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This dissertation is an exploration of the construction of indicators that point toward positive peacebuilding in education. A conceptual framework that allows for such integration is that of basic psychological needs. When basic psychological needs are satisfied in a constructive manner, human beings are expected to experience optimal developmental outcomes, including greater potential for caring, pro-social behavior. The first section of the dissertation employs data on students' experiences in school from the 1997/98 Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. Organizing the HBSC data according to a framework of basic psychological needs, this analysis examines the extent of need satisfaction in schools, cross-nationally, as well as the association of basic need fulfillment with outcomes such as school satisfaction, eudaimonic functioning, and bullying. The analysis suggests that changes in basic need satisfaction are associated with positive peacebuilding. The second section of the dissertation explores the construction of indicators for peacebuilding in a nonformal education project sponsored by Catholic Relief Services in Montenegro. Based upon qualitative fieldwork conducted in Montenegro in September of 2002, this section focuses on questions of the meaning of peacebuilding in that context and the use of a basic needs framework to interpret students' growth as “agents of peace.” The challenges of constructing indicators collaboratively with the staff of a development agency are also discussed. As a whole, this study raises critical questions about the nature and use of indicators and the challenge of “retrofitting” data onto a framework of basic psychological needs. The study suggests avenues for further research and implications for the construction of educational indicators based on a framework of psychological needs in both formal and nonformal learning environments. Such indicators could contribute to the goal of building a culture of peace, the author argues, by more clearly connecting students' experiences with the goals of nurturing optimally-functioning and non-violent human beings.

<p> The hospital setting provides an environment for patients to receive medical care, for medical professionals to provide treatment, and for medical students and residents to learn the practice of medicine through supervised patient encounters. Education provided at the point of care allows students and residents to apply knowledge and develop clinical skills needed for medical practice. The hospital environment is also a confluence of learning and work, where applied learning takes place in an integrated and simultaneous manner with work duties. This setting, referred to as the clinical learning environment (CLE), is a focus for educators, scholars, administrators, regulators and accrediting agencies to understand, measure and improve it. While several instruments have been developed to measure the CLE, they suffer from great variation in subscales and content. The purpose of this study is to deconstruct the CLE, apply theories from related fields, and frame those theories in the context of the hospital setting to develop a conceptual framework for the CLE. A systematic review of the literature and thematic synthesis of existing research about the CLE provided evidence to inform and test a learning environment framework in the clinical setting. Data from qualitative CLE assessments, the ACGME Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) <i>Pathways to Excellence</i>, and existing CLE measurement instruments informed these results. Findings showed that a CLE framework consists of three mediating factors: <i>learning</i>, <i>people</i>, and <i> change.</i> As the clinical setting is a unique environment for learning, the <i>people</i> dimension (as a community of practice) was found to be the most influential on learning outcomes for students. The dimension of <i>change</i> was found to be most influential from the perspective of improving organizational or work outcomes, including patient care, clinical quality and patient safety. Findings from this study provide researchers and scholars with a framework to for developing measures of clinical learning environment effectiveness, and informing practitioners of CLE components and relationships that impact both learning and organizational outcomes.</p>

<p> Urban public education is currently being remade to reflect corporate values and management structures. Charter CMO&rsquo;s particularly are constructed by policy as the most viable solution for &ldquo;turning around failing schools.&rdquo; To date, there are few, if any, insider accounts from charter management-operated (CMO) schools in the research literature. This project brings critical practitioner inquiry into this under-explored space in order to better understand the ways teachers and staff within one specific CMO-operated charter elementary school resist the dehumanizing forces of whiteness and deficit notions of teaching, learning, students, as well as the communities in which they serve. Using critical organizational theory and collaborative inquiry, as well as a narrative inquiry methodology, this project looks at the experiences of teachers and staff members as they enacted the &ldquo;no excuses&rdquo; philosophy over the course of one school year. First, the no excuses philosophy and management practices of College Prep Elementary School (CPES) will be explored. This includes narratives from staff members as they interpret their experiences being trained in the no excuses philosophy and how their views changed throughout the year. Then, the emotional reactions of the teachers and staff members will be more thoroughly analyzed as important intersections of identity and politics. Next, I explore stories of institutional microaggression and deficit shared by Staff of Color to gain a better understanding of the ways whiteness exists in schools. Finally, the inquiry group theorizes culturally competent school leadership, arriving at three main themes all resonating with the ethic of care: care for students, care for families and community, and care for teachers. In the final chapter, implications for policy and practice are shared, as well as the limitations of this study.</p>

