<p> Racial injustice in U. S. society cannot be separated from that which happens in U.S. classrooms. Indeed, many battles between white supremacy and antiracism are waged in the public school arena&mdash;such as, the whitewashing of slavery in textbooks, and the Supreme Court decision to ban Mexican American Studies in Arizona. Thus, this dissertation took into account teacher learning and classroom practice around race, racism, and social justice through professional development. Specifically, among teachers committed to social justice, this dissertation investigated the role professional development plays in shaping how their commitment translates into classroom practice. I designed &lsquo;race space&rsquo; Critical Professional Development (CPD) (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, &amp; Ortiz, 2015) to support in-service urban teachers in learning about race, racism, and what it means to engage in social justice teaching. I employ the term &lsquo;race space&rsquo; to describe an aim to engender transformational, reflective, real talk and action around race and racism, through collective effort. With the theoretical groundings of critical race theory (CRT) in education, ideological becoming, and Third Space, I asked: What is the nature of &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD? Specifically, among urban in-service teachers committed to social justice, how does a &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivate: a) racial literacy; b) social justice teaching, and; c) ideological becoming? </p><p> Methodologically, this research project consisted of an ethnographic case study of the &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD. During the 2016-2017 academic year, three in-service, social justice-oriented public school teachers, who teach mostly students of color, participated in twelve &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD sessions over the course of eight months. I facilitated the sessions, completed 1-2 classroom observations of each teacher every week, and interviewed teachers and two of their students. Shay is a Black female Academic Intervention Services (AIS) and English Language Learners (ELL) teacher. Josh, a white male sixth grade special education teacher, teaches in a self-contained classroom. Gigi, a white female secondary biology teacher, teaches in a nontraditional high school. Primary data sources included: a) audio and video of &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD sessions and classroom interactions, b) field notes, c) teacher and student interviews, and d) pre- and post-questionnaires of teachers. I transcribed audio of &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD sessions and teacher and student interviews. Employing descriptive and process coding, I analyzed 591 pages of session transcriptions for narratives and dialogic exchanges around racial literacy, social justice understandings, meaning-making around social justice teaching, classroom practice, curriculum planning, and social justice ideological becoming. I then conducted a critical discourse analysis of focal dialogic exchanges to understand collective and individual racial literacy cultivation, social justice ideological becoming, and social justice teaching engagements. </p><p> Data analysis revealed three major findings. First, &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivated racial literacy by being responsive to the racial literacy teachers already displayed while providing support in responding to the racial consciousness of students of color. Second, &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivated social justice teaching among teachers through dialogic exchanges that pushed thoughtful and meaningful social justice curriculum planning that co-exists with the organic social justice teachable moments that arise. Third, &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD cultivated social justice ideological becoming among teachers, through dialogic exchanges that advanced and critiqued the oppressive nature of school. Through the actualization of a Third Space within &lsquo;race space&rsquo; CPD, participant and facilitator ways of knowing/acting were both welcomed and called into question, for the purposes of interrupting and revising their performances of the present. Implications include extended time and space in professional development initiatives for learning around race, racism, and social justice.</p><p>

<p> English Language Arts has historically been tied to the civic purposes of schools, and this qualitative study of a social design-based project (Guti&eacute;rrez &amp; Vossoughi, 2010) examines the intersection of language and literacy learning and youth civic engagement, a problem space I call &ldquo;Civics English.&rdquo; In this dissertation, I describe and analyze the experimentation and inquiry process of a Professional Learning Community of English teachers in a diverse middle school as they integrated civic learning and action into their English teaching practices. The dissertation examines this teacher team&rsquo;s development and shifts through various tensions and challenges that arise, analyzing through the lenses of Cultural Historical Activity Theory the ways their Professional Learning Community operated as an English teaching activity system attempting to integrate the cultural activity of civic engagement, leading to the teachers&rsquo; expansive professional learning (Engestr&ouml;m, 2001) about possibilities and challenges of Civics English.</p><p> The English teachers implemented various civic action projects, including producing and sharing multimodal civic advocacy essays online, composing and presenting children&rsquo;s storybooks about civics issues, and organizing and conducting a Town Hall with local leaders about civic dimensions of allyship and youth sports. This study looks at how, contextualized by these civics activities, they adapt and innovate customary English Language Arts practices, such as reading novels, writing in authentic genres with blended text types, and developing literacy and discourse. As the teachers encounter various tensions that arise in their attempts at Civics English, I present evidence of how these tensions emerge from the contradictions of two intersecting cultural activity systems, and what adaptations and innovations the teachers develop to overcome these tensions.</p><p> Integrating civics causes shifts in the teachers&rsquo; practices of literary study, writing, and classroom discussion, as they orient students&rsquo; learning towards public audiences, collective action, and discursive models of political and professional discourse. I identify how reading literature creates an imaginative space for civic deliberation. And I demonstrate how the Town Hall civics project shifts various dimensions of literacy and language activity by recontextualizing them. The potentials and the constraints of these shifts are examined through studying the teachers&rsquo; work, students&rsquo; language and activity, and the civic event&rsquo;s efficacy as an English teaching focal point.</p><p>

