Physical education (PE) is recognized by public health officials as a medium capable of addressing various health-related behaviors, and middle school students perceptions and attitudes toward a cooperative PE curriculum have yet to be identified. This study sought to determine the perceptions and attitudes 10 middle school students have toward cooperative activities in PE class with the notion that the results would benefit both teachers and researchers. Two theories were used to guide this study: Bandura's social cognitive theory, and Harter's competence motivation theory. The research questions focused on identifying the attitudes and perceptions middle school students have toward cooperative activities in PE class and utilized a qualitative study with a case study approach. Focus groups, observations, and teacher interviews were data sources analyzed using open, axial, and selective coding. Triangulation of the data stemming from the three data sources supported the emergent theories that middle school students feel good participating in cooperative activities when they are done in small groups, there are chances to help others, and the activities provide an opportunity for all students to equally participate both physically and verbally. It is recommended that PE teachers, curriculum writers, and trainers of PE teachers consider cooperative activities when deciding how PE classes can be structured for middle school students. Implications for positive social change included empowering students to have more autonomy with their PE curriculum, which can lead to increased participation. Training PE teachers to effectively facilitate cooperative activities could provide students the opportunity to learn and build motor skill while learning experientially and benefiting mentally and physically.

Despite research that indicates that internationally adopted children are at greater risk for poor developmental outcomes than their non-adopted peers (Bimmel, Juffer, IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2003; Juffer, & van IJzendoorn, 2005), girls adopted from China into Western culture tend to thrive, exhibiting high self-esteem, low behavior problems (i.e., both externalizing and internalizing), and excelling academically (Rojewski, Shapiro, & Shapiro, 2000; Tan & Jordan-Arthur, 2012). However, few studies have examined whether this trend continues into adolescence, as well as to what factors lead to these positive outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate predictors of mental health outcomes among internationally adopted adolescent Chinese girls, particularly factors that predicted levels of internalizing pathology (e.g., depression and anxiety) in adolescence. To fulfill this purpose, a secondary data analysis (N = 167) of information collected as part of a longitudinal study of U.S. international adoptions of Chinese children (2005-present) was completed using a hierarchical regression approach. Overall, these variables (e.g., age at adoption, pre-adoption adversity, family stress, parenting style, adolescent self-esteem, and academic competence) predicted 35% of the variance in internalizing behavior outcomes. The positive adjustment that has been seen in childhood continued to adolescence in this study, with 88% of the adolescent girls reporting Total Internalizing T-scores of less than 60 (i.e., in the normal range) on the Youth Self-Report form on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001b). Authoritative parenting style and self-esteem showed the strongest relations to internalizing behaviors. Implications of the study for practice and discussion of future research based on these findings are explored.

This Cultural Studies dissertation comes from extended research on three East Tennessee school districts as they attempted to integrate after the Supreme Court mandated an end to segregation in the United States. The study focuses on the experiences of former students of Austin High School, the segregated black school on the eastern edge of Knoxville, Tennessee. From looking at their schooling experiences in the context of the area's failed attempts to integrate, I address the myriad ways these participants and white citizens took up the term community to advance or block integration efforts. Community, I argue from this research, is a socially constructed discourse situated in a specific context of power that can simultaneously empower and oppress targeted groups in its creation. This study that centers on the stories of alumni of Austin High shows the negotiation of local power as defined through the efforts to maintain geographically separate spaces for each race in their schools and neighborhoods. In my research, I developed a methodology called historical ethnography to address these questions. By employing a historical ethnographic approach, I attempted to show that the history of education must take into account that schooling is not an experience lived and remembered, but one that is continually relived in every act of remembering. Therefore, it is not a standard historical account of a segregated school. It is an interdisciplinary exploration of how power can be recreated in schools through claims to community and how my participants engaged that power still in recounting their own school experiences.

This study uses mixed methods to examine the experiences of African American women in doctoral programs. 102 African American women completed an on-line survey, and twenty women participated in one-on-one interviews. As an African American female, the researcher is interested in comparing the experiences of African American women: critiquing, analyzing and interpreting similarities and points of divergence in their experiences, and articulating stories of triumph and struggle, using a narrative style. This study confirms that Black women have experienced success in doctoral programs. Some of the participants had meaningful and supportive mentors. They have had limited exposure to Black faculty and/or scholarship. The participants in this study illuminate the dynamics inherent in their relationships with their dissertation committee members, particularly the chairs of their respective committees. In addition, this study explores the discordant relationship between Black female graduate students and Black female dissertation committee members. A majority of the participants were unfamiliar with the term Afrocentricity. They did not fathom that Afrocentricity could be used as a methodological or theoretical framework. All the participants exhibited at least one tenet of Afrocentricity. They are testimonies of the veracity of the Sankofian principles of looking back, reclaiming, and retelling their collective stories. These stories serve as inspiration for some and models of commitment for others.

