The focus of this research is the re-conceptualisation of learning in higher education. By theorising the university as a group of interconnected discourses I have been able to develop an understanding of student learning identity which goes beyond the formal academic settings of the university and which explores the influence of both the social and academic spheres of the university in terms of student transition and engagement in learning. Data were gathered in three phases: through in-depth interviews with sixty nine students entering their first year at three British universities, the collection of three day diaries from forty four of these students and follow up interviews with thirty students from the original sample. By negotiating positions on continua of continuity and discontinuity of experience with interlocutors in identified discourse settings, students were found to experience learning as an integral and transformative aspect of their identities.

<p> Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) education programs are currently being introduced and expanded across &ldquo;developing&rdquo; nations. STEM programs often conflict with hegemonic gender norms, for example by targeting girls and women in male dominated societies. However, given the cultural complexity of STEM for girls, implementing educators are rarely asked their point of view on programs from abroad. This study explored the perceptions of educators in Nepal who participated in the Girls Get STEM Skills (GGSS) program, a program funded through the U.S. Department of State for 2015/2016. The 8-month program reached 254 girls across three government schools and included the donation of 30 laptops. In August, 2016, the researcher conducted one-on-one interviews and focus groups with 18 participants at GGSS school sites in Pokhara, Nepal. Qualitative data was gathered on educators&rsquo; perceptions of teacher roles, Nepal as a developing nation, gender imbalance in STEM, and the GGSS curriculum. The study argues that educators viewed educational topics through the lens of bikas, the Nepali word for development. This suggests that the principal impact of STEM programs&mdash;as part of larger development initiatives&mdash;may be the creation and reinforcement of new social meanings rather than the tangible impacts of the projects themselves. </p>

<p> Guided by the critical network analytic framework and liminal legality, this qualitative study explored the experiences of undocumented Latina/o youth in their first year in college to gain insight into their experiences during a critical transition in their educational and life trajectories. This work centered the experiences of youth within a policy context of contradictions that provides increased opportunities, but continues to impose restrictions and control on the life and educational aspirations of the undocumented community. This scholarship aimed to understand how students&rsquo; transition to college is impacted by current immigration and educational policies, particularly the California Dream Act and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This research describes the racist nativist microaggressions youth experienced throughout their educational trajectories, the multiple ways policy impacted the transition to college, and the navigational strategies youth employed to matriculate to higher education.</p>

My project explores the ways in which racial equity is addressed in a predominantly white school, through a study of Washfield High School in Seattle, WA. Through semi-structured interviews with three administrators, six teachers and two alumni, I examine themes including the prominence of blackness, segregation, curricular strategies, differential expectations across races, campus efforts and leadership. Through this study, I focus on the role that predominantly white schools have in increasing racial equity in education.

<p> Examining teacher participation in collaborative microblogging activities may offer insight into creating alternative options for effective professional development. In this sequential explanatory mixed methods study, educators&rsquo; opinions of their use of a microblogging tool, Twitter, will be examined to determine what factors affect their participation in professional development activities using the microblogging tool, Twitter. The overall guiding question for this study will be, Why do educators participate in voluntary professional development opportunities, specifically in Twitter-supported professional learning networks? </p><p> This study will contribute to the existing body of research in the areas of professional development, professional learning networks, educator&rsquo;s motivation to learn, informal learning, online learning, and social media. Social media, specifically the microblogging tool Twitter, will be examined for its potential to act as an alternative mode of dissemination for educator professional development, as well as its potential for creating informal professional learning networks. Data sources for this study will include: surveys and interview questions. This information may be useful for future creation of more effective professional development opportunities. Findings from this study may be useful for researchers, educators, administrators, and developers of professional development opportunities.</p>

No description available.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Contemporary work in the Sociology of Education has been sharply polarized between approaches which emphasize the reproductive role of education systems and those which emphasize the role of popular resistance and culture in shaping the social relations of schooling. That opting for either of these two divergent approaches poses serious theoretical dilemmas is demonstrated particularly sharply by attempts to analyze the South African education system for Africans in the years between the 1940s and 1976. On the one hand, it is widely seen as a system which maintained relations of class and racial inequality; on the other it produced an enormous student rebellion in 1976. The thesis suggests that viewing education systems as part of the state, understood as a contested field of social relations, offers a way of investigating educational conflict which avoids both the functionalism of reproductionist perspectives and the voluntarist tendencies of culturalist interpretations. It enables the valid insights of these theories to be integrated into an analysis without their characteristic drawbacks. On this basis a series of analytical propositions about Bantu Education are generated. The thesis argues that the relationship between Bantu Education policy and capitalism was changing and contingent rather than fixed, as previous analyses have implied. The state educational bureaucracy did not function as an instrument of capital; rather, at certain times its aims were complimentary with the needs of capital, and at other times, largely contradictory with them, The education system reproduced varying levels of skill in the work force across time. Urbanization and industrialization, were central forces moulding education policy, the introduction of Bantu Education policy was a response to urban crisis. The thesis argues that the way in which state education policy was pursued was partly shaped by popular movements. There was a battle within the education system between the hegemonic project of government and mass resistance. Changes in popular culture affected the nature of popular responses to educational structures. Teachers' responses were particularly affected by their ambiguous structural position. The thesis attempt to test these arguments through a historical investigation of the period from the 1940s to 1976. It argues that the roots of Bantu Education policy need to be sought in the social crisis resulting fro~ urbanization and industrialization, Which affected South African society from the 1940s. In the education sphere, this crisis was manifested in the inability of the existing black education system to cope with the needs of urban youth, growing conflict within the mission schools, and disaffection and radicalization of the African teaching profession. In these circumstances dominant class opinion favored state intervention and restructuring of the education system. The implementation of Bantu Education from 1955 was initially focused on resolving the urban crisis, by providing for the social control of the urban working class and reproduction of a semi-skilled work force. A notable campaign of resistance, in the form of school boycotts by the African National Congress, opposed the policy in 1955-1956, but eventually broke down, primarily because of its inability to rival the state's capacity to provide mass schooling. other forms of resistance to state policy, such as opposition to the establishment of school boards, teacher activism and student riots, were too. dispersed and limited to block it. By the early sixties, a new, state run, cheap education system had been established. However the grim material conditions in that system, and its racist administration, prevented it from exploiting Opportunities to win active popular support. In the 19608, government, enjoying favorable political and economic conditions, moved to a more rigid linking of education policy to the enforcement of territorial apartheid, especially by preventing the expansion of urban black secondary, technical and higher education in the urban areas. It appeared that a degree of popular acquiescence in the education system was developing, with the stabilization of popular participation in the school board system and in conservativee teachers organizations. However, the system was generating new industry, was adversely affected by skill shortages increased by government educational policy, in the early 1970s industry launched a strong campaign for change in educational policy, which resulted in a government shift toward expansion of urban schooling. By the mid-1970s the changing political situation outside and inside the country, changes in youth culture, new ideological influences, and the material problems of the expanding schooling system were creating a new and more politicized culture of resistance amongst urban African youth .The implementation of a new language policy by government produced first the disaffection of school boards and then revolt amongst students. The conclusion argues that the analysis developed in the thesis has justified the claim. that the theoretical approach adopted in it goes beyond the limitations of reproductionist and culturalist studies. / AC 2018

