The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences and perceptions of four Massachusetts public school superintendents about the use of power. The major goals of the study were to profile and compare four practicing superintendents; to document their experiences, attitudes and accomplishments as seen through their own eyes; to inform and expand the understanding of the superintendency based on the real life experiences of superintendents; to develop new areas for preservice and inservice training of superintendents; and to identify areas for future study. An exploratory case study approach was used. The method for gathering the data, the in-depth phenomenological interview, was based on the model of I. E. Seidman which requires a series of three separate interviews with each participant. The interview trilogy was titled as follows: Life History, Contemporary Experience and Meaning to the Participant. In analyzing the data, a multifaceted approach was used, including Banfield's rephrased questions, an Affinity Diagram, four significant authors and an independent reader's observations. This yielded five conclusions: The exercise of power is linked to the person's character; the interactions with other players is influenced by family dynamics; the position and title of superintendent must be accompanied by persuasion and agreement power; evidence exists of a shift from "power over" to "power with"; there is a formula for mobilizing the organization' s resources and people to accomplish goals. The theory resulting from the conclusions was based on four general principles: that past experience determines current behavior relative to the exercise of power; that power is a process linked to purpose; that leadership and followership are interwoven; that power depends on context and resources. Recommendations for preservice and inservice training of superintendents took the form of three suggested training modules, "Self-Analysis and Personal Development," "Skills for Leading Socially Complex School Districts" and "Communication Skills for School Leaders." Suggestions for further study included replication, expansion of number of cases, comparison of those identified as less successful in exercising power, comparison with CEOs from other organizations, expansion of the context of the study to include interviews of others, development of a questionnaire, and development of a controlled study.

This dissertation describes and examines the fictional representations of friendship between middle-class boys at all-male public boarding schools during the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries in England. In the texts under consideration, romantic friendships embody educational, social, and spiritual ideals; readings of sermons, letters, memoirs, and book illustrations contextualize these ideals and suggest that they mirror a broader ideological framework in the culture. Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and F. W. Farrar's Eric (1858), which consolidate the tropes of the schoolboy narrative, self-consciously reflect the philosophical and educational standards of Thomas Arnold, Headmaster at Rugby School from 1828 to 1842. For Arnold, highly emotional friendships, based on Christian values, helped to develop piety and to reflect, in earthly terms, the spiritual brotherhood that all "men" share with God. Friendships in Charles Dickens's fiction also conform to many of these narrative and ideological constructs. Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9) represents the comforts of compassionate friendship, while David Copperfield (1849-50) illustrates the torturous complexity of the schoolboy romance. In Our Mutual Friend (1864-5), Dickens alludes parenthetically to Mortimer and Eugene's school days in order to evoke the history and depth of their adult friendship. Edwardian fiction presents a revised discourse on schoolboy friendship, with expressions of affection breaking through a strenuous emotional reserve. In E. M. Forster's A Room With a View (1908), the schoolboy Freddy Honeychurch invites George Emerson to share an uninhibited bond (the "Sacred Lake" bathing scene) that both contrasts with the atomized heterosexual relations in the novel and presages their eventual brotherhood (when George marries Freddy's sister Lucy). The animals in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (1908) inhabit a homosocial society modelled on Grahame's fantasy of the public school. E. F. Benson's David Blaize (1916) dignifies friendship between boys in spite of the political, intellectual, and aesthetic breakdown of male identity and relations that resulted from the oppressive traumas over masculinity indicative of the fin-de-siecle.