<p> Despite the expressed need for bicultural teachers, research on teacher attrition has demonstrated that a growing number of bicultural educators are leaving the classroom. Bicultural male teachers, in particular, experience high rates of teacher attrition. Schools, unfortunately, are contexts in which Latino male teachers are constantly experiencing dilemmas related specifically to both their gendered and racialized positionality as males of color.</p><p> Grounded in Antonia Darder&rsquo;s critical bicultural framework, this autoethnographic study explored the complex factors that drive Latino male teachers out of the classroom, through an in-depth and grounded examination of a Latino male teacher who left the classroom. The study contributes to the conversation on bicultural teacher attrition, gendered relations, and their relationship to both teacher preparation and the education of bicultural students.</p><p> Furthermore, the study explored how racism, sexism, classism, trauma, and heteronormativity mitigate the experiences of Latino male teachers, and how these manifest themselves through the hidden curriculum, asymmetrical relations of power, gendered essentialism, policing of behavior, the culture of silence, conditions of isolation, and disabling cultural response patterns. The implications of such factors in the life of one Latino male teacher are carefully analyzed and discussed, in an effort to consider their significance in rethinking teacher preparation programs, with respect to the needs of Latino males. Moreover, the study offers an engagement with critical autoethnography as a significant tool of reflection in the educational process and emancipatory process of bicultural teachers.</p>

<p> Research indicates that teachers benefit from education coursework in their preparation that provides opportunities to develop and practice pedagogical understandings (Darling-Hammond, 2000, 2006). Research also indicates that opportunities to enact learning from coursework are beneficial in teacher efficacy development within teacher preparation (Tschannen-Moran, 2007). Therefore, teacher education programs need to examine their structures and practices in an effort to provide the opportunities to enact their coursework to develop teachers&rsquo; pedagogical understandings and teacher efficacy. What needs to be better understood are the actual structures and strategies within the communities of practice that provide and encourage opportunities for growth of teacher efficacy for pre-service teachers. A case study methodology was used to explore the structures and strategies that pre-service teachers identified as contributing to the development of teacher efficacy within the collaborative cohort during the fall 2015 semester in a teacher education preparation program located in the Rocky Mountain West. </p><p> The findings suggest that (a) school communities matter as a context for pre-service teacher efficacy development, (b) purposeful, aligned, situated learning experiences which bridge course and field work contribute to efficacy development, and (c) a mindset of continual professional growth within practice develops confidence.</p>

<p> Researchers in cross-cultural pedagogy often invoke the work of Hofstede (1980; 1986) and Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov (2010) to explain variation in classroom behavioral norms across countries (e.g. Cronj&eacute;, 2011; Li &amp; Guo, 2012; Tananuraksakul, 2013). Although Hofstede' s model of culture was developed from IBM employee surveys to facilitate cross-cultural management, Hofstede explicitly suggests that his findings can be generalized to student and teacher behavior in the classroom. The present study tests this suggestion by administering an online survey to university students (n=625) in the following countries: USA (n=181), South Africa (n=103), China (n=64), Turkey, (n=60), Russia, (n=59), Finland (n=58), Vietnam (n=52), and France (n=48). Although the number of countries included in this study is too low to produce globally generalizable results, a statistical comparison of national means on each item fails to support Hofstede's predictions about how national culture manifests in the classroom for these particular countries. Instead, provisional support is found for the creation of a new set of cultural dimensions for the specific purpose of studying classroom culture, with three such dimensions emerging from a principal components analysis of the present data set. The examination of national differences on individual items in this survey can also be useful for traveling instructors of English-speaking university classrooms. </p>

