Thesis (Ed. D.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Carolyn D. Herrington, Florida State University, College of Education, Dept. of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains xv, 238 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Selima Sultana; submitted to the Dept. of Geography. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Aug. 21, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-88).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-315). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-315). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: This study examines the contemporary school placement decisions of Navajo parents in the reservation community of Piñon, Arizona. School placement decisions are defined as the school where the parent chooses to enroll his/her child for schooling. Twelve Navajo parents participated in this qualitative study, which explored their past educational experiences in order to garner insight into the current school placement choices they have made for their children. Navajo parents who live within the community of Piñon, AZ who currently have school-aged children living in their household were recruited to participate in this study. Participants took part in 60- to 90-minute interviews that included questions related to their prior educational experiences and current school placement choices for their children. Parents were given an opportunity to reflect about the school placement decisions they have made for their children. The variety of schools Navajo parents are able to choose from were illuminated. These findings have implications for education decision makers by providing insight into which schools parents are choosing and why. The study will assist Navajo Nation policy makers in future educational planning, and may have more general implications for American Indian/Alaskan Native education. This may assist Navajo Education policy makers in making future decisions regarding the newly developed Navajo Department of Education and its education planning. Participants will also benefit from the study by being able to understand how the past has impacted the school placement choices they have made. In doing so parents may be better able to articulate the impetus behind the choices they make for their children, thereby becoming better advocates for themselves and their children. The results of this study impacts scholarly literature as a new viewpoint in the area of school choice. Navajo parents represent a distinct group who make educational choices within a specific context. This study is unique as the impact of historical Indian education policies is considered. Future studies can further expand on the topic creating a unique area of research in the field of Indian education. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Administration and Supervision 2011

abstract: School choice reforms such as charter schools, vouchers, open enrollment, and private and public school tax credit donation programs have expanded throughout the United States over the past twenty years. Arizona’s long-standing public school choice system enrolls a higher percentage of public school students in charter schools than any state besides Washington D.C. A growing number of Arizona’s charter schools are managed by for-profit and nonprofit Education Management Organizations (EMOs). Advocates of school choice argue that free-market education approaches will make public schools competitive and nimble as parents’ choices place pressures on schools to improve or close. This, then, improves all schools: public, private, and charter. Critics are concerned that education markets produce segregation along racial and social class lines and inequalities in educational opportunities, because competition favors advantaged parents and children who can access resources. Private and for-profit schools may see it in their interest to exclude students who require more support. School choice programs, then, may further marginalize students who live in poverty, who receive special education services, and English language learners. We do not fully understand how Arizona’s mature school choice system affects parents and other stakeholders in communities “on the ground.” That is, how are school policies understood and acted out? I used ethnographic methods to document and analyze the social, cultural, and political contexts and perspectives of stakeholders at one district public school and in its surrounding community, including its charter schools. I examined: (a) how stakeholders perceived and engaged with schools; (b) how stakeholders understood school policies, including school choice policies; and (c) what influenced families’ choices. Findings highlight how most stakeholders supported district public schools. At the same time, some “walked the line” between choices that were good for their individual families and those they believed were good for public schools and society. Stakeholders imagined “community” and “accountability” in a range of ways, and they did not all have equal access to policy knowledge. Pressures related to parental accountability in the education market were apparent as stakeholders struggled to make, and sometimes revisit, their choices, creating a tenuous schooling environment for their families. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2017

O objetivo desse trabalho é identificar se a Lei de Cotas, Lei sancionada pelo governo brasileiro em 2012 que reserva 50% das vagas em todas as universidades federais para alunos que estudaram o ensino médio integralmente em escolas da rede pública, tem impacto sobre a probabilidade de migração para a rede pública dos alunos matriculados em escola privadas no ensino básico. Como antes de 2012 a maior parte das universidades federais brasileiras já adotavam alguma ação afirmativa, analisamos com maior profundidade, a partir da metodologia de Diferenças-em-Diferenças, o impacto da Lei em dois estados: Minas Gerais e São Paulo. Em Minas Gerais, estado onde a Lei representa uma mudança institucional significativa no acesso ao ensino superior público, estimamos um aumento de 20% na probabilidade média de migração da coorte tratada. Já em São Paulo, onde essa mudança não ocorre no mesmo nível, o aumento estimado é inferior a 8%. Estimamos ainda que, tanto em Minas Gerais, quanto em São Paulo, a Lei de Cotas tem menor impacto sobre os alunos provenientes de escolas privadas de maior qualidade / This thesis intends to identify if the Law of Social Quotas, Law enacted by the Brazilian government in 2012 that guarantees 50% of the seats in all federal universities for students who studied all high school period in public schools, has an impact on the school choice of students enrolled in private elementary schools. As before 2012 most Brazilian federal universities already had adopted some affirmative action, we analyze, building on a Diff-Diff methodology, the impact of the Law in two states: Minas Gerais and São Paulo. In Minas Gerais, state where the law represents a significant institutional change in the access to public higher education, we estimate a 20% increase in the average probability of migration of the treated cohort. In São Paulo, where this change does not occur at the same level, the estimated increase is below 8%. We also estimate that both in Minas Gerais and São Paulo the Law have lower impact on students from higher quality private schools.