<p> There is growing interest in teaching K-16 students where food comes from and how it is grown, as evidenced by school gardens, farm-to-school programs, majors related to food systems, student farms on college campuses, and campus sustainable food projects. Many of these programs, however, do not necessarily highlight social inequities embedded in food systems or engage with the people who feed us, including slaughterhouse workers and restaurant workers. Moreover, there is currently little documentation and analysis of the few programs that highlight food workers and their experiences. Given the dearth of research on the practice of critical food systems education, I designed and researched a 10-week, seminar-style undergraduate course titled &ldquo;Making Visible the People Who Feed Us: Labor in the Food System&rdquo; that I taught over three academic quarters. Using teacher research methodology, this qualitative study explores how three cohorts of 18 students in the course responded to multicultural texts that reflect diverse, marginalized perspectives of food workers, many of whom are people of color, women, and/or undocumented. Following the reflective and reflexive tradition of teacher research, I also reflect on my teaching practices, consider how my biases affected my teaching, and elaborate on tensions that emerged as I taught the course. Data sources included student work, field notes of each class session, post-course and 6-11-month follow-up interviews, and entries in my reflection journal.</p><p> Findings from this study indicated a wide range in terms of how students responded to multicultural texts about food workers, depending on students&rsquo; prior knowledge and experiences. Some students showed a variety of emotions, from frustration to sadness, or expressed appreciation or respect toward the workers, especially if the workers&rsquo; experiences resonated with the students in some way. Other students took a critical, analytical stance, drawing on their prior knowledge of structural inequities. Still other students, especially those who had prior knowledge of the food system, showed resistance, whether by questioning the actions of the people in the texts or questioning the content and authors of the texts. In addition, some students showed evidence of taking on different perspectives that conflicted with their prior beliefs, whether with respect to immigration or the American Dream.</p><p> Ultimately, I advance three arguments in this dissertation. One is that multicultural texts about food workers have the potential to encourage students to make a wide range of connections with their prior knowledge or experiences and to try on or entertain multiple perspectives that underlie labor and social justice issues more broadly. Another is that the food system is a rich context for inviting students to think critically about a variety of social justice issues embedded in society. And a third is that educators who teach about labor and social justice issues in the food system need to be both reflective and reflexive with respect to their own teaching practices and grapple with pedagogical questions that have ethical implications.</p><p>

The overall aim of this thesis was to explore the school as a site for ethical practice. Specific objectives were to elucidate, encourage understanding for, and discuss: (i) teachers' and students' lived experience of ethical situations in school, (ii) teachers' and students' working together to promote learning in subjects and also to develop an ethical attitude towards society and the way people interact, and (iii) teachers' and students' working together to create an appreciative and positive climate in school. The research was conducted in a secondary school in Northern Sweden, which participated in a school improvement process, entitled Full of Value. The process has aimed at promoting learning through the development of an ethical attitude. This involves both the psycho-social and the physical community of the school.The research was inspired by life-world phenomenology. A total of 45 teachers and 45 students participated in the study. To create empirical data, the following methods have been used: written reflection, interview, close observation, and photo documentation. Through empirical findings during the research process, some parts of the research were inspired by participatory and appreciative action research (PAAR).The thesis consists of five part studies, published in international pedagogical journals. The findings show essential values for teachers and students in school, such as: openness, communication, trust, respect, care, empathy, truth, justice, appreciation, participation, and mutual learning.Teachers' and students' experiences of school as a site for ethical practice imply the value of: striving for ethical awareness, building ethical relationships, and encouraging ethical actions. The findings in this thesis suggest that the schools' mission to integrate ethics into the curriculum can be viewed as a process whereby, together with students in different educational settings, an ethical learning community can be created and sustained. / Godkänd; 2009; 20090426 (ulrber); DISPUTATION Ämnesområde: Lärande / Teaching and Learning Opponent: Professor Tom Tiller, Tromsö universitet, Norge Ordförande: Professor Eva Alerby, Luleå tekniska universitet Tid: Fredag 5 juni 2009, klockan 09.00 Plats: D-huset, Sal D770, Luleå tekniska universitet