In the last thirty years childhood obesity and inactivity rates in the United States have increased at alarming rates (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2014). In response to this, physical education curriculum is shifting to focus more on health promotion rather than competitive team sports and game play. This focus is reflected in the recently revised K-12 physical education national content standards and learning outcomes and is impacting how colleges are preparing future teachers (SHAPE America (Organization), Couturier, Chepko, & Holt/Hale, 2014). Changing how physical education is taught can be challenging for teacher educators, in part due to the fact that students' deeply held beliefs about the purposes of physical education are often based on years of experience in traditional, PK-12, sports-based physical education programs (Placek et al., 1995). The purpose of this study was to explore how teacher candidates and recent graduates experience the process of occupational socialization into their profession as physical education teachers. Utilizing occupational socialization theory, this study examined factors that impacted participants' teaching perspectives and explored the beliefs they held about the goals and purposes of PK-12 physical education. The adoption of the national physical education standards by the Vermont Agency of Education, along with recent legislation (Act 77) that is changing the way schools prepare PK-12 students for college and careers, make the Vermont context a rich setting. This phenomenological case study was set within a small public university located in Vermont in the United States during the summer and fall of 2016. The units of analysis included five freshman year physical education candidates, five junior year physical education candidates, and five recent graduates, also from the same institution, who were employed as Vermont physical education teachers. Three secondary participants included a Vermont principal and two physical education teacher education faculty members. Data collection methods included eighteen semi-structured interviews and document review of course syllabi and student assessments. Findings suggested that participants: 1) enter the field with teaching orientations rather than coaching orientations, 2) believe that the purpose of physical education is lifelong health and wellness, 3) develop innovative teaching perspectives during teacher education that persist into teaching careers, and 4) identify as agents of change in the field of physical education. Understanding how students are socialized into careers as physical education teachers may inform the decision-making for physical education teacher education faculty and PK-12 physical education teachers.

<p> Within this qualitative multiple case study the ways in which music education specialists construct meaning out of their attitudes and beliefs concerning student musical aptitude and ability while assessing American-born and international students in the New England boarding school population were explored and explained. A phenomenological approach to data analysis was used in order to understand better the experiences of music education specialists within New England Boarding Schools and their attitudes and beliefs concerning musical aptitude and ability concerning the culturally and ethnically diverse students that they teach. </p><p> Eight overarching themes emerged during the process of analyzing data: (a) formative factors and influences, (b) acquisition of beliefs, (c) musical mastery and student needs, (d) music mastery and flexibility, (e) instructional approaches. (f) experience valued over formal education, (g) the benefits of autonomy, and (h) international student musical aptitude were identified as contributing to the process in which the participants constructed meaning out of their attitudes and beliefs concerning student musical aptitude and ability. The implication of this study for practice illustrates the need to create opportunities for music education specialists in which they can reflect and become more self-aware about the unconscious biases that they bring to their educational context particularly due to the diverse nature of the music programs within New England Boarding Schools. Recommendations for future research are: (a) whether the music programs in specific nation-states foster higher levels of musical aptitude and ability among students who participate in them; (b) exploration of the methods that school leaders in New England Boarding Schools utilize to better support teachers of diverse students in the adoption of inclusive, intercultural instructional strategies; (c) the policies that school leaders in New England Boarding Schools utilize to better support teachers of diverse students in the adoption of inclusive, intercultural instructional strategies, and; (d) the benefits of offering undergraduate music performance majors coursework focused on the literature and pedagogy of the instrument that they are studying in their degree program.</p>

<p> Contemporary research in veterinary medical education indicates alarming rates of depression and anxiety among veterinary students. Yet, the focus of this scholarship is primarily on mental illness as effects of a social and relational process, rather than interrogating the affectual nature of the process. Medical education has a long history of interrogating various facets of socialization as largely embedded in the hidden curricula&mdash;the tacit culture of a social entity, and repository for values and norms of conduct. Unfortunately, scant scholarship explores the hidden curricula of veterinary medicine. Recently, an anonymous letter signed Young Veterinarian was published on a public website, and opened an electronic dialogue regarding the nature of affects imbedded in professional socialization. Many themes of the letter referred to issues imbedded in the literature. This study followed this online dialogue, and initiated one in a College of Veterinary Medicine. Centering this letter, object-focused interviews were conducted to explore how members of this community are affected by the anonymous letter. Analytical insights suggest three broad areas of affects related to the hidden curricula: Onto-epistemic tensions; affective neutrality; and freedom, debt, and hopelessness. Implications for research and professional practice/curricula are discussed and deliberated. </p><p>