This thesis seeks to explore the factors that limit the freedom of choice and access of the Indian community to tertiary level education in Malaysia. Issues of ethnic minorities are of concern for all multi-cultural societies. In Malaysia, it was the indentured labour system, introduced by the British colonial rulers who brought non-Malays into this previously mono-ethnic society. British colonisation has influenced the position of the Indian community in Malaysia in a number of ways, which are explored in this thesis. The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of the complexity of this plural society and its implications for one of its ethnic minority groups, particularly in terms of education. This sector has been examined as education is a fundamental component for socio-economic development and upward social mobility. Malaysia, a classic modern day plural society, has its own complexity in terms of issues of ethnic minorities. The findings of this thesis indicate four main factors limiting the freedom of choice and access to tertiary level education for the Indian community. These factors are the country’s education policies, the financial situation of Indo-Malaysians, the attitude and awareness of the students, and the community’s values. The findings are significant as it is believed that the advancement of the Indian community in Malaysia is currently obstructed through lack of access to tertiary level education. Before this situation can be improved it needs to be understood.

Economic change requiring a more highly skilled workforce prompted worldwide concern over high school drop out. Dropouts are young people who leave school early, often without attaining formal educational qualifications. Much previous research centred on at-risk students and a range of individual, social, family and school factors associated with drop out were identified. This case study of student drop out and retention at three girls’ state secondary schools over 2003 suggests that early leaving behaviour cannot be understood outside of the settings in which it occurs. Adopting an ecological perspective facilitated a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between the dropouts and their environment. From a narratives and numbers approach rich stories of early leaving emerged. Patterns of leaving were consistent with national trends: The lower decile school had the highest drop out rate, and dropouts were more likely to be Maori and Pasifika than European. Dropping out was shown to be a complicated and iterative process in which the influence of the environment is very important. Family and school relationships had a major impact but which had the greatest influence was inconclusive because there was a high level of interconnectedness between these proximal settings within the mesosystem and the bigger picture education and welfare systems. The extent of the contribution each level made to early leaving varied across individual stories, between schools and over time. Leaving school is an ecological transition that involves changing roles from high school pupil to that of tertiary student, mother, worker or benefit recipient. The students’ stories show drop out to be both an outcome, and an initiator, of developmental change. An important challenge for schools is not necessarily to reduce the number of early leavers but to establish effective transition programmes that assist students to become proactive in navigating the many transitions anticipated over their life course. The implementation of such school programmes needs to be supported by parallel changes in government policy.

This dissertation argues that cultural capital is self-reinforcing in nature. This conjecture is explored through the analysis of sixth-four semi-structured interviews with black and white middle class parents. The first phase of the analysis investigates how the use of one form of non-elite cultural capital, racial socialization, varies among middle class black parents and how it is related to their deployment of elite forms of parental cultural capital. Throughout the dissertation elite parental cultural capital is operationalized as parents' educational aspirations, parental encouragement of academic engagement and promotion of the work ethic. Next, the relationship between the use of elite parental cultural capital and adolescents' academic achievement is evaluated for black and white middle class families. Ultimately the link between the use of non-elite cultural capital and racial differences in academic outcomes is examined. The results suggest that there may be subtle differences in cultural socialization practices among black parents in this sample, which are apparently correlated with their use of elite cultural capital. This implies that non-elite cultural capital has the potential to reinforce elite cultural capital. However, this appears to have only a weak relationship to the achievement of black adolescents or to the racial achievement gap. / African and African American Studies

This study examines how Swedish upper secondary school youth constructed femininity and masculinity in the period 1880–1930. The overall intention of the dissertation is to analyse the gender ideals that are found in texts written by girls and boys in a bourgeois school environment during a period characterised by transformative social changes in society. The source material consists of school magazines and student essays authored by youth in upper secondary boys’ schools, secondary girls’ schools, and co-educational schools.  The study analyses gender stereotypes from five different areas: youth, love life, body, parenting and working life. Boys are prone to use gender stereotypes that emphasise the subordination of women vis-a-vis men. The boys’ usage of stereotypes is thus prominent and is widely used in order to reinforce male dominance. They did not problematise or question their role in the society to any great extent. Girls were, to a significantly greater extent than the boys, keen to problematise women’s traditional role in society. This challenges the images of women as complicit in their own subordination. It seems that the girls have not only been aware of their subordination, but also have been more inclined to strive for their emancipation. The girls’ gender stereotypes are diverse and tolerant, and display progressiveness towards the emancipation movement. The young people’s ideal of moderation emerges as a recurring theme. Both the working class and the upper class are used as deterring examples of excess. The changes in society during this period seems to have had little influence on the ideal gender stereotypes, but in terms of emancipation, appears have made the boys more reactionary than the girls. The daughters of the bourgeois pressed forward; the sons of the bourgeois glanced backward.