<p> This study examined the effects of a school improvement project involving Distributed leadership (DL), a perspective for studying or developing organization leadership through the interaction of organizational members and activities. This research was part of a larger DL Project taking place in York City School District, PA, which sought to improve school leadership to enhance student achievement as a final end. While recent studies provided significant findings about DL&rsquo;s contribution to school improvement, the literature begs for more research about the effects of distributed leadership. One of the effects the DL Project wished to accomplish was the development of trust among the DL teams. According to the literature, trust has a direct link to academic achievement and school improvement respectively. Similarly, it was expected that this effect would improve the implementation of the DL Project. This smaller study sought to answer how, if at all, the DL Project implementation changed trust on the teams and in the schools; and how the experience of doing an evidence-based project, within the DL Project, contributed to the changes in trust in the teams over time. The two-month study took place in York City schools and involved the first-year of the DL Project, and as participants, DL team members and members from the staff. An embedded mixed methods approach was used to collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data from project archives, surveys and interviews. The analysis suggests that trust changed positively or negatively within the first year of the Distributed Leadership (DL) intervention; The DL Project mainly improved respect and integrity (two dimension of trust) among the teams and in the school; The other two dimensions of trust were highly affected during the first year of the DL Project implementation: Competence and personal regard; Improvements in trust are less evident in the first year; The context can greatly affect trust changes; and the evidence-based project proved to catalyze changes in trust during the first year.</p><p>

<p> There has been very limited research on the possible role religion has in its influence on teacher choices, especially within a Social Science classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine how secondary Social Studies teachers explicitly and implicitly treat religion as a factor in the teaching of history and how their own affinity with/to a religion and beliefs about religious institutions influence their curricular choices. The following research question informed the study: How are teachers&rsquo; religious identities, affinities and positionality revealed in their curricular choices? </p><p> Through the use of the multiple case study model using interviews, observations and artifacts, this dissertation examined how secondary Social Studies teachers explicitly and implicitly treat religion as a factor in the teaching of history and how their own affinity with/to a religion and beliefs about religious institutions influence their curricular choices. Using the lenses of positionality and presence, while explicitly being aware of American Civil Religion, religious hierarchies and Christian Privilege, this study examined two Atheist/Agnostic teachers in a comprehensive urban high school settings. </p><p> The findings are presented as single case studies with a cross case analysis. The analysis of findings found that both teachers did not include religion as a significant factor of history and therefore, did not privilege religion as a topic in their classes. The data showed that both teachers, despite their religious identifications, had internalized Civil American Religion and its alignment with Christianity.</p><p>

<p> The ultimate goal of teaching history to young people is to create effective, responsible citizens (Fallace, 2009). Despite such ambitious goals, the traditional teacher-centered method of instruction has not proven to have engaged students. As a result, students often rank history as their least-liked subject, particularly at the secondary level. One instructional strategy that may ameliorate this problem is the incorporation of primary sources. Identifying the inhibitors and inducers of primary sources, the researcher in this study explored and described the elements of successful primary source use in the secondary American and world history classrooms of three teacher participants in a qualitative, semester-long case study. Student and teacher perspectives of the impact of primary sources were also considered. In contrast to some of the existing literature, primary sources can be employed successfully and consistently in the secondary history classroom as demonstrated by the three teacher participants in this semester-long study in a large suburban Atlanta, Georgia, school district.</p>

