Thesis. 1972. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. MOTION PICTURE AVAILABLE IN ROTCH VISUAL COLLECTIONS ONLY. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographies. / by Patricia Elizabeth Thompson. / M.C.P.

This study investigates the way traditional and alternative secondary public school organizations are structured to impact youths. Some studies have found that traditional secondary schools utilize inappropriate and outdated organizational elements and arrangements. Alternative schools with different organizational arrangements have been initiated in public school districts to institute school reform measures. The three goals of this study are to: (1) collate a large share of the literature on the function, social context and organizational characteristics of conventional and alternative secondary public school organizations, (2) explicate a theoretical framework or interrelated set of propositions of organizational principles regarding modern organizations, including secondary schools, and (3) describe and analyze one alternative high school in Colorado. The theoretical exploration of the literature and case study will address the following questions: (1) what organizational models do conventional and alternative high schools utilize? (2) What are the organizational elements of conventional and alternative secondary public schools? (3) What types of conventional and alternative secondary schools exist in urban areas? (4) How do conventional and alternative high school organizations bear up to the charges leveled against secondary education in America? (5) What are the organizational characteristics of the alternative school in Colorado? (6) What type of alternative school is Mountain Open High School (MOHS)? (7) How does MOHS measure up to the charges leveled against American secondary education? (8) How is MOHS similar or dissimilar to public secondary schools reviewed in the literature? Data for the exploration of the organizational characteristics of traditional and alternative secondary public schools include the following sources: (1) consultation with experts in the field, (2) in-depth literature review, and (3) historical and document analysis. Data for the case study include the following sources: (1) in-depth interviews with 13 student volunteers, the principal, and other staff, (2) field observations, and (3) historical and document analysis. The results show that traditional secondary public schools utilize a bureaucratic organizational framework but organizational characteristics of schools vary according to their function and student body composition. Also, alternative secondary schools exist under bureaucratic principles but differ according to their function and organizational arrangements. The case study of MOHS demonstrates one model with instituted school reform measures.

While the challenge of improving young North Americans’ civic engagement seems to lie in the hands of schools, studying alternative ways of teaching citizenship education could benefit the current educational system. In this context, free schools (i.e., schools run democratically by students and teachers), guided by a philosophy that aims at engaging students civically through the democratic activities that they support, offer a relatively unexplored ground for research. The present inquiry is a case study using tools of ethnography and drawing upon some principles of complexity thinking. It aims at understanding students’ citizenship education experiences during democratic activities in a Canadian free school. It describes many experiences that can arise from these activities. They occurred within a school that operated democratically based on a consensus-model. More precisely, they took place during two kinds of democratic activities: class meetings, which regulated the social life of the school, and judicial committees, whose function was to solve conflicts at the school. During these activities, students mostly experienced a combination of feelings of appreciation, concernment and empowerment. While experiencing these feelings, they predominantly engaged in decision-making and conflict resolution processes. During these processes, students modified their conflict resolutions skills, various conceptions, and their participation in democratic activities and in the school. Based on these findings, the study concludes that students can develop certain skills and attitude associated to citizenship education during these activities and become active from a citizenship perspective. Hence, these democratic activities represent alternative strategies that can assist educators in teaching about citizenship.

While the challenge of improving young North Americans’ civic engagement seems to lie in the hands of schools, studying alternative ways of teaching citizenship education could benefit the current educational system. In this context, free schools (i.e., schools run democratically by students and teachers), guided by a philosophy that aims at engaging students civically through the democratic activities that they support, offer a relatively unexplored ground for research. The present inquiry is a case study using tools of ethnography and drawing upon some principles of complexity thinking. It aims at understanding students’ citizenship education experiences during democratic activities in a Canadian free school. It describes many experiences that can arise from these activities. They occurred within a school that operated democratically based on a consensus-model. More precisely, they took place during two kinds of democratic activities: class meetings, which regulated the social life of the school, and judicial committees, whose function was to solve conflicts at the school. During these activities, students mostly experienced a combination of feelings of appreciation, concernment and empowerment. While experiencing these feelings, they predominantly engaged in decision-making and conflict resolution processes. During these processes, students modified their conflict resolutions skills, various conceptions, and their participation in democratic activities and in the school. Based on these findings, the study concludes that students can develop certain skills and attitude associated to citizenship education during these activities and become active from a citizenship perspective. Hence, these democratic activities represent alternative strategies that can assist educators in teaching about citizenship.

While the challenge of improving young North Americans’ civic engagement seems to lie in the hands of schools, studying alternative ways of teaching citizenship education could benefit the current educational system. In this context, free schools (i.e., schools run democratically by students and teachers), guided by a philosophy that aims at engaging students civically through the democratic activities that they support, offer a relatively unexplored ground for research. The present inquiry is a case study using tools of ethnography and drawing upon some principles of complexity thinking. It aims at understanding students’ citizenship education experiences during democratic activities in a Canadian free school. It describes many experiences that can arise from these activities. They occurred within a school that operated democratically based on a consensus-model. More precisely, they took place during two kinds of democratic activities: class meetings, which regulated the social life of the school, and judicial committees, whose function was to solve conflicts at the school. During these activities, students mostly experienced a combination of feelings of appreciation, concernment and empowerment. While experiencing these feelings, they predominantly engaged in decision-making and conflict resolution processes. During these processes, students modified their conflict resolutions skills, various conceptions, and their participation in democratic activities and in the school. Based on these findings, the study concludes that students can develop certain skills and attitude associated to citizenship education during these activities and become active from a citizenship perspective. Hence, these democratic activities represent alternative strategies that can assist educators in teaching about citizenship.

