small groups was well-received by students. They enjoyed this way of doing history and used the different activities to work their way into meaningful engagements with history. Student responses included: (1) purposeful retellings, (2) numerous connections among books, movies, historical themes, and life experiences, (3) thematic statements, (4) wonderings and wanderings, and (5) historical understandings that integrated facts and stories.

This qualitative case study examines the influence of a whole language methods course on a preservice teacher's ideas and student teaching performance. In addition it explores significant problems the participant had when she attempted to apply theory in practice and the influence of block instructors, classroom teachers, primary school students, and block classmates on the participant's development in whole language. The study took place during the participant's whole language block semester at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in which preservice teachers learned teaching methods in language arts, reading, and social studies through both classroom sessions and a practicum, at Borton Primary Magnet School, whose principal was a well-known proponent of whole language education. The participant's apprenticeship classroom teacher utilized an integrated curriculum in a holistic paradigm. The study continued until the participant finished her student teaching in the same classroom. The data included exchange journals, videotapes, field notes, audiotapes, oral interviews, documents, memos, and photographs. K. S. Goodman's five pillars of whole language and Cambourne's eight optimal conditions for learning were used as frameworks for the data analysis. The results of the analysis were presented in chronological and analytical descriptions. The chronological description portrayed the stages of the participant's growth in whole language during the block semester and her attempts to translate theory into use during student teaching. The analytical description elaborated the results of the data analysis within the two whole language frameworks. The results of this study emphasize the importance of immersion in whole language in order to develop in whole language, the value of the transactional paradigm in teaching and learning, and the power of a community of learners.

Despite claims that media have broad effects upon individuals' thinking and behavior, the field of media literacy research has failed to provide support of these claims with pertinent data and research. A few qualitative studies did examine how studying the mass media could help individuals become critical viewers. Yet, these qualitative studies study how the media could influence personal attitudes toward a specific culture. Lack of research became the rationale for conducting this study. Purpose of the study was to investigate whether studying Meso-American media could heighten one's sensitivity to and knowledge about the Meso-American culture and its people. If media could teach students to become critical "users" of mass media, then studying the mass media may also help in increasing students' sensitivity to other cultures and experiences. Eighteen students were the participants in this descriptive study of attitude change toward Meso-American media and culture. The participants were selected from available media arts courses that dealt with a non-American culture. A comparison group was also selected to contrast responses on the attitude surveys with the observed group. Five measurement instruments were used to delineate attitude change toward Meso-American media and culture. Data were analyzed by developing codes for the fieldnotes, interviews, and document analysis. Correlational t-tests were used to analyze the pre- and post-tests. Findings revealed some important information related to media literacy education and cultural studies courses. Among the most important outcomes of the study was the discovery that media provided students with the opportunity to become acquainted with a particular culture. This is especially true when history and culture cannot be segregated from the media themselves or from their codes. Another important finding was that media provided the visual element that touched the students emotionally. These findings have important implications for future media literacy research.