<p> The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how the market works on the ground. It analyzes the hazelnut market in Turkey and explores the interaction between the market agents. It reveals how this interaction relates to the presence, production and circulation of forms of uncertainty. It also ascertains what uncertainty means in market settings and what role production, representation, dissemination and limiting of uncertainty play in market relations.</p><p> In market relations, intentionally or unintentionally, individuals try to forecast, value, prevent and qualify (as risk or loss) uncertainties. They assume that they can perceive, measure and avoid uncertainties on the basis of probabilities, level of knowledge about unknowns or ability to overcome. As such, uncertainty is assumed to be given yet with inadequate attention into its constitutive dynamics, actors of its making and its role in the market creation. The dissertation examines how uncertainties are constructed and what role this construction plays in constituting the market exchange and relations. The conclusions reached are that economizing uncertainty becomes a market device in production, exchange, circulation, pricing and policy making. </p><p> The dissertation starts with an analysis of the market reform policies and agricultural transformation in Turkey. Next, it traces the processes of the production and calculation of hazelnuts, examining how hazelnuts are produced and measured under uncertainty, and how uncertainty is created in the calculation of hazelnuts. It then explains exchange relations and price politics created at different spheres and with different expectations. After that, it explores the struggles and controversies among market groups over the production, calculation, exchange and pricing of hazelnuts and policy making. Subsequently, it analyzes what the politics of uncertainty means and how it is produced in the market setting.</p><p> Following uncertainties and observing their making in markets require a research program that draws on literatures concerning economics, political science and sociology. The research program includes the discussion of material things, individuals, formal and informal institutions and prices as well as their interactions. The research was based primarily on qualitative interviews, participant observations, case studies and document analysis conducted between 2006 and 2009.</p><p>

<p> This study addressed the lived experience of corporate executive women who have had a trusted advisor. The relayed impact and significance of trusted advisors for their career development was portrayed. Traditionally, women lagged behind men in numbers in key corporate positions. Due to increased international efforts to level the playing field over the last decade, more women were present at the executive level in corporations. Understanding the experience of these women is crucial for psychology practitioners in the workplace to strategically support and enhance working conditions in the corporate environment. In this study, the phenomenon of what it is like for corporate executive women to have had a trusted advisor was explored through the descriptions of their perceptions and experiences. A qualitative, phenomenological research design was utilized to collect, analyze, and describe data and synthesize the description of the experience and process of having or having had a trusted advisor. The experience of nine executive women was recorded and transcribed through open-ended, conversational, face-to face interviews. Over 400 meaning units were scrutinized to arrive at individual, and eventually, composite textural and structural descriptions of the phenomenon. The essence of the experience of the executive women was portrayed and the findings presented. This portrayal of the &ldquo;what and the how&rdquo; of the trusted advisor experience revealed a complex process of human connectedness, sense of self, and the importance of trust for these nine women. Seven themes were common to all the participants; unconditional support, communication/interaction, trust, feelings associated with the trusted advisor relationship, personal and professional integrity, pathway to career and growth, and advice and decision making. The essence of the experience of having a trusted advisor was clearly set in the relational world of human experience and was best represented as the give and take of a shared dyadic relationship.</p><p>

<p> As a high percentage of substance use counselors are in recovery, using adult learning methods such as constructivism and transformational learning are needed to neutralize any preestablished views of treatment modalities that may exist, as well as combat any possible issues of countertransference. Teaching critical thinking leads to student improvement in critical thinking, and critical thinking has been positively correlated with competency level, thus teaching these skills is imperative to the field. However, these skills taught and methods utilized are typically taught in advanced education, something not necessarily required to practice substance use counseling. As the progression of the field of substance use counseling continues to mature, the separation gap between the fields of mental health and substance use counseling continues to close. This study indicates although we have not set nationwide standards for practice as substance use counselors, and the field has not kept pace with mental health counselors in terms of standardization, those in the field are aware of the need for heightened professionalism and are preparing to treat patients to the best of their ability by going above and beyond the current requirement in many cases. The unification of these separate counseling practices would aid in in preparing substance use counselors to work with the complexities of co-occurring disorders as well as streamline the licensing process, aid in resolving current substance use counseling workforce issues, and create more adherence to evidence-based practices, thereby affecting the true bottom line: treatment outcomes. A descriptive comparative research design using the survey method was utilized in this study to answer the overarching research question, is there a difference in critical thinking skills in substance use counselors based on education level as measured by two validated critical thinking skill survey instruments, the Critical Thinking Disposition Scale and the Actively Open-Minded Thinking Scale. The population for this study are professional level NAADAC members, actively working substance use counselors across the United States with varying levels and types of education. Results of the study supported the null hypothesis, there is no difference in critical thinking skills based on education. However, 73% of the population surveyed had obtained a Master&rsquo;s degree or higher, which could explain these results.</p><p>