This dissertation reports an ethnographic investigation of the peer group talk of Hawaiian middle school students during an English language arts class. It is concerned with the academic and social agendas of the seventh grade participants. The purpose of the research was to investigate: (a) student labels and descriptions of their interactive accomplishments; (b) communicative features which characterized academic and social engagement; (c) relationships and identities invoked in the conversations. The study was conducted over one school year with primary focus on one group of four students. The analytic categories "doing English" and "socializing" were derived from field notes, video tapes, group and individual interviews, and copies of pertinent written documents. These student terms-for-talk foregrounded their perceptions of what was required to participate appropriately in the language arts classroom and recognition of "socializing" as an acceptable, prominent, and purposeful activity within the small peer group and larger classroom context. Instances-of-the-terms-for-talk were interrogated to identify topic patterns, features-of-the-talk, norms of interaction, and tone of engagement. Patterns of engagement related to peer group harmony included "getting busted," arguing and fighting, preserving the status of group members, using humor, and mediating tensions. Intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics were examined as dimensions of individual autonomy and group affiliation. Enactments of personhood or identity invoked in the terms for talk "doing English" and "socializing" were rendered as those of 'student' and 'friend' respectively. Monitoring, assessing, directing, clarifying, and confirming were salient interactional strategies associated with academic endeavors, while using humor emerged as the prominent feature of social interactions. The significance of this investigation relates to the value of socializing. Off-task conversations served to promote collective group identity, mediate tensions that arose during academic engagement, and further develop the social and personal identities of the participants. These insights contribute to the literature on face-to-face interactions in classrooms by legitimizing "socializing" or off-task talk as an activity form that can serve to expedite on-task or academic interactions such as "doing English." The results of the study expand our understandings of how students categorize, describe, and construct classroom events.

This study observes and investigates the relationship between a predominantly White institution of higher education and its African-American student population. It explores how Black students conceptualize the uniqueness of their experience at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in terms of the Committee for the Collegiate Education of Black and other Minority Students (CCEBMS) Program. Three different methodologies were utilized to assess the inquiry. Focus groups, individual interviews, and survey-questionnaires were implemented to gain greater insights into the realities of Black juniors and seniors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A total of fourteen--nine women and five men--participated in the focus groups and interviews. The focus groups met twice and took place over a two-week period. Six individuals out of the original fourteen volunteered to be interviewed, so as to look closer at the issues previously raised in the focus group sessions. Lastly, survey-questionnaires were generated based upon the information revealed via the focus group and interview sessions. Over two hundred-fifty surveys were disseminated across campus to African-American juniors and seniors in an effort to weigh their responses against the data previously collected. The qualitative and quantitative instrumentation used examined the attitudes of African-American students towards university practices and whether or not the construction of a culturally-specific programming, otherwise known as the Committee for the Collegiate Education of Black and other Minority Students (CCEBMS), helped shape or modify their opinions. The findings of this study revealed that: (1) Black students in social science courses encounter a highly racialized climate, which expects Black students to represent the entire Black collective; (2) Black students, initially, are frustrated by having to negotiate where they belong and how they're supposed to behave in a racially segregated setting in all contexts that relate to campus life; (3) the Committee for the Collegiate Education of Black and other Minority Students (CCEBMS) Program minimally influences or impacts how African-American collegians interpret their experience at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and (4) that many Black students believe that their success relies on their ability to effectively balance the duality of their reality, which requires them to be part-student/part-politician.

Today, increasingly attention has turned to the impact that school experiences have on gay youth. However, research to date has focused disproportionately on crisis intervention strategies or on meeting individually based needs rather than on the school setting. This study contributes an organization-wide examination of one public school district's efforts to address the needs of gay youth at the high school level. This study examines the role of this public school district Safe Schools Committee and their participation in the Massachusetts Department of Education Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Youth and assesses the impact these efforts have had on the overall school setting in relation to gay youth issues. Two social justice change models provide the theoretical foundation for this study: multicultural education and multicultural organization development. The data for this study were gathered and analyzed using traditional qualitative research methods. Students, educators, parents, administrators, community members, and consultants at the statewide level were asked to describe their perceptions of change in the high school. The four recommendations of the Massachusetts Department of Education Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students, the Stages of Multicultural Awareness model, and the Continuum of School Change Strategies provided useful perspectives in understanding how change initiatives impacted this school setting. Factors important to the success of this school district's change initiatives were identified. The importance of prior experiences in creating a state of organizational readiness for change, the role of the Safe Schools Committee as a subsystem for change in the organization, and the importance of collaborative relationships across the organization, with community stakeholders, and with statewide resources and experts emerged as significant. Conclusions drawn from this study indicate that a systemic perspective can be critical in supporting school-based change efforts to meet the needs of gay youth and that addressing the needs of gay youth in school settings can make important contributions to increased multicultural awareness and organization development. Organization factors and behaviors of members of the Safe Schools Committee identified as particularly important to the success of these efforts are also presented.