This thesis challenges media claims that adolescent girls in New Zealand are becoming more aggressive and are therefore behaving like boys. Most early studies of aggression ignored girls entirely or presented them as a subset of boys. Although later studies did address issues around girls’ aggressive behaviour, these were largely focused on adults’ views of girls’ relational or social aggression. This doctoral study therefore used a small case study to explore adolescent aggression from the perspective of six adolescent girls whose behaviour had been described by their schools as aggressive. The girls’ accounts of their experiences and beliefs about gender-specific aggression were gathered via a series of individual conversational interviews, and initially analysed through the theoretical perspective of role theory and psychological perspectives on aggression. However, as the study progressed, the limitations of that approach became apparent and the girls’ transcripts were revisited via the lens of poststructural theory, using the tools of discourse analysis. The study found that these girls’ behaviours and beliefs did not fit the description of severe adolescent female aggression as described in the literature. Nor did the risk factors most commonly associated with aggression at adolescence appear to have affected them. Conversely, it would appear that their physicality influenced how they positioned themselves and how others positioned them; as “sporty girls”, “tomboys”, “loving daughters and siblings”, or as “righteous aggressors”. Their behaviours frequently challenged the dominant discourse of conventional schoolgirls. None of them thought that girls were becoming more aggressive and all stated that girls could behave how they wanted without being labelled de facto boys. This study was limited in terms of the number of participants and the range of cultures represented, therefore no generalisations can be drawn from it. Nevertheless, it does have some important implications for policy makers and practitioners: particularly that interactions of culture, class and gender impact on the way that individuals constitute themselves and others. Interpretations of behaviour are determined by the discursive context and the experiences and belief systems of both “actor” and “audience”.

This thesis is concerned with a group of Chinese skilled migrant mothers’ experiences in relation to their children’s early childhood care and education in New Zealand. Utilising Bourdieu’s concept of capital, habitus and field, the current research addresses the complexity and ambiguity of the Chinese migrant mothers' lives whose social position transcends multiple fields. Because their children attend mainstream education, and the local educational system is different from those where the migrant mothers were brought up, the migrant mothers had to transcend different cultural fields. Chinese skilled migrants, who were middle class professionals in their native country, usually experienced social and financial downturns in New Zealand. Although skilled, the migrant mothers encountered difficulties in finding paid employment that matched their pre-migration job status. These mothers were more likely to give up paid work or reduce paid working hours on the birth of their children than were their male partners. The current study focuses on these transcendent experiences, encompassing both embeddedness and ambiguity across different fields by examining the interplay of class, gender, and ethnicity in the daily lives of these mothers. Traditional interpretations of cultural capital usually refer only to dominant social and cultural capital, whereas the current thesis expands the concept to include both dominant and non-dominant forms of social and cultural capital. The findings showed that the migrant mothers redefined and reconstructed the concept of capital. The migrant mothers’ attitude towards mainstream education was ambiguous and complex: covering the full spectrum from willing embracing, reluctantly following, selectively utilising to firmly rejecting. Simultaneously, the mothers promoted, criticised, and rejected various traditional Chinese practices and beliefs in order to maximise benefits for their children.