China’s curriculum system has been undergoing substantial transformations since 1986. In response to public criticism of the highly prescribed national curriculum, the central state of China is attempting to build a more inclusive system which is composed of national curriculum, province curriculum and school-based curriculum. The new curriculum system accommodates more flexibility in carrying out national curriculum policies and even encourages local input in curriculum development and management. Apparently, the current curriculum reform in China is moving toward decentralization. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the complexity of decentralization reform in China’s curriculum system and examine the dynamics of policy formulation and outcomes of reform efforts in great depth. The main argument made in this socio-philosophical work is that the on-going Chinese curriculum reform is a process of centralized decentralization, which merely transfers work to the local level but not real authority. With an inquiry into the impetus of current Chinese curriculum reform, this theoretical research illustrates that centralized decentralization is taken as a strategic imperative by the state to avoid loss of control over school curriculum that carries particular social and political significance for China in a transitional period. Another major task for this cultural studies research is to problematize the strategy of centralized decentralization, investigating the consequences of the superficial decentralization in reality and analyzing the bottlenecks in promoting current Chinese curriculum reform. In this research, Mark Hanson’s conceptual framework of education decentralization is used to clarify ambiguity in defining decentralization reform in the education sector in China. Meanwhile, Foucault’s theory about power/knowledge and governmentality and Williams’ theory about hegemony are used to deepen the understanding of the state-education relationship in contemporary China. Besides a descriptive analysis of phenomena in current Chinese curriculum reform, the discussion is deployed through pragmatic approach and logic-based reasoning. Most data are obtained from literature review, including previous studies on Chinese education reform, government documents, laws and regulations related to current Chinese curriculum reform.

John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant authored two of the most famous pieces of work in ethical theory (Utilitarianism and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, respectively), yet both fail for various reasons to give us direction by way of living good lives. This thesis begins by outlining those shortcomings, before offering Aristotelian virtue ethics as the solution. Virtue ethics, as conceived by Aristotle, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Julia Annas, delineates a process – grounded in our real lives – by which we may improve as people and therefore flourish, or live good, moral lives: the habituation of the virtues. Importantly, virtue ethics is a process, (not a set of outcomes) and is teachable, which distinguishes it from the other two theories. In developing the virtues, we are able to discover goods internal to the practices that define our lives, whether those are our work, our school, our relationships, or something else entirely. Furthermore, the virtue-ethical approach helps us learn from and grow in our emotional lives, as opposed to casting emotions aside as a skewing force contrary to morality. Virtue, as I will show, lays the groundwork for love, and therefore for flourishing relationships across our lives. In the final chapter, I examine a place where virtue and virtuous love are effectively taught and embraced: Camp Lanakila, in Fairlee, VT. I conclude by offering some takeaways from Lanakila that we may incorporate in our schools, our places of work and worship, our families, and our lives.