School violence has encouraged the introduction of peer mediation programs in spite of the absence of reliable research and program evaluation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of peer mediation programs in 44 Massachusetts secondary public schools, describing the objectives, evidence, and conditions that fostered or hindered program success. The research questions that guided this study asked 132 respondents to indicate the objectives of peer mediation programs, evidence of success, and conditions within the schools that helped or hindered success. Of 42 objectives, only peaceful resolution of conflict was reported by a majority of the schools. Four others--learning alternative ways of dealing with violence; improving the climate in school and classroom; reducing the number of fights before becoming serious; and teaching students to talk out problems were reported by 41% of the respondents. From the seven most common examples of evidence demonstrating success, a decrease in violence and suspensions was reported by the largest percentage of respondents (38%). Major hindrances to mediation included adult intervention in mediation, lack of administrative funding, and scheduling conflicts. No single condition that either helped or hindered program success emerged in the study. The most common supportive condition was administrative and faculty support, and the most common hindrance was scheduling conflicts. Other hindrances were a lack of a full-time coordinator, and lack of administrative and faculty support. Respondents provided few examples of evidence or conditions to support their claims of success or lack of success. Results indicate that peer mediation was successful in most of the 44 schools in the study, and that every school program was unique. Still, improvements, such as effective program evaluation; greater funding; support for staff training from the state and universities; and closer scrutiny of developments in the field, are necessary. The rise in school violence throughout the nation is forcing educators to respond with programs, such as peer mediation. The blueprint for successful peer mediation programs needs to be designed by each school. Planned properly, facilitated effectively and evaluated appropriately, peer mediation can contribute to the realization of safe learning environments for students.

This critical ethnographic study explores the possibilities and challenges of dialogue across differences within a school-university partnership between a state university and a low-achieving urban elementary school. The focal point of the study is the dialogue (reflection and action) that occurred in a focus group composed of school and university educators, parents, and community members. The study uses “third space” as a metaphor and theoretical lens to illuminate how dialogue complicates understanding through the collision of multiple perspectives, and, in some cases, produces a hybrid consciousness that results in novel action. In addition, the study draws on the postmodern notion of discourses to show how societal discourses permeate the multiple perspectives that constitute “third space.” The findings of this study suggest that creating a time apart from normal routine, positioning participants as learners and co-inquirers, and expecting and valuing different perspectives contribute to a dialogue process and to the building of parity among participants. Moreover, multiple and different viewpoints are crucial for complicating understanding in ways that lead to a hybrid consciousness that has the possibility of creating new agency. This study shows that the potential for hybrid understanding and negotiated agency is diminished when participants draw on primarily middle class discourses. The study concludes that a commitment to issues of social justice must occur at several levels of a partnership: (1) gathering a diverse group of participants whose perspectives are shaped by dominant and non-dominant discourses; (2) posing questions about the school context and teaching/learning practices in relation to sociocultural, political messages; (3) participating in social action that addresses the political and economic factors that produce inequities in schooling.

