Increased metacognition, social-emotional growth, and career viability are all researched benefits of including the arts as part of core content instruction, with even greater impact for struggling students, English Language Learners, and students with special needs. Some turnaround schools that are federally funded School Improvement Grant (SIG) schools are beginning to implement an arts-rich method of school reform by teaching core content both through and in the arts. This approach is most often presented as a choice in the high-stakes testing environment of turnaround schools. Since teachers have the most direct impact on students, yet a relatively low amount of authorship in the way school reform is approached, their voice and experience is highlighted in this phenomenological study. The participants are from three public turnaround schools in the South. The researcher used traditional research methods layered with an arts-based research approach mirroring the techniques used in an arts-rich classroom. The researcher found that participants experienced their work as a vocational calling, used methods of engaged pedagogy, and experienced a number of roadblocks to their work. They swiftly moved through these roadblocks to create pathways leveraging the arts to change their curriculum and classroom contexts, applied the arts as an access point for content areas, and then experienced the use of an art-rich classroom as a contagious practice. Potential implications for this study include a scalable model for turnaround schools, investment in engaged pedagogical practice for turnaround schools, and increased agility for teachers to become curriculum bricoleurs.

It’s been more than a decade since the National Institute of Mental Health (NAMI) initiated its public campaign, ‘Real Men Real Depression.’ Despite increased awareness, research and relevant studies indicate that African American / Black men continue to underutilize mental health treatment while still having the highest all-cause mortality rates of any racial/ ethnic group in the United States. When reading this statement, one must question what impact that the beliefs about ‘social workers’ through the lens of Black males in the United States, may play. This very simply, yet flammable, question not only seems pertinent but also seems to warrant further exploration due to the research that shows that service access and help-seeking by African-American males across the lifespan is significantly lower than that of their non-Black counterparts. That same research seems to make assumptions about why this is, however it is only responsible and ethical, given the National Association of Social workers’ (NASW) Code of Ethics calling for cultural competence in practice, that we challenge and test the rationales being offered. This study was exploratory in nature, employed a snowball sampling methodology, and utilized an electronic survey offered through social media and promoted by word of mouth, targeting Black males over the age of 18, to assess their overall knowledge about being a social worker, and their beliefs and perceptions about social workers and how they believe social workers perceive them. The goal of this study was to begin to explore the reasons for overwhelming statistics that speak to the fact that Black males do not access mental health services, especially those provided by social workers. A total of 59 were started, and 43 completed, by the target respondents, which included a 5-item scale, to assess basic knowledge about social workers, a 10-item scale to assess the general beliefs about social workers, and 13-item scale to assess the beliefs about the perceptions of social workers about Black males. Univariate and bivariate analyses were performed using SPSS, and the results revealed that although there was a moderate level of general knowledge about social workers, the general belief of the respondents were primarily negative, with their beliefs about how social workers see Black males was just slightly more positive. These results seemed to be across the board and were not shown to be correlated with level of education, income, or whether they has received direct services provided by social workers or had no affiliation with such services. What did seem to have some relevance was an overall negative belief about social workers, and a level of suspicion and distrust for how their information would be used, as evidenced by 16 respondents who started the survey but would not completed it. In keeping with the NASW Code of Ethics, recommendation are provided to helps clinicians and those social workers providing direct service, be informed of the suspicions and apprehensions among this population, while encouraging the importance of continuous learning and increasing of cultural competence, awareness and humility. Lastly, recommendations for future research are also provided for the same purposes.

University branch campuses play a vital role in today’s higher education field. Branch campuses help facilitate the delivery of knowledge, development, and learning opportunities to populations that may not have any other prospect in regard to pursuing their educational goals. Branch campuses have also become a new way for institutions of higher education to collaborate and work together to serve students’ interests. Yet, despite enrollment growth across thousands of higher education branch campuses that exist in the United States, the literature on branch campuses is scant. Furthermore, branch campuses, like their main campus counterparts, have a responsibility to ensure that their students are successful and reach their learning objectives. One of the ways in which branch campuses are promoting student persistence is through the use of High Impact Practices (HIPs). HIPs have helped shape education policy at colleges and universities since they were first introduced a decade ago. While there is still active debate on their effectiveness, they have become an established part of the curriculum as colleges and universities invest in resources to implement and institutionalize these practices. Given the lack of literature examining HIPs at university branch campuses, this phenomenological study sought to examine what branch campus students experience in relation to HIPs, and how these experiences influence student persistence. Additionally, this study uncovered other experiences that influence the persistence of branch campus students and assists in providing a fuller understanding of the branch campus student experience.

