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<p> The concept of self-esteem has so thoroughly infiltrated American education that &ldquo;most educators believe developing self-esteem to be one of the primary purposes of public education&rdquo; (Stout, 2001, p. 119). That the available scholarship challenging the validity of self-esteem principles has had little to no impact on schooling and school policy demonstrates the need for more a comprehensive interrogation of a concept that has become so pervasive and commonsensical that many administrators and teachers do not even think to question its place in traditional pedagogy, let alone consider the possibility that self-esteem is a damaging ideological construct. The rhetorical (and impossible) promise of self-esteem as both a quantifiable and fixed human resource has proliferated in educational language as schools continue to promote self-esteem among racialized and poorly performing students, while the structural conditions that negatively impact these students&rsquo; performance in the first place remain intact.</p><p> The legacy of self-esteem in educational discourse requires a critical interpretation, or re-interpretation, by educators who wish to challenge oppressive commonsense assumptions and feel-good principles that covertly help to maintain &ldquo;dominant cultural norms that do little more than preserve social inequality&rdquo; (Darder, 2015, p. 1). This study takes a decolonizing approach that involves a substantive interrogation&mdash;historical, political, and philosophical&mdash;of the Eurocentric epistemological concept of self-esteem, in order to demonstrate the debilitating effects that self-esteem has on students from working-class communities of color. It then suggests an emancipatory understanding of the self and alternative critical pedagogical principles of social empowerment.</p>

<p> The United States is losing millions of students from its educational systems each year, leading researchers to exclaim that reducing the dropout rate is the top priority for educators throughout the country. As educators wrestle with the charge to educate and prepare every child to be successful in a global society, they seek answers about those students who are faced with serious adverse conditions leaving them statistically at risk of failure. While the national statistics for high school dropouts are high and deserve much concern, there are many students who are conquering the challenges that have caused many to drop out, and instead, are succeeding in their educational endeavors. The intent of this study is to share with professionals in the educational community effective strategies that will foster resiliency, grit, and growth mindsets in at-risk students. This study uses research and real life experiences of at-risk students succeeding in school to provide effective strategies for fostering resilience with students in danger of failing school. </p><p> This mixed-methods study identified effective strategies and programs that fostered resiliency in at-risk students who were academically successful in high school. The qualitative and quantitative data indicated that schools can become havens for implementing strategies and programs that will support at-risk students to overcome the adverse conditions that they experience. The study identified protective factors that are both external and internal to the individual at-risk student, and when fostered, lead to academic success. The four major themes that emerged as critical to the development of resilience, grit, and growth mindsets in at-risk students are involvement, high expectations, positive reinforcement, and fortitude. When these critical components are effectively nurtured, at-risk students have shown to overcome the challenges they face, and attain academic achievement.</p>

<p>In many ways, Christian education of the Presbyterian Church was deeply influenced with the public education in Egypt. One of the negative consequences of such influence is the significant lack of developing and using critical thinking as a basic element of the process. While multiple factors and reasons, educational and theological, contribute forming it, this problem manifests itself in many ways. This research, therefore, deals with the problem of the lack of critical thinking as a central element of the problematic reality of education process in the Presbyterian Church in Egypt. In order to illuminate and address this problematic situation, an American philosopher, psychologist, and educator John Dewey was brought into a dialogue with a reformer and theologian John Calvin within the framework of understanding Christian education as practical theology of Christian educator and practical theologian Richard Osmer. </p><p> In the light of this dialogue, not only the lack of critical thinking, but also other multiple dimensions of the problematic situation of Christian education in the Presbyterian Church in Egypt have become apparently distinguished. Lack of democracy, lack of using experience, lack of creative pedagogies, lack of practical reason, and lack of theology from the process are some of these dimensions. Yet, it has become increasingly evident that division and dualistic thinking are fundamental elements, which reflected the deep need for a different approach to the Presbyterian education in Egypt. Adapting Osmer&rsquo;s comprehensive approach to Christian education as practical theology, I propose a &ldquo;holistic approach towards Christian education,&rdquo; which aims at transforming education into a reconciling process. Through the holistic approach, the Presbyterian education process in Egypt will be able to work on reconciling the divine authority with the human agency; creation theology with the redemption theology; faith with reason; and theology with philosophy. It is through this approach that the Christian education process is able, not only to create critical theologians, but also to develop a contextual theology that is Eastern Egyptian Arabic contemporary theology. </p><p> <i>Keywords</i>: practical theology, critical thinking, practical reason, democracy, experience, and holistic approach </p>

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<p> Experiential learning theory, student driven learning methods, and brain research related to learning and memory support the use of experientially based learning activities in a traditional classroom. It is the author&rsquo;s opinion, however, that teachers rarely make use of such activities, termed Learning Games in this paper, as a means to help students learn, retain, and recall material presented in the classroom. Reasons include a lack of training and a perceived limit of time for the inclusion of experientially based teaching techniques. Others argue that experiential learning resembles unguided learning and places undue demands on student working memory that can hinder effective learning. This paper presents support for the use of Learning Games, activities developed by the author based on research and the value of &lsquo;fun&rsquo;, &lsquo;play&rsquo;, and &lsquo;games&rsquo;, to enhance the learning process. Significance of the study is to increase the acceptance of experiential learning in a traditional classroom, to dispel preconceived notions, and to expand on a teacher&rsquo;s diversity of teaching techniques to offer more opportunities for student learning. A mixed methods research design is used to evaluate student preference to experiential learning pedagogy to that of traditional classroom instruction. The results showed no significant difference in student preference between experiential and traditional pedagogy. Possible reasons include factors related to the school&rsquo;s culture and traditions, student demographics, teacher inexperience, and classroom environment. Heuristic inquiry reveals the researcher&rsquo;s teaching philosophy and methods incongruent to the research setting.</p>

