Thesis (Ed.D.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2006. / Thesis advisor: Penelope Lisi "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-144). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This research seeks to explore cultural explanations of educational achievement of Gujarati children of junior school age. Chapter one establishes the multicultural education context of the research. In the second chapter, researches relating to the Gujarati communities in Britain are reviewed. The third chapter is concerned with development of a deductive theory on the basis of a set of propositions. These propositions encapsulate findings from research as well as theoretical insights into the educational achievement of Asian children. The chapter ends with a series of hypotheses about socialisation and cultural experiences of the pupils in the family and their achievement in school as well as about 'stress' between home and school. The fourth chapter entitled The Research Procedures provides an account of instrumentation undertaken in the light of the discussions in the previous chapters. The instrumentation is in the form of grids consisting of a matrix of ten constructs and twelve elements and relate to Achievement, Culture and Curriculum. The chapter also includes a description of the independent variables constructed from the grids. Explanations are also provided for the bases for the selection of statistical techniques used. The results of various statistical analyses form the subject matter of the following three chapters entitled Discussion of Results (Chapter Five), Achievement, Culture, and Curriculum (Chapter Six), and 'Deviant Cases' (Chapter Seven) respectively. Regression analyses are used to test the deductive theory. The findings indicate that the deductive theory is not supported by the evidence. Indscal analyses are used to derive salient dimensions in groups with regard to achievement, culture and the curriculum, which are described in Chapter Six. The grids for six 'deviant cases' are analysed individually using principal components analysis in order to gain further understanding of the results. This analysis highlights certain characteristics of high achieving and low achieving pupils. These are presented in Chapter Seven. The final chapter, entitled Retrospect and Prospect (Chapter Eight), provides a discussion of triangulation in theory and method to increase the utility of deductive theories and as an aid in further development of 'middle range' theories. The chapter ends with suggestions for further research.

This research follows work conducted by the Education team at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick into the development and implementation of Local Education Authority (L. E. A. ) policies on Multicutural and Anti-Racist Education. It consists of a detailed ethnographic case study of a multi-ethnic, inner-city comprehensive school which espoused a commitment to Multicultural and Anti- Racist Education, and concentrates on the school's efforts to put this commitment into practice. Initially the study provides an elaboration of the values underpinning Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education, most notably equal opportunities and education for a non-racist society, and a discussion of the implication of these values for school practice. This discussion provides a model with which the practices in the case study school are compared. A number of theoretical questions concerning the extent to which within-school processes contribute to reproduction of the social characteristics of modern society are also introduced. A detailed decription of the social context, structure and organisation of the school is presented and then the study facusses on the development of L. E. A. and school policies on Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education, teachers' interpretations of and responses to these policies, and the practice of Multicultural and Anti- Racist Education in the school, The study also examines the processes of differentiation and how they affected ethnic minority students. Finally it examines the strategies which many teachers adopted in order to 'survive' as teachers in what was a 'difficult' inner city school and the implications of these strategies for the educational opportunities available to the students who attended the school. The overall argument presented is that the teachers in the school had gone a considerable way towards developing Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education especially in curriculum terms, and had succeeded in creating a non-racist environment within the school. The study found that there were few practices which restricted the chances of educational success of ethnic minority students within the school. However, teachers were forced to adopt 'survival strategies' in order to cope in the classroom and school with students who were sometimes hostile and frequently indifferent to their schooling, and thus the quality of educational provision offered to the students was reduced. Such student attitudes, it is suggested, were derived from wider youth, class and ethnic sub-cultures generated outside the school in part by the structural features of contemporary society. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the research findings for school and L. E. A. policies on Multicultural and Anti- Racist Education and makes suggestions for further research.

<p> Current statistics in education suggest a systemic problem of racist disciplinary practices in schools, as Black males have been demonstrated to be overwhelmingly overrepresented in the practices of school discipline (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014). While researchers have begun to explore the causes of this phenomenon to find solutions to counteract this trend (Gillborn, 2014; Skiba et al., 2014), little has been done to examine how racism&mdash;in the form of racial colorblindness&mdash;may play a role in manifesting the discipline gap and perpetuate structural racism in schools. Considering that a majority of the teaching force in the Northwest are white, this research examines how racial color-blind ideologies (Bonilla-Silva, 2014; Neville, Awad, Brooks, Flores, &amp; Bluemel, 2013) and deficit thinking (Valencia, 2010) are related to ideologies of school discipline, which perhaps condition discipline in schools. </p><p> This quantitative research combines Neville, Lilly, Duran, Lee, and Browne's (2000) Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale, items from Skiba et al.&rsquo;s (2003) Disciplinare Practices Survey, and scales developed for this study, designed to address deficit thinking (Valencia, 2010) and attitudes toward Black males within disciplinary contexts. An online survey was administered to practitioners in contrasting educational communities within the Northwest. Correlation analyses included examining relationships between components of the survey within and in-between organizations. Furthermore, this study introduces new scale items to address attitudes toward Black males within educational discipline settings, further penetrating the literature base on the topic. </p><p> Findings demonstrate significant correlations between color-blind, deficit thinking, and pro-discipline attitudes, suggesting a relationship between educators&rsquo; attitudes toward the justification for discipline and color-blind attitudes are perhaps an interwoven issue which contributes to racial disparities in school discipline. These data suggest a need for developing the racial identities of a predominantly white educational workforce in the effort to eliminate the discipline gap.</p><p>

