<p> When elite men's colleges began to open their doors to women in the late 1960s, elite women's colleges were faced with a dilemma that threatened their institutions' continued existence. These colleges needed to redefine their purpose and communicate a new image in order to remain successful in a challenging environment. To investigate this process, I studied how three elite women's colleges responded to the challenging landscape of the 1970s, particularly the specific challenge of responding to elite men's colleges' conversion to coeducation. These elite women's colleges were successfully able to promote a new image of their institutions that argued for their validity, and the women's movement was an important influence on that process. Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley decided to remain single-sex colleges for women after the elite men's colleges moved to coeducation, and I argue that they were able to do so because student opinion drastically changed in the early 1970s due to the influence of the women's movement. Despite similar goals, the elite women's colleges and the women's movement have not always supported each other. Although their relationship was strained, women's colleges benefited from the women's movement, not only because it changed students' opinions, but also because the women's movement opened up career opportunities and encouraged women to pursue them. This made it possible for women's colleges to successfully create and disseminate a new image based on the assertion that they best prepared young women for professional careers. This new image, grounded in an attack on coeducation that also borrowed from the women's movement, made it possible for women's college to justify their continued existence.</p>

This dissertation examines childhood, education, and designed environments as interrelated concerns. It explores the ways in which, in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe, gardens and architecture were understood as important instruments in pedagogical theory and practice, often being deployed as primary instruments in the education of young children. In order to establish the primacy of these spaces in the pedagogical imagination of this period, the study interrogates texts and images produced in France and Germany between 1761 and 1850. The analysis develops through a series of case studies that are connected historically, beginning with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761) and Émile, ou de l’éducation (1762), two works that established some of the issues and concerns that were later adopted by progressive educators in Germany. The study then turns to the work of Johann Bernhard Basedow, Christian Heinrich Wolke, and other German pedagogues associated with the Philanthropinum, an experimental school founded in Dessau in 1774. A discussion of the historical context brings to light their reinvention of the garden as a space for physical training; their use of pictures, architectural models, and scientific instruments in the development of the child’s powers of observation; and their activation of architecture as a cognitive filter for the perception of the world. The study concludes with a discussion of a paradigmatic garden for early childhood education, Friedrich Froebel’s Kindergarten, as it was theoretically formulated and visually represented in 1850. Rather than investigating actual gardens or spaces, the research concentrates on the ways in which these settings were imagined, described, and represented in pedagogical texts. The methodology through which these narratives and representations are approached deliberately aims to bring into focus an understudied aspect of the material culture of childhood by expanding the context of analysis of distinct disciplinary histories. By bringing together various field-specific studies—the intellectual history of modern Europe and the histories of landscape, of education, and of childhood—this dissertation uncovers the ways in which educators in this period conceived of the performative power of space.

<p>Effective teacher training and preparation is widely recognized as key in raising student achievement. This historical study examined the influence of the normal school movement, one of the first concrete approaches to the preparation and training of public school teachers in the nineteenth century in the United States. Specifically, this study investigated the influence of the vision of teaching and learning of Nicholas Tillinghast, the first principal of Bridgewater State Normal School between 1840 and 1853, and of the &ldquo;sons of Bridgewater,&rdquo; the students of Tillinghast who became normal school principals across the United States. Primary source and archived documents such as personal correspondence, diaries, conference records, and newsletters, and photographs were used to conduct this study. As a result of this study, normal schools, which were regionally impacted as they were established across the United States, emerged as an unrecognized, yet significant factor in the evolution of teacher training programs. The work of Nicholas Tillinghast and the sons of Bridgewater during the nineteenth century made a significant impact on the spread and evolution of the normal school movement and played an important role in the professionalization of teaching. </p>

<p>Since the early 1980s Holocaust education and genocide studies programs at the primary, secondary and post-secondary educational levels have become commonplace and an accepted element of public school curriculum. As these programs and their curricula gained acceptance within public education, efforts to increase awareness of genocidal events outside and beyond the European Holocaust as well as increased attention paid to ethnic studies programs have also gained traction in public schooling. These efforts manifested themselves in the mid to late 1990s to include the Great Irish Famine (1845&ndash;1852) as a sub-study of greater Holocaust/genocide studies in both the states of New Jersey and New York. More than ten years after the formal adoption of the official state-sponsored Great Irish Famine curricula, their impact, influence and utilization remain unclear. This paper examines the history behind the creation of both New Jersey and New York Famine Curricula, compares and contrasts the two documents, examines their use in both states&rsquo; public schools, and suggests potential revisions to each Famine curriculum. </p>

Guinea, a former French colony, experienced an abrupt severing of relationships with the colonial power when President Sékou Touré rejected De Gaulle’s offer of becoming part of a French commonwealth of nations and opted for total independence instead. France withdrew all support, trade and personnel within a matter of days, and Sékou Touré attempted to develop this new nation along strongly independent and ideological lines. He made a verbal commitment to social development and evolved an ambitious programme to develop the health and education services. This thesis uses dependency theory as a tool of analysis to ascertain whether independent, autonomous development indeed took place, particularly in the fields of health and education, once the break with the metropolis was made. The period under review, 1958 - 1984, was the period of Sékou Touré’s presidency. The four criteria used to assess the measure of development achieved are: a) The successful rejection of Western models of development. b) Equal development and an equal distribution of resources between the regions. c) No urban/rural imbalance. d) Services available for all rather than limited to an elite. In the light of these criteria, Guinea was indeed able to experience some measure of independent, autonomous development, more particularly in education. The health sector had been less developed as only 2.1% of the national budget was devoted to it in 1981, compared to 17.6% spent on education in 1980. The inequalities in the health service were particularly noticeable in the urban/rural imbalance, Conakry in particular enjoying a larger share of available resources, but this was not the case in education where no such imbalance appeared to exist. The area of Labé emerged as the least developed area of the country but the discrepancies in provision were not too marked. Guinea also achieved much in the promotion of women and the eradication of elites, especially among the different ethnic groups. With the death of President Sékou Touré in 1984, Guinea's experimenting with a revolutionary form of development came to an end. The nation's future, now in the hands of the military, is uncertain.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2243. Adviser: Cara A. Finnegan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-303) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-144) and indexes.

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-144) and indexes.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0505. Adviser: John Grashel. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 436-521) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.