The Swedish educational reforms in the beginning of the 1990s, introducing a public-funded voucher system, free school choice and the right to run schools as commercial enterprises, had an important impact on upper secondary education. The Stockholm region, the most populous in Sweden, offered favourable conditions for the growth of a previously non-existent educational market. A massive expansion of independent schools took place, managed primarily by larger companies, along with the extensive marketing of profiled study programmes and the import of management models from the private sector. In 2011 alone, schools competed for 75 000 pupils representing an annual economic value of approximately 8.5 billion SEK. Covering the period 1988 to 2011, this thesis analyses the relationship between the educational market and upper secondary education as a social field structured by the educational strategies of social groups. Building on Bourdieu’s relational sociology, the study combines quantitative and qualitative methods, using correspondence analysis as a major analytical tool. While free school choice and the voucher system established a supply-demand relationship between schools and families and pupils, the analysis shows that the market has submitted to the same forces that structure the field of upper secondary education within which it unfolds, primarily the volume and composition of symbolic and other assets that students, families and schools possess. In fact, the social structure of the field of upper secondary education in Stockholm remains remarkably stable over time, opposing on the one hand female and male dominated education and on the other hand education with high social and scholarly recruitment to that with low. Euclidean clustering analysis unveils a complex social structure reflecting how the increasingly differentiated educational supply has adapted to the needs of various social groups. Elite schools, market-oriented schools and market-exposed schools develop different strategies in the battle over pupils. Competing amongst themselves for pupils rich in inherited and acquired capital, the elite schools withdraw from the openly market-oriented approach that characterises the other type of schools and instead opt for more subtle, long-term strategies for building up trust from their audience, involving investments in staff and other institutional assets.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:35:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5705.pdf: 2179757 bytes, checksum: 0c5c8e03feae144855e8936e9e5f7c14 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-12 / The present research proposes to conduct a study on the field of Sociology of Education as presented in the theses and dissertations available in the CAPES Theses Database from the period from 1987 to 2011, based on bibliometric and scientometric approaches, in order to obtain a theoretical reflection on the field of Sociology of Education in Brazil that unfolds in the identification of: prime research topics in the field of Sociology of Education; aspects of sociological theory; the most influential authors and theoretical frameworks of reference in Sociology of Education. The data source was the CAPES Theses Database with contributions from BDTD/IBICT, the public domain and the digital libraries available for raw text access. The methodology was developed in four phases comprised of: construction of a theoretical reference; data collection in the CAPES Theses Database, BDTD, Public Domain Portal, description and categorization of survey data utilizing automated tools (the software programs Vantage Point and Excel) for the organization of the results obtained and subsequent analysis and interpretation. The chosen design consisted of two studies: Study 1: Bibliometric analysis of dissertations and theses in Sociology of Education with the aim of reporting the state of the art of the scientific production in this area; Study 2: Analysis of reference citations in light of theoretical approaches in Sociology of Education and Information Science, signifying the importance of combining different methodological perspectives to explore the same study object. In Study 1, we present the following results: the production of theses of dissertation occurred at some moments in an oscillating manner, but the increase was gradual throughout the studied period. The works at the Master s level predominated with 71% of the recovered records. With respect to distribution by institution and region, both indicators were found to be concentrated in the southeast region, that is, UFMG, PUC-SP and PUC-RIO were the most frequent institutions confirming the representativeness of this region in the national research. As to the administrative nature of the institutions, the Federal and Private institutions were predominant. The graduate programs that have most researched this topic indicate Education and Sociology given that Sociology of Education is the scientific field that has maintained historic relations with these areas. The most frequent theme is Education, followed by Sociology of Education. The Research Instigating Agencies that fund the most research studies are Capes and CNPq. The studies that did not receive financing correspond to 51% of the total, which indicates that these researchers are participating in the labor market. The female gender is present in 72% of the authorial credits in the dissertations and theses, confirming that women tend to predominate in