According to critical scholars there is a global education policy community that contributes to the increasing convergence of national education policies (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Key players in this community include the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Although the scholars point out that global education policies are not uniformly copied or implemented, missing from the literature on globalization and education are the voices of the students and educators impacted by them. The process of policy implementation is neither seamless nor mechanical. The intended impact of a policy is not necessarily its outcome. Not only may there be unanticipated consequences, but educators and students may also resist, adapt, or transform practices suggested by the policies. This study examines international influence on the classroom practices of educators in one high school in northern Mexico by tracing the implementation of a recent national high school reform. Mexican education officials drew on the examples of recent high school reforms in Europe in designing the reform and, in addition, borrowed money from the World Bank for its implementation. Analysis of key official documents related to the reform along with participant observation and interviews of teachers, students, parents, a union representative, and education officials reveal that although just like the policies of the global education policy community the reform promotes neoliberal and human capital views of schooling, these views are not shared by all of the participants in this study. In addition, participants do not believe that the reform is adequately adapted to the context of Mexican schools. Judging from the teachers participating in this study, Mexican schools and educators have strengths that were overlooked in the development of the reform.

This study is aimed at analyzing how contemporary urban Aymara youth hip hoppers and bloggers are creating their identities and are producing discourses in texts and lyrics to contest racist and colonial discourses. The research is situated in Bolivia, which is currently engaged in a cultural and political revolution supported by Indigenous movements. Theoretically the study is framed by a multi-perspective conceptual framework based on subaltern studies, coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge, interculturality and decolonial theory. Aymara young people illustrate the possibility of preserving Indigenous identities, language, and knowledge while maximizing the benefits of urban society. This challenges the colonial ideology that has essentialized the rural origin of Indigenous identities. Moreover, this research argues that the health of Indigenous languages is interconnected with the health of the self-esteem of Indigenous people. Additionally, this study provides information about the relation of youth to the power of oral tradition, language policies, and the use of technology.

This dissertation research showcases six ethnographic case studies that focus on the experiences of Puerto Rican transnational youths and their families upon returning from the US to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a remarkable setting to study transnationalism because of its particular historical and sociopolitical relationship with the US, which grants Puerto Ricans citizenship and thus ease of movement, while retaining a strong attachment to the Island. It can be argued that Puerto Ricans define transnationalism, being simultaneously insiders and outsiders to the US national scene. The youths involved in these dynamics learn to navigate different educational and social settings on the Island and the US. Factors like language and the educational contexts are highly influential in the students' lives and their educational outcomes. The study was conducted over a period of seven months in two public schools in Puerto Rico. The data were collected through interviews, classroom observations, and home visits with return migrant students, their parents, and their teachers and school staff. The combination of these data collection methods and the variety of participants, provided a nuanced portrayal of the nature of their transnationalism and the social and educational experiences of the families in and out of the school context.

Most research on low-income, racial minority students' access to higher education has been conducted in urban communities. Little research explores these students' experiences within rural settings. Using Ríos-Aguilar, Kiyama, Gravitt and Moll's framework (2011) that bridges Yosso's (2005) "community cultural wealth" with alternative forms of capital, this case study investigated how three alumni students from a low-income, rural, border community accessed information and resources for college within their school, homes and community. Narratives, one-on-one interviews, and a survey questionnaire helped determine multiple forms of capital participants leveraged towards higher education. Participants' college pursuits and choices were influenced by information from family members, teachers and guidance counselors, community scholarships, and emotional support of family, friends, and community members. Research must continue to follow the experiences of rural, low-income, minority students access to higher education and create better opportunities and connections for them to attend college.

This study explores the cultural dimension of translating children's and adolescent literature. Framed within the theories of cultural studies, translation studies, Baktinian dialogism, and reader response theories, this study is three-fold: (1) a content analysis is conducted to identify the cultural and linguistic shifts in the translated books and the strategies utilized by the translators for making those shifts, (2) the responses of the source-text (ST) and the target-text (TT) readers are compared; (3) the potential relationship between the translation strategies and the reader responses are inferred based on the findings from (1) and (2). The expected findings are: (1) adept use of various translation strategies helps the TT readers recognize themes as similar as the ST readers; (2) some interventions may create deviating responses in the TT readers as compared with the ST readers; (3) some unique responses by either the ST or the TT readers may be as a direct result of cultural differences more than the translation strategies. The implication section provides recommendations to publishers, translators, educators, parents, teacher educators, and researchers, and suggestions for further research.

This multi-modal dissertation examines the historical hegemonic making of U.S. education, and how compulsory schooling has framed acceptable notions of culture, language/literacy, and knowledge production. Through this criticism of colonization and education, theoretical and practical alternatives are explored for the opportunities outside mainstream schooling in the US. In examining the literary work on decolonizing education, these efforts can engage in unlearning of coloniality by finding examples from a time before colonization. In contemporary society, the practice of de/unschooling can hold the possibilities for decolonizing education. To demonstrate how families of color in the U.S. engage with unschooling, interview questions serve as the sharing of knowledge and experience so as to ground the research in lived reality. A brief survey of critical education and critical pedagogy broadens those already critical of schools and/or receptive to the criticism of schools and the un/deschooling alternative then places student and family/community as the center of learning and teaching.