<p> Beginning in 2001, Finland&rsquo;s students have achieved relatively high scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Finland&rsquo;s reputation encouraged educational leaders from around the world to seek the transference and application of educational knowledge into their native context. In order to better understand the mental processes involved in cross-cultural transfer of Finnish educational knowledge, the researcher conducted a qualitative phenomenological instrumental case study of Finnish educational success. Five Finnish educational leaders and three visiting educational leaders seeking transfer were interviewed. Ten documents of first-hand accounts concerning the phenomenon of Finnish educational success and transfer were analyzed, and a self-reflective journal of the experiences and observations of the researcher as participant within the country of Finland as a visiting university student were utilized for the collection of data. The synthesis of the data revealed that Finnish educational success and its transfer are often viewed by educational leaders through a holistic and integrated lens, and the possibility of wholescale transfer is questioned. However, through cooperative reform, transformational experiences, and inspirational partnerships at home and internationally, educational development that emulates Finland&rsquo;s appears possible.</p><p>

This dissertation is a comparative study of school discipline in the United States and in Greece. It examines the effect that schools, particularly their organizational form and rules, have upon the behavior of students and how this behavior is understood and categorized. The empirical findings show that, despite facing an elaborate system of rules, punishments, and staff dedicated to discipline, students at a New York school were three times more likely to be unruly compared with students in a similar school in Athens, where only teaching staff managed behavior, and formal rules and regulations governing student conduct were virtually non-existent. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Emile Durkheim, Mary Douglas, Tom Popkewitz, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and neo-institutionalist scholars, this study proposes explanations for this surprising pattern. I argue that increased structural-functional differentiation within schools and heavy-handed sets of rules and punishments for students erode the moral authority of the teacher and create spaces outside the classroom where students can develop and employ identities and cultural hierarchies that lead to more frequent and extreme forms of unruliness. I also argue that the regulation of student discipline is part of the broader system of state regulation and control. In societies where govermentality is a dominant theme, school discipline becomes preoccupied with questions of measurement, care, and efficiency. What is needed, I suggest, is a return to democracy.

This dissertation focuses on low-income rural-urban migrant children and their families in Bangladesh, living in a severe poverty-stricken environment in the capital city, Dhaka. Specifically, it deals with the dilemma of so-called non-formal primary education (NFPE) programs aimed at providing alternative schooling opportunities to children who do not attend regular school in the city. It describes how such programs do not necessarily help children integrate into the country's formal school system, but instead continuously prepares them for the subordinate segment of the society. The study particularly addresses the state-sponsored Basic Education for Hard-to-Reach Urban Working Children (BEHTRUWC) project, and examines its three elements: 1) exclusive membership and the making of "working children," 2) distinction from formal schools and meaning of schooling, and, 3) an implementation model that reflects Bangladeshi social structure. First, the study looks at how the BEHTRUWC project labels its participating children as "working children" (not particularly as students), and provides them with only limited coverage of primary schooling. As a result, children become "working children," not only learning the concept, but also acquiring customs to "act out" as working children. Second, the study problematizes the unique goals and subjects taught at the BEHTRUWC project that ultimately draws clear distinction between its children and formal school students. The children and their parents also realize that their experience in the project would not assure the same level of education as formal schools, or provide them with more skilled and better-paid employment opportunities in the future. Finally, the study examines how the basic pattern of interpersonal relationships so common in Bangladesh is reflected in the daily practices of the BEHTRUWC project. The project's learning centers remain similar to any other places in Dhaka where children feel morally obligated to teachers and others, and thus, through the project, the children gradually recognize their assumed existing position in relation to other people in society. Through shedding light on the relationships, negotiations, and struggles of the people involved in the BEHTRUWC project, this study explores how these different elements of the project generate the unintended consequence for low-income migrant children in Dhaka.