Diss. Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2007.

Free Schools entail increased involvement from civil society actors in the provision of State-funded education in England. The increased devolution of freedoms and responsibilities to these 'self-governing' schools is reflected in a significant range of strategic decisions made through the development process. These include decisions over such issues as religious character, social purpose, educational priorities and innovations in organisation. However, which factors influence the exercise of these strategic freedoms within local experiences of the strategic development processes remains unclear. Existing literature and media debate has predominantly focussed on justification for these structural reforms and their educational and social outcomes. In maintaining focus at the macroscopic level the link between policy and outcomes is assumed. Furthermore, discussion at this level may ignore important features of the provision within Free Schools at the local level. This study focusses on how the social experiences of governors provide an alternative narrative within the broader debate on structural reform. It presents empirical findings focused on the reported experiences from 21 governor interviews with those responsible for the development of three Free Schools. Analysis followed a grounded theory methodology in which theoretical sampling was influenced by a broader range of interview, survey and secondary data. Coding of the data revealed that the formation of the vision and purpose, diverse relationships, continuous reorganisation and the positioning of oneself relative to others were recurring themes in the experiences reported within and between the schools. In order to explain the diversity of experiences in relation to these themes three categories were developed, namely motivations, relating and power. Similarities and differences in motivations (including personal relationships, vested interests and subjective judgements), relations (including social groupings and experiences of specific interactions) and power (including its configuration, perpetuation and dynamism) were analysed across the participant accounts. Diverse and manifold motivations and relations emerge in complex responsive processes of relating through which tacit hierarchies, sub-group identities and individual interests emerge in the conduct of loosely defined roles. It is concluded that the freedoms to self-define expose governors to diverse social influences on development. The enduring influence of founding relationships challenges the capacity of governors to maintain the balance required of the critical friend role. Furthermore, the local reallocation of diverse value propositions in school provision does not guarantee the relevance of schools to their communities, or democratic accountability over public spending.

While the challenge of improving young North Americans’ civic engagement seems to lie in the hands of schools, studying alternative ways of teaching citizenship education could benefit the current educational system. In this context, free schools (i.e., schools run democratically by students and teachers), guided by a philosophy that aims at engaging students civically through the democratic activities that they support, offer a relatively unexplored ground for research. The present inquiry is a case study using tools of ethnography and drawing upon some principles of complexity thinking. It aims at understanding students’ citizenship education experiences during democratic activities in a Canadian free school. It describes many experiences that can arise from these activities. They occurred within a school that operated democratically based on a consensus-model. More precisely, they took place during two kinds of democratic activities: class meetings, which regulated the social life of the school, and judicial committees, whose function was to solve conflicts at the school. During these activities, students mostly experienced a combination of feelings of appreciation, concernment and empowerment. While experiencing these feelings, they predominantly engaged in decision-making and conflict resolution processes. During these processes, students modified their conflict resolutions skills, various conceptions, and their participation in democratic activities and in the school. Based on these findings, the study concludes that students can develop certain skills and attitude associated to citizenship education during these activities and become active from a citizenship perspective. Hence, these democratic activities represent alternative strategies that can assist educators in teaching about citizenship.

The aim of this study is to examine the different types of challenges and struggles that religious students face in the Swedish school system, more specifically the different struggles that occur within the Swedish subject of religious studies. This will be done by analysing different types of opinion forming articles that expresses how religious students are excluded from the subject and the school environment. The questions that will lead this study and determine which direction of development it will take, are the following. 1.     What are the problems and challenges being expressed in each of the opinion forming articles? 2.     Do the different types of religious traditions problems and challenges that are more characteristic for their own specific situation? 3.     How can these problems and challenges that are identified within opinion forming articles, be depicted, and further understood through the Kittelmanns operationalization of secularity/secularism? When it comes to the opinion forming articles that will be examined, a demarcation has been made to articles that concerns the Abrahamitic religions, i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These articles will be examined with a qualitative text analysis and more specifically, with the methods of qualitative text condensation and discourse analysis. Karin Kittelmann has in her thesis (2015) concluded that a secular discourse exists within the classroom for the subject of religion within the Swedish schools, and that the secular discourse perpetuates itself as a hegemonic position. This study will use Kittelmanns operationalization of secularity and secularism to analyse the articles to further understand how the classroom environment relates to a society that has been strongly described as secular. The conclusion this study makes is that a strong secularism is present within the classroom for the subject of religion in Sweden, but also that this presence is crucial for understanding the secularity of Sweden.