Research suggests that there still exists a disproportionate number of Black males who have contact with juvenile justice systems across this nation (Nance, 2016). The disproportionate placement of students of color, specifically, Black American males in alternative schools, serves as the gateway to the school-to-prison-pipeline (Pelzer, 2012). This study examined the lived educational experiences of two Black American juvenile males, who enrolled in an alternative school in the Southeast. This study incorporated phenomenological and narrative methods and provides rich, descriptive analyses of the participants’ experiences while attending an alternative school. Findings from this study revealed instability among the participants’ home life and education, encounters with law enforcement and an early age, varying experiences attending an alternative school, and feelings of uncertain hope displayed by the participants regarding their future lives.

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South Africa‟s racialised history dates back to a colonial period where South Africans were separated by race, language and laws which prevented people of colour from mixing with those who were termed White. 22 years after the end of apartheid, race and language remain a painful part of history and a topic which is always visible in our private and public discourses. Students, as of recent, have pointed to the challenges and legacies of apartheid they face in higher education and broader society. The lack of broader transformation and racial prejudice leave a great divide amongst different groups of students. Given this background, this study sought to examine how students were making sense of themselves and others. The participants of this study included 50 second year students from the Department of Language Studies at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. This research study focused on the identity development of students and how these factors impacted their identities taking into account aspects of race, language, sense of agency and those impacting their sense of agency and sense of self. This study used a qualitative research method which involves an interpretive approach to research as this method was best suited for this study‟s analysis of student narratives. This study is a case study of the single case of second year students. The research, furthermore, used a Poststructuralist approach as theoretical underpinning and Critical Discourse Analysis for analysis of the data. Relevant literature were read and reviewed to determine what studies were saying about factors impacting on youth identity. Student narratives were analysed in order to determine which factors impacted on their identity formation, as well as the perceptions of their own identities and those of others. The results of the findings showed that students‟ identity development was affected by factors such as cultural background, parents, death of loved ones, aesthetic interest, race and language. Socio-economic inequalities in South Africa, race and language strongly defined student identities. Identities were found to be multiple and dynamic. The impact on student agency was as a result of the influences of their parents but also because of the inequalities in society. The only commonality students identified as having with other students was study. Students revealed that they did not cross racial or language boundaries to socialise with other students. There were students who indicated that they resisted racial categorisations and spoke of the celebration of diversity in South Africa but these were in the minority. Unlike previous studies that showed students wanting to move on to a new unified South Africa while simultaneously using old apartheid discourses, this study showed that students remained rooted in these discourses but reverted to these discourses because of societal inequalities. They did not foresee any moves to a new unified South Africa if inequalities not addressed. They were more radical about what a new future looks like with the battle against privilege won. Language was identified as a barrier and the fallacies of English being linked to superior intelligence was pointed out. The divides between White and Black students were apparent in the data. The study therefore recommended that curriculation of modules be undertaken with teaching of fluidity of identities and providing of critical tools for students to deconstruct race and language. The South African context should be foregrounded in all faculty study areas so that students work to a public good that seeks to eradicate inequalities. Safe spaces need to be provided for debating of these issues as well as social spaces for interaction across racial divides.

Orientador: Jorge Luiz Schroeder / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T08:52:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Zafani_JoseTadeuDutra_M.pdf: 1521384 bytes, checksum: d4a69db7865b421e48a41970b8a89f5a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Utilizando conceitos sociológicos de Pierre Bourdieu (1996,1998,2004) e Bernard Lahire (2002,2004,2010) e da sociologia da educação de Maria da graça Setton (2002, ,2007,2008, 2010, 2011,2012), o presente trabalho tem como objetivo esboçar o "retrato sociológico musical" de professores de guitarra, professores de violão e professores de ambos os instrumentos. Para isso, conectou-se o processo socializador pelo qual passou cada professor durante sua formação junto ao campo sociomusical em que atuam com suas formas particulares de agir, pensar, crer e perceber (disposições) os aspectos musicais no presente de seus respectivos trabalhos, tendo como principais eixos de investigação as respectivas práticas do ensino da guitarra e do violão e as possíveis relações didáticas entre os dois instrumentos e suas simultâneas atuações artísticas. Para obter as informações necessárias para a realização da pesquisa, foram realizadas entrevistas presenciais com doze professores, com qualquer trajetória musical, que se encaixaram no perfil da pesquisa. Observou-se que a forma de agir, pensar, crer e perceber o ensino de guitarra e violão se mostra como reflexo de uma construção social e musical através da qual os professores transitam, assim como a condição de emancipação e dependência didática, técnica ou artística da guitarra em relação ao violão aparece também como uma construção individual em busca de uma síntese pessoal das contradições entre os procedimentos específicos de cada instrumento, ou seja, a questão de dependência ou emancipação só se resolve intrinsecamente em cada indivíduo de forma única e pessoal e esta resolução é resultado de uma trajetória músico-social singular / Abstract: Using sociological concepts of Pierre Bourdieu (1996,1998,2004) and Bernard Lahire (2002,2004,2010) and concepts of sociology of education of Maria da Graça Setton (2002, ,2007,2008, 2010, 2011,2012), the present study aims outlining the "musical sociological portrait" of guitar teachers, eletric guitar teachers and teachers of both instruments. For this, it was connected the socializing process by which each teacher spent during his sociomusical field training in which they act, with their particular ways of acting, thinking, believing and perceiving (provisions) musical aspects of their work, having as main lines of investigation their practice of teaching acoustic guitar and eletric guitar and the relations between the two instruments and their artistic performances that may exist. To obtain the necessary information to conduct the survey, personal interviews were conducted with twelve teachers with any musical path and who matched the research profile. It was observed that the way we act, think, believe and realize teaching acoustic and eletric guitar is shown as a reflection of musical and social construction through which teachers transit, as well as the condition of didactical, technical or artistic emancipation and dependence of the electric guitar in relation to the acoustic guitar also appears as an individual construction in a search for a personal synthesis os contradictions between the especific procedures of each instrument. It equivalent to say that the question about the dependence or emancipation only is resolved inside each person in a unique and personal way and this resolution is the result of a singular musical and social trajectory / Mestrado / Fundamentos Teoricos / Mestre em Música

