This study explored how rule systems evolved in two high school social studies classes. To accomplish this, detailed descriptions and analysis of the practices and processes by which teachers established and maintained rules were conducted in two classrooms over a nine-week observational timeline. In addition, the teachers were interviewed at the beginning, middle, and end of the observation period to gain insight into how they thought about their classes and reacted to the daily experiences they were having in these settings. Findings indicated that the teachers utilized the same enactment practices to uphold their management and rule systems, however, each operationalized these practices in dissimilar ways. This was largely due to the fact that the teachers' goal structures and beliefs about the function of management and classroom rules affected their implementation practices. Both set similar goals for managing the classroom and fostering self-discipline and student responsibility, yet each experienced problems attempting to balance student affordances for responsibility with teacher surveillance and interventions. One system thrived on explicitness and enforcement, while the other was dedicated to helping students develop autonomous morality. In reaction, both teachers had mixed feelings and/or satisfaction regarding the outcomes. This contrast was especially useful in demonstrating the inherent tensions in classroom systems that attempt to orchestrate students' personal responsibility. Such systems depend upon general norms and/or rules to guide student behavior. When students do not accept these norms, a teacher is constrained from imposing explicit rules and consequences because such practices take responsibility away from students and thus undermine the very system the teacher is attempting to implement. Overall, further research on this inherent tension is needed to better understand how teachers can orchestrate student responsibility in schools and classrooms.

The goal of this study is to develop an understanding of how participants express their environmental identities during an environmental learning program. Past research on the outcomes of environmental learning programs has focused primarily on changes in knowledge and attitudes. However, even if knowledge or attitudes can be accurately measured, they do not necessarily directly predict outcomes of environmental learning programs but rather serve as a proxy. Environmental identity is proposed as an alternative way to understanding participants' experiences in an environmental learning program. This study borrows a theoretical framework for environmental identity from the field of environmental campaigning and applies the field of environmental learning in a new way. This framework is based on known aspects of human identity from psychological research and allows environmental identity to be explored in a new and unique manner. A thematic analysis approach allows for the description of how six middle school students express their environmental identities around the themes of values and life goals, group membership, and fears and threats related to environmental issues. Findings indicate that the environmental identities of the participants in this study appear to be continuously developing and changing to account for new experiences and ideas related to the environment. Over the course of the program, some of the participants expressed that their environmental identities had strengthened due to their participation in the environmental learning program. The theoretical framework is used to describe what a strong environmental identity would look like as well as to characterize three of the participants' environmental identities. The affordances and limitations of the framework are shared and suggestions are made for how the framework could be strengthened for use in understanding participants' environmental identities during environmental learning programs.

I investigated linguistic patterns in middle school students' writing to understand their relevant embodied experiences for learning science. Embodied experiences are those limited by the perceptual and motor constraints of the human body. Recent research indicates student understanding of science needs embodied experiences. Recent emphases of science education researchers in the practices of science suggest that students' understanding of systems and their structure, scale, size, representations, and causality are crosscutting concepts that unify all scientific disciplinary areas. To discern the relationship between linguistic patterns and embodied experiences, I relied on Cognitive Linguistics, a field within cognitive sciences that pays attention to language organization and use assuming that language reflects the human cognitive system. Particularly, I investigated the embodied experiences that 268 middle school students learning about water brought to understanding: i) systems and system structure; ii) scale, size and representations; and iii) causality. Using content analysis, I explored students' language in search of patterns regarding linguistic phenomena described within cognitive linguistics: image schemas, conceptual metaphors, event schemas, semantical roles, and force-dynamics. I found several common embodied experiences organizing students' understanding of crosscutting concepts. Perception of boundaries and change in location and perception of spatial organization in the vertical axis are relevant embodied experiences for students' understanding of systems and system structure. Direct object manipulation and perception of size with and without locomotion are relevant for understanding scale, size and representations. Direct applications of force and consequential perception of movement or change in form are relevant for understanding of causality. I discuss implications of these findings for research and science teaching.

Community colleges are tasked with helping all students regardless of their academic background to receive a degree, certificate, or other form of education. Many of these students need support in learning the mathematical content necessary to take college-level courses. Since a large proportion of students in these developmental classes are students of color, and unlikely to be successful, developmental courses are not leveling the playing field of higher education. In-class computer-centered (ICCC) classes are a possible solution to this social justice issue because they provide students with flexible learning opportunities. Students can work independently on a schedule that matches their needs and can access the multiple learning tools embedded in the software in ways that make the most sense for their own learning. Research on ICCC mathematics courses has primarily compared success rates with those of traditional lecture classes. These quantitative studies provided a limited view of student activity in an ICCC class and did not demonstrate how students were navigating these courses or the nature of their experiences. This study uses a qualitative research design to explore student actions and their experiences relative to their success. In my analysis, I utilized Bandura's construct of agency, defined as the capacity to understand, predict and alter the course of one's life's events (Bandura, 2008). My framework also considers agency as a temporal phenomenon residing in the past, present, and future (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Agency is operationalized temporally and by using four characteristics, intention, forethought, reflection, and reaction. This study uses case study research design where students are interviewed and observed in an ICCC class. In it I illustrate the various forms of agency students bring and leverage in the ICCC mathematics classroom in their attempts to be successful. Findings indicate that the students who were successful were most adept at leveraging a variety of resources to help them work towards their goals. There is the assumption that students need flexibility and individualized learning in developmental courses; these needs are addressed by ICCC and are a way in which the ICCC format perfects the traditional lecture. However, this research demonstrates that the question of how to best help developmental students remains open.