Professors who manage large classes are unrealistically expected to grade each student fairly and accurately. Even with all of the technological advancements that have occurred in the past thirty years, very little progress has been made in classroom management, and as a result, professors are not equipped with enough tools to successfully manage large class sizes. Because radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is making its way into student issued identification cards, there is an opportunity to use it as a tool to aid professors in the classroom. The focus of this paper is to discover the most effective system that can be implemented as a classroom management instrument. Through multi criteria analysis, several different infrastructures are examined and compared to determine the best alternative. The result of an effective system leads to a reduction in time spent taking attendance, an increase in student performance, an increase in the fairness and accuracy of recording classroom participation, and an enhanced professor-student relationship.

Faculty-led short-term international service-learning (STISL) experiences are thought to have great potential in developing students' global citizenship through combining study abroad and community service pedagogies. However, thorough investigation of the pedagogical strategies employed in STISL courses to achieve such outcomes has yet to be conducted. This qualitative narrative inquiry of STISL faculty at 7 different institutions across multiple academic disciplines and country service sites sought to fill that void. Data reveal a new conceptualization of STISL teaching, learning, and service success that involves culturally contextualized solidarity, global civic engagement, and global competence, which culminate into students' global agency. Emerging from the data, the Van Cleave Pedagogical Design framework for Global Agency illuminates the interactions of five interdependent learning dimensions: academic, professional, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and intercultural. Course, program, and policy implications are explicated across pre-departure, host-country, and re-entry experiences.

Queer-teacher lives aren’t easy! They experience isolation and bifurcation of their lives on a daily basis. How much more difficult must life be for these teachers in the theologically heteronormative context of the Catholic school? Yet, these teachers remain educators in these institutions, sensing goodness in what they are doing and in the future of these schools. Inspired by this interesting reality of tension, this study asks two important questions. First, how do queer teachers understand their identities as constructed in a Catholic school? Secondly, it wants to know what action teachers will take when they have come to an answer about their constructed identities. This dissertation incorporates queer studies, liberation theology, and critical pedagogy into a bricolage theory to fully address the intersectional lives of its participants. With a methodological approach informed by the ethics of culturally responsive research, this participatory action research begins from a moment of dialogical praxis towards the hope of social engagement. Crafted as a retreat in which queer educators share their stories of working in these institutions, this unique research incorporates the participants into the analysis process as essential actors in understanding the meaning of their own lives. The study reveals the perceptions of queer teachers about the ways that schools make meaning of their role in the educational environment as well as how they make meaning of their lives. Three major themes, “doing queer,” “being queer,” and “enforcing queer” show that these teachers are part of a complex reality in which their identities and performances in Catholic schools are dictated by the pull and push of fear enforced x through many channels in the Catholic school. These themes also show that teachers are actively making new meaning about themselves and acting in ways that seek to dismantle oppression in their institutions. The study also reveals a vibrant spirituality which emerges from the daily experience of being queer in a Catholic school. Geared towards social justice, this spirituality invites us to reimagine that work for social justice may mean pushing into oppression through a paschal victimhood which transforms institutions fundamentally from within.

This thesis will use data derived from in-depth interviews, historical research, and environmental justice literature to examine the academic achievement of students living in the Community of Lennox. Specifically, this thesis will explore the intersectionality between social environments and academic resources to analyze how it supports or deters students from obtaining a higher degree education.

This thesis discusses the impact of the Haitian Revolution on the United States as a lens through which to view the transnational nature of American exceptionalism. It concludes with an articulation of the necessity of incorporating this relational nature of United States identity development into high school coursework, and advocates for teaching about the Haitian Revolution as an effective means through which to do this.

Many indigenous languages have suffered irreparable damage or even extinction due to the violence of colonization and the violences that continue to be perpetrated by its successor institutions of neo-liberalism and global “development” projects. This thesis focuses on the attempts of two groups of indigenous people, the Imazighen (or Berbers) of Algeria and Morocco and the Runa (or Quechua) of Peru and Bolivia, to break these cycles of repression and revitalize their languages. A close comparison of these two groups’ struggles reveals the difficulty of transcending this assimilationist, imperialist framework, but it also highlights several successes that bode well for future efforts. Through their attempts to introduce indigenous languages into the classroom, and into the public sphere more broadly, these peoples have articulated alternate cosmologies which challenge the biases and assumptions that form the basis of western education. These cosmologies imply a direct challenge to western-occidental notions of modernity and to the institution of the modern nation-state.

Native American students obtain the lowest on-time high school graduation rate among all races and ethnicities in the United States. Through an analysis of previously published literature and seven interviews conducted by the author, this paper sets out to identify the key barriers Native students face when working toward their high school diploma. This paper will argue that, together, a history of abusive educational tactics and an institutionally racist policies and practices adopted by the U.S. Department of Education have made it challenging for Native students to complete high school on time.