<p>This purpose of this doctoral project is to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing a new education methodology in teaching systematic theology. The project assesses the level of engagement and application seminary students are able to gauge in their classroom experiences. The intervention methodology is called the ?sermonic/narrative? and it was applied as the andragogical methodology in systematic theology courses at Alliance Theological Seminary. In explaining the conceptual framework, studying the theological foundations, and researching the effectiveness of the methodology, this study has shown that the sermonic/narrative approach is more effective in engaging students in the classroom experience than the traditional lecture methods. Additionally, students were able to more readily apply the lessons they had been exposed to when being taught through the sermonic/narrative method. Although student performance levels were not evaluated in this study, the literature will show that deeper engagement in classroom experiences leads to better student learning.

<p> This thesis examines the relationship between self-efficacy, parental self-efficacy, and valence toward school. Given the link between student&rsquo;s higher achievement and parental involvement, a desire for deeper understanding of how to engage parents in their children&rsquo;s learning was the driving force behind this study. Research was conducted to seek understanding of a potential relationship between parents&rsquo; school valence and how social constructionist theory may play a role in their self-efficacy. Further inquiry focused on how parents&rsquo; self-efficacy in learning may have an impact on engagement with their children&rsquo;s learning. Follow-up questioning probed at what support parents want in order to feel more successful when engaging with their children in learning. This descriptive research is a mixed methods approach, utilizing survey and personal interview data to come to some conclusions on the interplay of these factors. Ultimately it is determined that more research is necessary to come to more concrete conclusions, though an underlying connection between self-efficacy and parental self-efficacy is made. It is recommended that further research be conducted on a larger scale. This research would investigate if there is a significant correlation between parents who had involved parents when they were in school and parents who are involved with their own children&rsquo;s education.</p><p>

<p> Building upon an emerging literature of educational biopolitics, this dissertation develops and thinks through some concepts to explore the prevailing forms of educational life (constituted <i>b&iacute;os</i>) that schools commonly promote in the service of constituted power and, alternatively, the kinds of educational life (constituent <i>b&iacute;os</i>) that call constituted power into question and portend new possibilities and alternative arrangements of being. In considering the kinds of life that schools typically allow and disallow, this philosophical dissertation poses the following educational problem: schools have long celebrated and reproduced a limited and corrosive formulation of educational life (constituted <i>b&iacute;os</i>) while foreclosing constituent forms. Moreover, the emergent social, political and epistemological strengths of students marginalized in the configuration of constituted power&mdash;the component parts of constituent <i>b&iacute;os </i>&mdash;are routinely deemed inferior in schools and often regarded as a contaminating threat that must be eliminated. Using the concepts of constituent and constituted <i>b&iacute;os</i> as units of analysis, this study explores how progressive and critical educational approaches, such as culturally relevant teaching and resistance theory, also fail to account for and appreciate constituent forms of educational life. In order to offer a more nuanced understanding of the relation between forms of life and schools, this study offers an <i> autonomist biopolitics of education</i>. With this orientation, constituent <i> b&iacute;os</i> is recognized as the foundational and constitutive motor to which schools are constantly reacting and attempting to &ldquo;deal with.&rdquo; Such a perspective might help educators be more attuned and responsive to the constituent dimensions of social ontology.</p>

<p> Most studies on relationships in education are not about human relationships <i>in itself,</i> but about what teachers or students <i>perceived</i> to be a good teacher-students relationship or the <i>outcome</i> of a good teacher-students relationship. This dissertation, however, attempts to unfold the complex and implicit elements of human relationships and investigate how it can be practiced in teacher-student relationships in current educational settings. For this purpose, this dissertation explores two figures who had significantly contributed to the knowledge of human relationships&mdash;Martin Buber and Jalaluddin Rumi. The aim of this study is to explore how an understanding of human relationships from a spiritual perspective can improve teacher-student relationships in educational settings and help students to learn to perceive any relationship with another person not only as multicultural relationships but also as relationships between human beings. There are three principles of spirituality in human relationships derived from the teachings of Buber and Rumi. First, the human reason cannot be the foundation of the relationships between human beings because of certain limitations. Second, there is a state of a unified-self where qualities including ones that are paradoxical to each other can be reconciled and hold together within the unified self. Third, the relationship between a human being and the world is a microcosm-macrocosm relationship. Spiritual relationship is a relationship of microcosm¹-macrocosm-microcosm² where two individuals are sharing the same macrocosm. In educational settings, teachers play an important role in establishing spiritual relationships with students. Spirituality is not something that the human reason can observe and assess. What teachers can do is to make sure that the spiritual barriers are removed and turn towards the students as a whole person. Such a relationship between teachers and students of different race and religion can possibly establish a harmonious multicultural society in Malaysia.</p>