The purpose of this study was to find out more about the college choice process of minority high school seniors. The research questions were (1) Do minority high school seniors consider important the same college attributes that the literature of college choice suggests? (2) Do minority students consider important other aspects of colleges, such as those attributes suggested in the college climate and retention literature as influential in the college success of minority students? The population of the study included 1155 Southeastern Massachusetts high school seniors segmented into five sub-groups: Asian, black, Cape Verdean, Hispanic, and white. Data were obtained from two questionnaires administered in January and May, 1993 in all high school English classes. The results were compared with the college choice literature. In addition, the results were analyzed in relation to the college climate attributes of social opportunities, curriculum, campus diversity, and academic support. The conclusions included the following: (1) Not all sub-groups are the same. There were significant differences between black and Cape Verdean sub-groups and among all sub-groups. (2) Geographical proximity is a factor. (3) Financial aid and academic support supersede academic reputation. (4) Models of college choice need to be modified to include student location and deferred application. (5) Mother is a primary influence on college as identified by all sub-groups. Recommendations for institutional responses are based on these conclusions.

This study is an inquiry into the school life of pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers. The purpose of the study is to gain insight into conditions that exist in schools that make it possible for pregnant and parenting teenagers to be successful learners in school. An additional purpose is to gain insight into the difficulties pregnant and parenting mothers face that hinder their school success. Four research questions guide this study: Research Question 1: What conditions in schools do teenagers report make it possible for them to be successful leaners in school once they become pregnant? Research Question 2: What conditions in school do teenage, mothers report make it possible for them to become successful learners in school once they have a baby? Research Question 3: What do teenagers report as the major difficulties that hinder them from being successful learners in school once they are pregnant? Research Question 4: What do teenage mothers report as the major difficulties that hinder them from being successful learners in school once they have a baby? This study employs qualitative research methods. Twenty-one participants across the United States were interviewed. The interviews were transcribed verbatim then rewritten as narrative profiles. Each profile was searched for data that answered the four research questions. An open-coding strategy was used to identify themes in each narrative profile, and then across profiles that emerged for each research question. Three themes emerged on conditions in school that support learning: Social/Emotional Support, School Programs, Practices and Policies and Characteristics of Self. The mirrored opposite of these themes emerged as themes that hinder learning. In addition, three themes that hinder learning outside of school emerged: Lack of Social and Emotional Support Outside of School, Life Circumstances and Time. The challenges and support individual school settings create are complex because of the many variables that effect how the individual and the learning environment interact. Striking diversity, as well as common perceptions about the conditions that support and hinder success in school were evident in the findings.

This dissertation describes how and why high school students in a developing country may resist educational processes intended to make them into modern citizens. The research set out to illuminate in-school processes which affected students' academic engagement and to help explicate an eight-year decline on the Grade 10 School Certificate Examination in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. The report is based on one year of ethnographic research conducted in Pere village on the southeast coast and two high schools in Lorengau, the provincial capital, in 1994-95. I claim that at the time of study a shift away from the village in critical economic resources, rising unemployment, the ongoing viability of the subsistence base, and a need to maintain a degree of control over those living in towns led many Pere Villagers to be discouraged about the value of educational investment and to make claims to a somewhat invented "traditionality." In the high schools in Lorengau, students were aware of the limited opportunity structure after grade 10, and that they could return to their villages after finishing school and make their living from subsistence economics. A critical mass of students rationalized that school success, with its unlikely rewards, was not worth its requirements of hard work and conformity to rules. These students pursued social experience in school, resisted teachers, and valorized an egalitarian village-based identity within the student culture. I argue that the ongoing construction of this identity led these students to conduct routine surveillance of their peers for signs of acting "extra:" Appropriating Western behaviors which were associated with hierarchical status positions in the cash economy, or making strident efforts in school to obtain such a position. Accordingly, I show that Manus high schools functioned as social fields for the negotiation of Melanesian personhood. I conclude that people in Pere and Manus high schools lay claim to a moral "good" inherent in Melanesian egalitarianism, and that these were creative and rational responses which both critiqued the tendency of capitalist development to create hierarchical status differences and served to maintain these peoples' sense of worth in contexts of increasing powerlessness.