<p> Given the large homogeneous workforce of predominately White, middle-class female K&ndash;12 educators combined with the rising population of diverse students in the United States and the disproportionate achievement gap of students of color compared to their White peers, I sought to discover how new millennial educators defined and used empathy to build their own cultural competencies as well as discover how these teachers used empathy to strengthen the teacher-student relationships across cultural differences. Using the conceptual frameworks of Paulo Freire&rsquo;s (1970) pedagogy and Wang et al.&rsquo;s (2003) definition of ethno-cultural empathy, I conducted a critical narrative inquiry of five first-year teachers who did not share the racial or ethnic background of the majority of their students of color. From the participants&rsquo; stories, six major themes surfaced: (a) the role of empathy in the teacher-student relationships, (b) the struggle between empathy and sympathy, (c) their contrasting views on empathy and content, (d) the relationship between empathy and cultural competency, (e) the importance of empathy related to trauma, and (f) the personal limitations of empathy. I present a proposal for a new theoretical framework resulting from the symbiotic relationship of ethno-cultural empathy and critical pedagogy, called <i> Critical Empathy,</i> as well as recommendations for teacher formation institutions to prioritize an empathy formation that focuses on critical empathy development, self-awareness, administrative management, and self-care strategies. </p><p>

<p> This study explored the ways faculty members incorporate multicultural teaching strategies into their teaching to benefit minority students and the diverse patient population. Learning about culture in the bachelor degree nursing program is paramount to enable the nursing students to meet the cultural competency expected in professional practice. Though faculty members have been integrating culture in the curriculum, previous studies indicated that some faculty members have trouble with the application of cultural competency and integrating it into the curriculum. The need to further investigate how faculty members incorporate culture into the curriculum, identification of effective practices that facilitate culturally competent healthcare workers and the need to refine the way culture is taught was specified in the literature reviewed. Thus, this study explored the experience of Alberta bachelor of nursing faculty members&rsquo; application of culturally competent teaching techniques for the students of different ethnic minority groups. A basic qualitative research design method was used with an interest in uncovering how individuals construct and give meaning to their world. Faculty members from bachelor degree nursing programs were interviewed individually and their documents reviewed for cultural contents. Notes taken from the observation of faculty members during the interview were included in data which was analyzed thematically following categorization. The themes that emerged from the data portrayed how the participants learned and applied multicultural teaching strategies in their practices. The results showed two implications: some faculty who consider students&rsquo; cultures could be said to be culturally competent, while those who do not consider the students&rsquo; cultures are termed culturally incompetent. Of the 10 participants interviewed, only four specified considering the students&rsquo; cultures in their teaching.</p><p>

Learning how to interact with others of diverse backgrounds is essential to effective participation in a globalized world and is a key goal of two-way language immersion programs, which bring together students from different language backgrounds to learn in both languages. These programs are frequently lauded for their success in promoting academic achievement and bilingualism, as well as for their potential to promote cross-cultural learning. However, limited research in this area shows that while students develop positive attitudes and cross-cultural friendships, the unequal status of the two languages and the marginalization of African-American students are concerns. Few studies have looked at the process of cross-cultural learning in these programs to see how interactions between students, teachers, and resources like curricula may influence students’ cross-cultural educación (Valenzuela, 1999). This comparative case study examines the question “What does cross-cultural educación look like in two-way immersion programs, and what factors influence that process?” at two schools, using observations of classes and schoolwide events, semi-structured interviews with teachers, document review, and a student picture sort activity. Using contact theory, I find that the two schools have different strengths in regards to cross-cultural educación, with one providing institutional support structures for explicit cross-cultural learning and another providing more opportunities for informal learning through its socioeconomically- and ethnically-diverse student and teacher population. There are also distinct ways of talking about difference at the two-schools, with one favoring a discourse focused on commonalities and the other a more dissonant discourse that recognizes differences. Nevertheless, the schools share important characteristics associated with their shared context, the rapidly globalizing state of North Carolina; these include pressure to integrate cross-cultural learning with Common Core literacy standards and a focus on the cultures of foreign countries. I argue that two-way immersion programs need to emphasize equity for not only speakers of non-English languages, but also diverse ethnic and socioeconomic groups, through broadening considerations for choosing program models, diversifying student and teacher populations, and teaching students to both learn about and care for different cultures in their local communities. / Culture, Communities, and Education