the Human Sciences. Study 2 corresponds to the analysis of citations of books and chapters appearing in the theses and dissertations. The results show that in relation to the contemporaneousness of sources, the author shave relied on relatively recent literature, which can be explained based on the origin of Sociology of Education that, as a distinct field of Sociology, is relatively new; therefore, production in this area also tends to be new. As to book authorship, national and foreign authorial nuclei were identified. The most cited authors of the national nucleus are Maria Alice Nogueira, Paulo Freire, Florestan Fernandes and Demerval Saviani. The most cited in the foreign nucleus were Pierre Bourdieu, Émile Durkheim, Jean-Claude Passeron, Bernard Lahire and Michel Foucault. The most cited book title was A reproduction: elements for a teaching system theory , authored by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron. As to language indicators for the books and chapters, Portuguese predominated in the two sources. The editors of the books and chapters cited indicated Editor Voices as predominant in the most cited publications. In reference to authorship of book chapters, Pierre Bourdieu was the author of the majority of chapters cited. The indicator on authorship of books that integrate the chapters of books identified Maria Alice Nogueira as the most frequent author. The most mentioned chapter title was The conservative school: the inequalities facing the school and the culture, and is authored by Pierre Bourdieu; the books that integrate the book chapters presented the title Escritos de Educação (Writings from Education), organized by Maria Alice Nogueira and Afrânio Catani as the most cited. The data resulting from the three authorship indicators (authorship of books, authorship of chapters and authorship of books that integrate the chapters) constitute the research front found to be identified by 21 authors, 15 of whom are Brazilian and six foreign, that constitute the principle theoreticians and researchers that contribute to the theoretical underpinning that sustains the development of research studies in Sociology of Education in the production of theses and dissertations in Brazil. Through citation analysis, it was highlighted that the bourdieusian approaches are most often utilized as a theoretical referential in Sociology of Education theses and dissertations. The studies presented here in indicate the most influential authors and theoretical frameworks of reference utilized by the authors of theses and dissertations to support their research Sociology of Education and how they configure the national graduates cenario in Brazil. / A presente pesquisa propõe-se realizar um estudo sobre o campo da Sociologia da Educação presente em teses e dissertações disponibilizadas no Banco de Teses da Capes no período de 1987-2011, com base nas abordagens bibliométricas e cientométricas visando uma reflexão teórica sobre o campo da Sociologia da Educação no Brasil que se desdobram na identificação de: temas de pesquisa privilegiados no campo da Sociologia da Educação; aspectos da teoria sociológica; autores mais influentes e os quadros teóricos de referência no campo da Sociologia da Educação. A fonte de dados foi o Banco de Teses da Capes com aportes da BDTD/IBICT, domínio público e bibliotecas digitais disponíveis para acesso de texto integral. A metodologia foi desenvolvida em quatro fases, compreendidas por: construção do referencial teórico; coleta de dados no Banco de Teses da Capes, BDTD, Portal Domínio Público, descrição e categorização dos dados levantados utilizando ferramentas automatizadas (softwares Vantage Point, Excel) para a organização dos resultados obtidos e posterior análise e interpretação. Optou-se por um delineamento composto por dois estudos: Estudo 1: Análise bibliométrica das dissertações e teses em Sociologia da Educação com o objetivo de relatar o estado da arte da produção científica nessa área; Estudo 2: Análise das citações das referências à luz das abordagens teóricas em Sociologia da Educação e Ciência da Informação, sinalizando a importância de se combinarem diferentes perspectivas metodológicas para se explorar um mesmo objeto de estudo. No Estudo 1, apresentamos os seguintes resultados: a produção de teses e dissertações ocorreu em alguns momentos de forma oscilante mas o aumento foi gradativo ao longo do período estudado. Os trabalhos em nível de mestrado predominaram com 71% dos registros recuperados. No que diz respeito à distribuição por instituição e região ambos os indicadores encontram-se concentrados na região sudeste, ou seja, a UFMG, PUC-SP, PUC-RIO foram as instituições de maior frequência confirmando a representatividade desta região na pesquisa nacional. Quanto à natureza administrativa das Instituições, o predomínio esteve entre instituições Federais e Privadas. Os programas de pós-graduação que mais pesquisam essa temática apontam a Educação e a Sociologia por ser a Sociologia da Educação um campo científico que mantém relações históricas com essas áreas. A temática mais incidente é Educação, seguido da Sociologia da Educação. As Agências de Fomento à pesquisa que mais subsidiaram pesquisas são a Capes e CNPq. Das pesquisas que não receberam financiamento corresponde a 51% do total, o que supõe-se que esses pesquisadores estejam inseridos no mercado de trabalho. O gênero feminino está presente em 72% das autorias das dissertações e teses, confirmando a tendência do predomínio das mulheres