This dissertation reports on a qualitative study of school leadership with nine secondary-school headteachers (of maintained schools) or principals (of academy-type schools) in England. The project maps schooling provision and offers an empirical account of leaders’ identities and practices in neoliberal and neoconservative times. Informed by a critical policy-scholarship methodology, documentary data from primary and secondary sources supplement narrative and semi-structured interviews conducted over 18 months. The findings are reported in five journal articles and one book chapter. The first output maps school types through different lenses: legal status; curriculum; selection; types of academy; and school groupings. The mapping highlights the intersections between the reform agenda and historical diversity. I conceptualise the landscape holistically through locus of legitimacy and branding, arguing that diversification policies facilitate corporatised and religious interests. Second, I show how UTCs and studio schools construct children’s abilities as fixed and differentiable in terms of predicted economic value. They select, but the responsibility for this, following Bourdieu, is transferred discursively from the school through branding and habitus to the “consumers” where it is to be misrecognised as exercising ‘school choice’. Third, I typologise three effects on heads’ and principals’ agency and identities of a few elite multi-academy trust principals, or courtiers, who have won regional empires through expanding their academy chains to occupy the spaces opened up by the dismantling of LAs. Public-sector and school-leader identities and histories permit the promotion of their activities as “school led” and downplays their close relationship with central-state policy makers and private-sector networks. Fourth, I argue that corporatised leadership in schools in England is being promoted through new actors and new types of school. Corporatised leadership is characterised inter alia by the promotion of business interests and the adoption of business-derived leadership practices and identities. I use Bourdieu’s concept of field to explain the impact of business on educational leadership and the dissonance between leaders and led. Fifth, I argue with Gunter that school leaders are removing those who embody or vocalise alternative conceptualisations of educator by eradicating ‘inadequate’ teaching,and implementing the leader’s ‘vision’. We deploy Arendtian thinking to show how current models of school leadership enable totalitarian practices to become ordinary. Sixth, I develop Bourdieu’s concept of hysteresis through narratives from two heads to argue that rather than simply being an effect of change, hysteresis may be an actively sought outcome whereby the state intervenes to deprivilege welfarist headteachers and privilege corporatised principals through structurally facilitating their habitus and mandating its dispositions for the field. Collectively, these findings demonstrate how the diversification of provision in England and the demands of a performative, marketised regime have ontological and professional stakes for school leaders and for the led. Symbolic and economic capital is accruing to the capitalised, facilitated by corporate practices and corporate structural solutions through acquisitions and alliances. Resistance is possible, but a dissident habitus limits standing in the field. This hierarchisation is reflected in the relationship between school types and in how children are meant to self-select into that provision. This is a landscape constituted of positions, where pupils are expected to know their place and the purpose of education is to facilitate social segregation for economic efficiency.

As high levels of forced migration continue to challenge Europe, countries like Sweden are attempting to incorporate asylum-seekers into its education system. Over the past 50 years Sweden’s education system has undergone a unique shift from a centralized to a decentralized parental-choice model of schools. An approach called plural education promotes equity through shared experience and support for equity creating initiatives. Proponents of choice argued that plural education was maintained across the decentralizing shift in policy. Yet some evidence has begun to show that these values are not being upheld. Marginalized groups, such as asylum-seekers, appear to face a number of barriers to accessing the entirety of choices. In this qualitative study employing a grounded theory methodology, seven asylum-seeking parents were asked for their experiences entering their children into the Swedish compulsory school system. Semi-structured interviews explored the barriers, information and strategies each parent had for enrolment and school choice. Analysis found that parents had insufficient information for school choice, few strategies to find new information and faced a number of barriers. The implication of these findings are that these asylum-seekers did not have the support or knowledge to successfully participate in school choice and that education in Sweden may have weakened in its ability to promote equity for these respondents. / Samtidigt som stora flyktingströmmar fortsätter att utgöra en utmaning för Europa, försöker länder som Sverige att integrera asylsökande i dess utbildningssystem. Under de senaste 50 åren har Sveriges utbildningssystem genomgått ett unikt skifte från ett centraliserat till ett decentraliserat skolsystem baserat på det fria skolvalet. Ett tillvägagångssätt kallat "plural" utbildning har som syfte att främja rättvisa genom gemensamt lärande och erfarenhetsutbyte mellan elever. Förespråkare av det fria skolvalet hävdar att "plural" utbildning har kunnat upprätthållas efter systemskiftet till en decentraliserad skola. Det finns emellertid studier som visar på motsatsen. Marginaliserade grupper, som till exempel asylsökande, tycks stöta på flera hinder när de ska nyttja det fria skolvalet.I denna kvalitativa studie som bygger på en grundad teorimetodik intervjuades sju asylsökande föräldrar om sina erfarenheter rörande deras barns tillgång till den svenska grundskolan. Genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer undersöktes hinder och information samt strategier som föräldrarna hade beträffande inskrivning och skolval. Analysen visade att föräldrarna hade otillräcklig information gällande skolval och få strategier för att hitta ny information samt att de möttes av diverse hinder. Studien visar att dessa asylsökande familjer inte hade tillräckligt med stöd eller kunskap för att framgångsrikt delta i skolvalet och att den svenska undervisningen därmed har misslyckats med att ge dessa familjers barn en rättvis utbildning.