Across the country, community organizing has emerged as a strategy for engaging low-incoming communities and communities of color in school transformation. There is increasing recognition that this approach can be used to develop relationships, leadership, and political power to support systemic and long-lasting educational change. Oakland has a rich history of community-driven school reform. In the early 2000s, the mobilization of thousands of families across the city led to the passage of a new small autonomous school policy and the creation of over 30 new district schools through community-based design teams. However, since 2007, no new district schools have been authorized. Like many other urban districts, the charter sector has expanded, enrollment has declined, and the school district has turned to closing and consolidating schools, rather than opening new ones. This strategic leadership project sought to combine community organizing and design thinking frameworks to develop institutional and community support for a new dual language middle school as part of a PK-12 multilingual pathway of schools in the Oakland Unified School District. Throughout the capstone, I use Mark Moore’s strategic triangle framework (public value, operational capacity, and institutional support) to organize my research and analysis of this strategic project. I describe my leadership of the design team and some of the complexities that arose in our authorizing environment when we attempted to develop the new school through an existing district transformation process. The analysis includes implications for both new school design and school transformation work, and includes recommendations for how Oakland and other districts can more effectively facilitate communities to take leadership in school transformation.

Cross-cultural learning and identity formation are an under-theorized but fundamental aspect of dual language bilingual schools, where heritage speakers and English-only learners of a foreign language are educated together through immersion in both languages (Parkes, Ruth, Anberg-Espinoza & de Jong, 2009; Reyes & Vallone, 2007). Previous research on dual language programs has shown that despite careful program designs to treat each language equally, asymmetries between Spanish and English still play out even in well-implemented programs (Palmer, 2004; Potowski, 2005). Observation of such inequalities at the Espada School, a highly successful Spanish/English dual language school, spurred the current study, which seeks to explore in greater depth the language ideologies held by youth in such a setting. In-depth interviews and group discussions were conducted with six middle school students who had attended the school for eight years. Drawing on Foucauldian discourse analysis and sociocultural linguistics (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; Willig, 2009), the study sought to answer the following questions: 1) What discourses do bilingual youth at a dual language middle school draw on to talk about Spanish and English, and about speakers of each language? 2) How do they deploy these discourses of language for identity-building and world-building? Three discourses of language were identified. The first, language as utilitarian, emphasizes the functional or practical use of language as a resource or tool. The second, language as internal, constructs language as a skill, proficiency, quality or accomplishment that is located inside the individual person. The last, language as connecting or excluding, treats language as a means of relationship-building and understanding or as leading to division between people. Analysis reveals the ways that these discourses were deployed in different ways by each participant to construct their own identities with respect to their future, their everyday language interactions and their perceptions of the relationship between language and ethnicity. The study contributes to a theoretical understanding of ethnolinguistic and sociocultural identity formation from a youth perspective. Recommendations are also made for dual language educators interested in expanding the discourses of language available to students as one way of countering the lower status of Spanish.

<p> After the Syrian Civil War began, refugee exodus gained unprecedented momentum. Turkey, as one of the major destinations of Syrian refugees, experienced problems regarding the accommodation of a high number of refugees (Dorman, 2014; UNICEF, 2014; USAID, 2015). The scholars widely debated the problems regarding educating refugee (Akkaya, 2013; Arabaci et al. 2013), but the available studies do not focus on experiences of refugee students in the schools.</p><p> This dissertation study, therefore, examines the schooling experiences of Syrian child refugees in a Turkish public school with a developing conceptual framework named as Middle East Refugee Protection Model (MRPM). The MRPM originates as a result of the different expectations and motives among the host countries located in Europe and the Middle East.</p><p> This study uses Critical Qualitative Research. The data is collected through interviews and classroom observations. I employed the reconstructive data analysis strategies and used NVivo qualitative data analysis software to analyze the data.</p><p> The results show that the Syrian refugee students&rsquo; experiences in the school in Turkey are not dependent on the liability of the legal instruments but social norms and values. The school staff and classroom teachers use a child-centric approach to educate and integrate refugee students through accentuating values such as transparency and honesty, determination and commitment, and approving authority. Syrian refugee students in the public school face challenges due to their language skills, the host communities&rsquo; social expectations, and the lack of sustainable refugee education policy. As they continue facing challenges, refugee students begin constructing survival skills and these survival skills help them become an independent being and develop a sense of agency.</p><p> Based on the interpretation of the results, I have created two models to explain the refugee education strategies in the school, and how refugee students make sense of the school staff's approach in educating them. The first model is the refugee education and protection model. It explains the concepts and principles that school staff uses to regulate their refugee education system. The second model is agency and independence development, which explains the stages that refugee students go through to be an agent and an independent student. This dissertation suggests theoretical, political and practical implications of the use of models and effective strategies for educating refugees.</p><p>