This is a report of an ethnographic study of a graduate level Methods course for ESL/Bilingual teachers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The course is organized around task-based, small group, facilitative and collaborative learning. One of the intriguing aspects of the course is the opportunities it provides for students to identify, understand and critique the ways that they share power and authority with each other and with the course professor. This research investigates the early inception of the role of facilitator within this complex educational practice. The role is purposefully under-defined so that facilitators can experiment with it, and turn it into something that has meaning for them. My research questions address the enactments or "dance" of authority--how it is experienced, voiced and shared by facilitators and students in this classroom community. I have developed a theoretical framework for three concepts or "modes" of authority and their consequent acts. They are: compassionate authority, involving the act of imaginatively taking up positions for one another (Jones, 1993); scholarship authority--the act of reframing and generating theories of the facilitation practice in order to understand and critique this pedagogy (Christ, 1987); and inventive authority--the act of creating, finding and remembering the substance of discourse (Lefevre, 1986). These modes of authority are mutually sustaining, and when converged steer us away from conceiving of authority dichotomously. Drawing on the notions of positioning (Carbaugh, 1994b) and intertextuality (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993), I highlight the distinctive social positions that are created discursively when students uphold, reject and resist these modes of authority. The findings reveal that authoritative relationships at this site are contingent, patterned in moment-by-moment changes and often asymmetrical. The findings also reveal that the interactions constitute a balancing act--a power of balance--among the three modes of authority. Ultimately, this study should provide insights into discourses of compassion, critique and invention in multicultural and multilingual education.

This study reports on a research project that examines teenage young women's themes of power. The themes emerged within a community education program that was conducted in a small, low-income, semi-rural town in Western Massachusetts. The teenagers engaged in theater games and improvisations that were eventually performed live on public-access television. The research also looks at power relations imbedded within the project itself. The program was designed to create an educational experience that provided teenagers with a public voice about their own concerns and issues, and to do so in a way that addressed feminist and postmodern critiques of "liberatory" pedagogy. The study seeks to understand what teenage young women express about self-efficacy and power in relation to themselves, their schools, families, and communities; and an analysis of how the project encouraged or discouraged this expression, particularly in regard to my attempts at utilizing a postmodern feminist perspective in its design. It is framed within a feminist approach to research and incorporates several methodologies to explore these questions. Three definitions of power are indicated by the teen women: Power as control over oneself, others, and events; power as speaking for oneself, being heard, and being understood; and power as intuitive, creative and spiritual experience. The study provides an examination of these themes and a deconstructive analysis of the pedagogy. A primary finding of the study suggests that a special time and place is needed by teen women as a means of finding empowered voices. This "ritual space", is a safe place for honest expression, outside of the space and time norms of an adult secular world.

The purpose of this study was to access a research population of self-identified student perpetrators of ethnoviolence in order to learn more about their motivations, their perspectives of self and others, and their considerations for making moral decisions. The study design was quantitative and qualitative in nature and relied on both statistical analysis and ethnographic field study methods. The research procedures consisted of three basic phases: theoretical applications, perpetrator sample identification, and in-depth interview administration and analysis. A perpetrator screening survey was developed based on an Ethnoviolence Severity Scale Model and administered to a class size sample of 340 students of which 306 responded. Survey findings indicated a surprisingly high percentage of students (27.2%) admitted to committing ethnoviolent behaviors across the severity model. A significant number of students also admitted to both verbally (36.3%) and physically threatening (18.0%) others on the basis of race or ethnicity. In addition, 15.0% were physically involved in an actual hate fight and 6.0% injured someone over an issue of race or ethnicity. The survey also yielded several statistically significant relationships based on gender as well as Greek membership and the perpetration of both multiple and individual acts of ethnoviolence. Using a weight-based scoring system, 8 survey respondents were selected for in-depth interviewing (6 perpetrators and 2 non-perpetrators). Using two schemes for coding responses developed by Lyons (1983), the predominant Relational Component for self-definition among perpetrators was Separate/Objective (91.4%). As a group, perpetrators were 11 times more likely to use this mode, whereas, non-perpetrators were 18 times more likely to use the Connected one. These findings indicate that the majority of perpetrators see themselves as separate versus connected to others and view relationships as part of obligations or commitments with societal duty and principles to uphold. In addition, the perpetrator subjects were found to consistently use (greater than 80%) the Morality as Justice versus Care construct when considering moral problems. Across conflict types, perpetrators were 3.3 times more likely to use the moral ideological concepts of rights and fairness versus the concepts of situational response and interpersonal relationships in their considerations for making moral decisions.