This study explores the influence of mentor teachers in the meanings and practices that two elementary preservice teachers adopted about eliciting and using student ideas, while learning to teach science in the university science methods course and in the field placement classroom. Prior research on teacher development has shown that the high-leverage practice of eliciting and using student ideas can support preservice teachers in thinking about common problems of practice. I used four core problems of practice to examine the meanings and practices that preservice teachers adopted in eliciting and using student ideas as they planned, enacted and reflected on methods course assignments in the field placement classroom. Using sociocultural and situative perspectives on learning, I identified two factors that influenced the sense that preservice teachers constructed and the practices that they adopted about eliciting and using student ideas. These factors were mentor teacher's perspectives on learning and goals for student learning. I also examined three mechanisms by which mentor teacher's perspectives and goals influenced preservice teacher meanings and practices about eliciting and using student ideas in instruction, including mentor teacher's classroom practice, the nature and foci of mentor teacher and preservice teacher conversations and mentor teacher's use of preservice teachers' ideas in their conversations about instruction. The results suggest that preservice teachers come to make sense of and use student ideas in their instruction in ways that closely align with those of their mentors. They also indicate that preservice teachers' integration of experiences from different learning-to-teach contexts in making sense of student ideas may be related to the degree of alignment between mentor teachers' perspectives and goals and the perspectives and goals of the science methods course.

Entre 2005 y 2010 cerca de 1.4 millones de inmigrantes mexicanos regresaron a México. Aunque las razones de su regreso varían, es innegable que hay una creciente tendencia en lo que ahora es conocido como migración de retorno (MATT, 2014). Esta investigación cualitativa, tiene como propósito identificar características del desarrollo de lenguaje (español e inglés), el desarrollo social y el capital académico de los estudiantes con experiencia educativa previa en los Estados Unidos de América y que están inscritos en las escuelas de Sonora. Estudiantes y padres de familia que por un periodo de tiempo vivieron en ese país y ahora residen en tres distintas ciudades de la entidad dan su testimonio y, junto con el de los profesores se analizan las implicaciones educativas de esta migración de retorno bajo la perspectiva del transnacionalismo. Se busca volver visibles a estos estudiantes que cada vez adquieren mayor presencia en nuestras aulas, a través de la valoración de su capital social y académico y hacer propuestas educativas pertinentes acorde a sus necesidades multiculturales. Se reconocen las particularidades propias de esta región Sonora-Arizona, permiten por sus características geográficas, económicas y sociales, generar un enfoque enriquecido de redes transnacionales en favor del fortalecimiento de la identidad, el desarrollo económico y social. (Between 2005 and 2010 about 1,4 millions of people of Mexican immigrant returned to Mexico. Although their reasons are different, it is undeniable a growing tendency in what nowadays is known a return migration (MATT, 2014). This research aims to recognize qualitatively the social and language (Spanish and English) development, along with the academic value in students in Sonora who have had previous schooling experience in the United States of America. Students and parents who lived for a period of time in the US and now they live in three different cities in Sonora are some of the participants. Through their testimonies along with teachers this research explains the process of return migration to Mexico linked to the approach of transnationalism. The study focuses in making visible the increasing presence of these students in Mexican schools by giving value to their social and academic capital, as well as introduces educational proposals that are suitable to the student’s multicultural needs. The geographic, economic and social characteristics of the Sonora-Arizona region allows and generates a focal point abundant of transnational networks that favors the enrichment of identity, social and economic development.)

This dissertation study examines the experiences of four Latina/o pre-service teachers (PSTs) as they learn about teaching mathematics for understanding (TM4U) and integrating a child's out-of-school mathematical knowledge and experiences during instruction. Studying the knowledge and experiences of Latina/o PSTs is necessary because PSTs from minoritized backgrounds have particular insights about teaching diverse students that can inform the learning experiences of other PSTs. This study investigates the prior experiences and beliefs about mathematics instruction the Latina/o PSTs (and those from minoritized backgrounds) bring as they begin their mathematics methods semester and how they leverage their experiences as they learn to teach mathematics to diverse students. Teaching mathematics for understanding is one way that teachers can support children's understanding of mathematics (Kilpatrick et al 2001). Teachers who integrate children's out-of-school mathematical knowledge and experiences in their practice draws upon multiple existing frameworks--the basic premise being that children come to school with mathematical knowledge and experiences that helps them learn mathematics in school (Gonzalez, Andrade, Civil, & Moll, 2001; Greer, Mukhopadhyay, Powell, & Nelson-Barber, 2009). My study looks at the experiences of Latina/o PSTs as they learn to help children leverage their out-of-school knowledge and experiences to understand mathematics. Data sources included four individual interviews, relevant methods assignments and audio transcripts from methods course discussions, and observational notes from the PSTs' field experience classrooms. The study found that PSTs leveraged their prior experiences as English Language Learners to support linguistically diverse children learn mathematics. Based on their prior experiences, some of the PSTs were more sensitive to the needs of marginalized children learning mathematics. The study found that the PSTs leveraged their experiences as diverse learners to think about the ways teachers could connect in-school mathematics to children's out-of-school mathematical knowledge and experiences. Yet the findings suggest that PSTs still need more experience articulating how exactly children's out-of-school experiences can help children understand mathematics. Implications of this study speak to how the beliefs and prior experiences of PSTs from minoritized backgrounds can inform how future teachers are prepared to teach mathematics to diverse students.