nas Ciências Humanas. O Estudo 2 corresponde a análise de citações dos livros e capítulos citados nas teses e dissertações. Os resultados mostram que em relação à atualidade das fontes os autores têm se apoiado na literatura relativamente recente, tal fato pode ser explicado com base na origem da Sociologia da Educação que como campo distinto da Sociologia é um campo relativamente novo, portanto a produção nessa área tende a ser nova também. Quanto à autoria dos livros foram identificados os núcleos de autoria nacional e estrangeira. Os autores mais citados do núcleo nacional são Maria Alice Nogueira, Paulo Freire, Florestan Fernandes e Demerval Saviani. O núcleo estrangeiro foi composto por Pierre Bourdieu, Émile Durkheim, Jean-Claude Passeron, Bernard Lahire e Michel Foucault dentre os mais citados. O título de livro mais citado foi A reprodução: elementos para uma teoria do sistema de ensino de autoria de Pierre Bourdieu e Jean-Claude Passeron. Quanto aos indicadores de idioma dos livros e capítulos de livros o predomínio nas duas fontes corresponde ao idioma Português. O indicador de editoras dos livros e capítulos citados aparece a Editora Vozes como predominante nas publicações mais citadas. Em referência a autoria dos capítulos de livros, Pierre Bourdieu foi o autor da maioria dos capítulos citados. Para o indicador sobre autoria dos livros que integram os capítulos de livros identificou-se Maria Alice Nogueira como a autora de maior frequência. O título de capítulo mais mencionado foi A escola conservadora: as desigualdades frente à escola e à cultura, e tem por autoria Pierre Bourdieu; os livros que integram os capítulos de livros apresentou o título Escritos de Educação, organizado por Maria Alice Nogueira e por Afrânio Catani como o mais citado. Os dados resultantes dos três indicadores de autorias (autoria dos livros, autoria dos capítulos e autoria dos livros que integram os capítulos) constituem a frente de pesquisa que se encontra identificada por 21 autores, sendo 15 autores brasileiros e seis autores estrangeiros que constituem os principais teóricos e pesquisadores que contribuem para a fundamentação teórica que sustenta o desenvolvimento das pesquisas em Sociologia da Educação na produção de teses e dissertações no Brasil. Por meio da análise de citação, ficou destacado que as abordagens bourdieusiana são as mais utilizadas como referencial teórico nas teses e dissertações em Sociologia da Educação. Os estudos aqui apresentados apontaram os autores mais influentes e os quadros teóricos de referência utilizados pelos autores das teses e dissertações para embasar suas pesquisas em Sociologia da Educação e como elas se configuram no cenário nacional da pós-graduação no Brasil.

abstract: The Civil Rights Project estimates that Black girls are among the least likely to graduate from high school. More specifically, only about half, or 56%, of freshman Black girls graduate with their class four years later. Beyond the statistics little is known about Black girls who drop out, why they leave school and what happens to them once they are gone. This study is a grounded theory analysis of the stories eight adult Black women told about dropping out of high school with a particular focus on how dropping out affected their lives as workers, mothers and returners to education. There is one conclusion about dropping out and another about Black female identity. First, the women in my study were adolescents during the 1980s, experienced life at the intersection of Blackness, womaness, and poverty and lived in the harsh conditions of a Black American hyperghetto. Using a synthesis between intersectionality and hyperghettoization I found that the women were so determined to improve their economic and personal conditions that they took on occupations that seemed to promise freedom, wealth and safety. Because they were so focused on their new lives, their school attendance suffered as a consequence. In the second conclusion I argued that Black women draw their insights about Black female identity from two competing sources. The two sources are their lived experience and popular controlling images of Black female identity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2011

abstract: The number of community college honors programs has significantly increased since the 1980s. This study analyzes qualitative data collected from employee, student, and faculty participants associated with a community college honors program in the western United States during the months of April 2011 and January-March 2012. Using a theoretical framework derived from literature on Institutional Isomorphism and Academic Capitalism, this work explores the motivations behind the creation of a community college honors program, the implementation of the program, and the program's effects on the micro-level experiences of those affiliated. The data analysis reveals that the motivations for the incorporation and continuation of the Honors Program are driven by hopes of improving the college's reputation and attracting new funding sources for its academic programs. These findings are consistent with arguments about Institutional Isomorphism and Academic Capitalism. However, consistent with literature on program implementation, I identified barriers in the form of staff and student perceptions that impede Honor's program conformity to ideal standards. I refer to this finding as "incomplete isomorphism." / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Sociology 2012