O percurso teórico desta tese se inicia por uma reflexão de teor psicanalítico sobre a Didática Magna de Comênio, reflexão por meio da qual se pretende dar a ver as muitas \"ressonâncias\" que há entre o comeniano \"ensino de tudo a todos\" (ensino esse que, a despeito das aparências, não chega de fato a ser \"totalizante\", \"completo\", ou \"acabado\") e o \"ensino não-todo\", tal como é pensado no âmbito da Psicanálise e Educação. E ora, um ensino não-todo é precisamente o que contempla as hiâncias estruturais ao conhecimento (uma vez que este é, necessariamente, inacabável, inconcluso, não-findo etc.). Nesses termos, na medida em que um professor veicula um ensino \"inacabável e inacabado\" ou um ensino que coloca em ato o não-saber o aluno pode então encontrar espaço para se interrogar e, logo, para se implicar subjetivamente com o que lhe é ensinado (e de tal forma que se constitua para ele - muito embora em negativo ou latentemente - um saber singular a partir da transmissão de conhecimentos socialmente validados). Em outras palavras: no avesso do imprescindível ensino escolar de conhecimentos, de conteúdos, de enunciados relativos ao que é já-sabido, é crucial que tanto o professor quanto o aluno sejam invocados - a partir de diferentes posições discursivas - ao nível mesmo do desejo inconsciente que os habita, isto é, que sejam invocados em sua estrutural falta-em-saber, em suas enunciações, em sua irrepetibilidade, e sem o que a reprodução de conhecimentos manifestos - seja por parte de quem ensina ou de quem aprende - não passaria senão de massificação, de mera universalização uniformizante. Eis, assim, que um ensino não-todo demandará que o professor não se posicione como um replicador de conhecimentos públicos, já que deve ele colocar em tal ensino algo de singular, algo de seu, de sua irrepetível enunciação. Ou como diz Comênio: a erudição e os instrumentos já preparados não dispensam a viva voz do professor. E é, precisamente, essa viva voz que, em princípio, pode dar vida aos conhecimentos livrescos (os livros são nossos mestres mudos, disse Comênio), e de modo que se suscite o desejo do aluno de vir a despertar para uma nova vida tais conhecimentos públicos. Eis que nisso é que se encontra cifrada a transmissão. / The theoretical trajectory of this thesis begins with a discussion of psychoanalytic sense about Comenius´s Magna Didactics. Through this reflection we aim to demonstrate many \"resonances\" that exist between the comenian \"teach everything to everyone\" (teaching that despite appearances is not in fact \"totalizing\", \"complete\" or \"finished\") and the \"not-all teaching\", as it is thought within Psychoanalysis and Education. And so, a not-all teaching is precisely the one that contemplates the structural gaps of knowledge (since it is necessarily endless, inconclusive, non-ending, etc.). In these terms, it is as a teacher conveys an \"endless and unfinished\" teaching or a teaching that puts in act the not-knowing that the student may find chance to bring something into question and thus, imply him or herself subjectively in what is taught (and so that it constitutes to oneself - even though in \"negative\" or latently - a singular knowledge from a transmission socially validated). In other words, on the reverse of an indispensable teaching of school knowledge, the content, the statements related to what is \"already-known\", it is crucial that both teacher and student are invoked - from different discursive positions to the level of unconscious desire that dwells in them, that is to say, that they are invoked in their own structural lack of knowledge, in their utterances, in their uniqueness, and without which the reproduction of evident knowledge no matter if it is related to the one who teaches or learns would be just a massification, a mere uniforming universalization. Then, a not-all teaching will require that the teacher does not put him or herself just as a replicator of public knowledge, since he must deposit in such teaching something unique, something of his, something from its unrepeatable enunciation. Or as in Comenius: erudition and tools already prepared do not exempt the living voice of a teacher. And it is precisely this alive voice that in principle may bring life to bookish knowledge (books are our dumb masters, said Comenius), and so that can raise a students desire to awake such public knowledge to a new life. Thus, that is how transmission is cyphered.

The purpose of this research was to determine whether there were biases among funeral home and cemetery professionals with regards to hiring mortuary science graduates with tattoos. An anonymous survey including a photograph of either a male or female with various degrees of visible body art, ranging from none to extreme, was sent to 1484 members of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association. The primary methodology used to determine whether biases existed regarding visible body art were a semantic differential and a hireability scale. The survey was designed to gather information related to the following three research questions: 1. What are employers’ perceptions regarding hireability of individuals based on extent of visible body art? 2. Are there differences in the employers’ perceptions regarding visible body art based on the gender of the individuals in the photographs? 3. What are the differences in perceptions regarding visible body art based on respondent age, gender, and their own extent of visible body art? Of the surveys distributed, responses totaled 151. Due to incomplete information, 74 were discarded. The number of surveys used in the analysis was 77. Results indicated no specific biases of employers' perception towards potential hirees with body art. These results were based on multiple categories, including age and gender of respondent, extent of body art of respondent, and respondent position within their companies. Although the responses were neutral and showed no significant bias towards hirees with body art, mortuary science students should be aware of potential biases of the families served by the funeral homes, including age of the deceased and family members, as well as the conservative nature of the funeral profession.

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The notion of service has enjoyed historical longevity—rooted deeply within our institutions (i.e., churches, schools, government, military, etc.), reminiscent of indentured servitude, and rarely questioned as a colonizing practice that upholds oppression. Given the relentless insertion of service learning programs into working class communities, the sacrosanctity awarded and commonsensically given to service is challenged and understood within its colonial, historical, philosophical, economic, and ideological machinations. This political confrontation of service learning practices serves to: (a) critique the dominant epistemologies that reproduce social inequalities within the context of service learning theory and practice; and (b) move toward the formulation of a critical bicultural service learning theory and critical principles, in line with the humanizing and emancipatory intent of a critical decolonizing pedagogical practice. This dissertation is deeply influenced by the writings of Brazilian educational philosopher Paulo Freire and critical activist scholar Antonia Darder, among others, and incisively examines and critiques service learning through critical bicultural pedagogy and critical decolonizing interpretive methodology. As a radical political project, Darder’s decolonizing interpretive theoretical framework provides an opportunity to rupture the abyssal divide that epistemologically privileges the Eurocentric service learning discourse in an effort to place bicultural voices, scholarship, and communities at the forefront of this educational movement. In seeking to move toward equality and liberatory practices, both politically and pedagogically, it is imperative that critical consciousness be the guide to ensure that society does not stand by and accept the displacement and dehumanization of the oppressed by culturally invasive practices of service.