This eleven-month ethnographic study puts critical discourse analysis in dialogue with postmodern conceptualizations of space and place to explore how eight educators talk about space and in the process, produce racialized spaces in Roche Bois, Mauritius. The macro-historical context of racialization of this urban marginalized community informs the discursive analysis of educators' talk at school. Drawing on theories of race that call for the non-deterministic exploration of race relations as they occur in different contexts and times (Hall, 2000; Pandian & Kosek, 2003; Essed & Goldberg, 2000), I explore the spatial racialization of children in Roche Bois as a process specific to this township and its history. Engaging with Lefebvre's three-dimensional theorization of space (Lefebre, 1991) as well as the Discourse Historical Approach developed by Wodak and colleagues (Wodak & Reisgl, 1999), I draw on the micro-macro concept of identity construction "strategy" to study 1) how meanings of race play out as an amalgam of various thematic dimensions of schooling, culture, bodies, and work that are spatialized; 2) how meanings of place perpetuate or transform long-standing historical constructions of Creole identity in Roche Bois. The findings show that repeated patterns of educators' spatial racialization produce and reproduce conceived spaces (Lefebvre, 1991) and yet my research also highlights that banal moments of lived space (Lefebvre, 1991) also exist, as ordinary disruptions of the spatial order produced by patterns of conceived space. While educator discourse for the most part negatively emplaces and racializes the children, one educator's representations of place and race both assimilates and differentiates marginal identities, encourages unity and essentialism at the same time as promotes hybridity. The analysis therefore shows that discourses of place are not totalizing and that moments of interruption can be the basis for thinking of teacher education and practice as a politics of "decolonization" and "reinhabitation" (Gruenewald, 2003). Specifically, the findings indicate the importance of reinvesting critical historical meanings into pedagogies of the local.

The international Development field has long been critiqued on ideological grounds. This study complements more recent critical analyses which cast Development as discourse, as a system of logic disseminated through power-knowledge strategies which represent “the real” according to its own dictates. The interface between Education and Development, however, has received little scholarly or critical attention to date. Informed by the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, this study employs poststructuralist and deconstructive strategies to investigate the performativity of the discursive formation, (Education for) Development. The author builds an analytics which posits a “problematic” or epistemological framework, comprised of three “regimes of representation”—History, Geography and Governmentality—and two guiding modes of rationality, the “economistic” and “developmentalist,” which underwrite Development's power to constitute “the real.” Analyses of three recent influential texts, the Declaration of the World Conference on Education for All (1990); USAID Technical Paper No. 12 “Education Policy Formation in Africa” (1994); and World Bank (1995) Policies and Strategies for Education destabilize the apparent naturalness and inevitability of (Education for) Development's own account of itself. Problematizing the discourse's claims to objectivity and disinterested technical knowledge, the analyses subvert the logic which makes possible Development's constitution of problems crying out for solutions emanating from its own epistemological universe. The analyses expose the discourse's power to interpellate its subjects (“girls,” “women,” “government,” “the State”) within the limits of its own discursive regimes. Limits to representation proscribe the “girl's” subjectivity, for example, within the confines of childbearing and domestic labor. The discursive formations “Girls' Education” and “Population Education” are shown to perform in the service of Development's normalizing and self-sustaining strategies.

This dissertation develops an overdeterminist transnational feminist approach to discourse analysis—transnational feminist literacy practices—to interrogate current approaches to women and development and women's empowerment in particular. This methodology builds on transnational feminist and post-development approaches in order to challenge the developmentalism that sustains transnational inequalities. However, both transnational feminist and post-development approaches, despite their persistent critique, share with the mainstream developmentalist approach highly essentialized visions of women and economy that make it difficult to develop alternative strategies to transform transnational inequalities. In order to continue a direct challenge to developmentalism, I first reformulate an approach developed by a transnational feminist Chandra Talpade Mohanty by drawing on overdeterminist theories, namely, anti-essentialist Marxist theory of class, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and discourse theory. Through the lens provided by this reformulated approach I then identify economic and power essentialisms and other features that harbor transnational inequalities in two different articulations of women, empowerment and development, examine the mechanisms and consequences of these essentialisms and illuminate possibilities, diverse economies and unconscious desire, which are not visible within Foucauldian post-development critiques. By re-articulating empowerment with women and development, this dissertation offers a methodology to construct an alternative transnational feminist political imaginary that may function as a nodal point which will create and sustain conditions of existence for communal transnational feminist praxis on multiple scales and in multiple locations. To outline one dimension of its productivity this dissertation concludes with an exploration of its pedagogical implications for a Northern university context.