This qualitative multiple case study explores the intersection of young adult literature and adolescent memory narratives in an undergraduate course entitled Learning about Adolescence through Literature within an action research framework. This dissertation is motivated by two research questions: (1) What influence might young adult literature and memory narratives of adolescence have on undergraduate students' understandings of the cultural construction of adolescence? (2) How does the text we read affect how we perceive our lived experiences, and, in turn, how does this interchange of story affect the way in which we perceive adolescence in general? Building upon reader response theories and critical narrative pedagogy, findings indicate that YA literature and lifestory narratives can facilitate reconceptualizing previously held notions of adolescence, replacing pejorative and generalized assumptions regarding adolescence with an openness and acknowledgement of diversity. Implications for teachers and other youth workers are discussed, as well as implications for adolescents.

On the northern shores of the recreated lake apal an isthmus protrudes spanning east and west. A road runs along the isthmus and from its center a leisure and culture-center spans out over the water. The isthmus protects the surrounding countryside from flooding during extreme rainfall as it is predicted by MSB. There is an outlet for water connecting lake Hjälmaren with lake Mälaren containing a concrete obstacle for wandering crayfish.The Center is dedicated to the restored lake and its environmental benefits and to the Noble Crayfish domestic in Sweden but now faced with extinction due to the invasive Signal crayfish. The center follows the gentle curvature of the isthmus, half of it resting on the isthmus the other half protruding out over the water. 896 thin piles made of reinforced concrete carries the building with rests on a concrete slab. Large glulam frames and CLT beams makes out the carrying construction of the building. A long room whose width expands and collapses during its course spanns the entire length of the building and it too follows the curvature of the isthmus. No doors lead directly out to the long room, all room-exits go in an east and west direction. Large windows overlook the lake from the central restaurant, dedicated to the homegrown crayfish. The interior walls, roof and floor is made upp by wooden planks following the curvature of the Center. The glulam frames are, although clad because of the climatic surrounding, visible on the buildings exterior walls and roof like ribbs. The roof and ribbs are matt black and the walls are falu-red. Public spaces look out over the lake while the interior service rooms face north to the road. Main entrances and exits are on the eastern and western side, while cargo-loading is located on the northern side accessible from the road. / Längs den återskapade Apalsjöns nord östra strand ringlar ett näs i ost västlig rikting. På näsets norra sida löper en väg och söder om vägen samt ut över vattnet sträcker sig ett hus vars långsmala kropp följer näsets konturer. Näset skapar en vattenbarriär och skyddar den omkringliggande åkermarken från de översvämningar som beskrivs på MSB´s katastrofkartor vid framtida extremväder samtidigt som vattenutsläppet garanterar fortsatt sammanbindning av Hjälmaren och Mälaren. Ett vandringshinder i betong för signalkräftor finns i vattenutsläppet. Det långsmala huset är ett Folketshusdistriktet och Naturum, dedikerat till den återskapade sjön och till den inhemska svenska flodkräftan. Flodkräftan, snart stöd i vilt tillstånd, odlas i anslutning till huset i dammar på näset, för konsumtion i restaurangen samt försäljning. Kräftyngel odlas för försäljning till omkringliggande lantbrukare för odling i egna dammar. 896 20•20 betongpelare bär upp betongplattan och utgör husets grund. Stora ramar i limträ, takbjälkar i kl-trä och kl-vägskivor utgör husets huvudsakliga bärande konstruktion. Limträramarna är synliga i husets fasad. Inklädda till skydd mot vädret spänner dom över byggnaden som revben. Taket och "revbenen" är mattsvarta och ytterväggarna målade faluröda. Halva huset vilar på näset och halva skjuter ut över sjöytan. Husets södra del utgörs av publika rum med generösa fönster som blickar ut över sjön. Den norra delen av byggnaden består av interna personalutrymmen, toaletter, teknikrum, vaktmästeri etc. Ett långt rum löper genom hela husets längd i öst-västlig riktning, ömsom ökandes i bredd, ömsom avsmalnande. Inga dörrar öppnas direkt mot detta rum utan alla dörrar öppnas åt öst eller väst. De publika ingångarna till huset finns på östra och västra kortsidorna, inläsning sker på nordsidan från vägen.

This study explores the web-navigation practices of adult learners in higher education and re-conceptualizes the concept of the organizing circumstance of self-managed learning, originated by Spear and Mocker (1984). The theoretical framework draws on funds of knowledge theory from a cultural historical perspective and elaborates a Vygotskian concepts of learning and development by introducing the notion of the distal object and the zone of distal development. The study employed a mixed methods design with an embedded multiple-case study involving half of the twelve participants using a new technology for self-managed learning called Zonebee. Zonebee recorded participants' web navigation, known as Zonebee Trails, providing quantitative data for analysis. Surveys were administered, namely the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw&Dennison, 1994), the Index of Learning Styles Inventory (Soloman&Felder, 1986), a survey of technology use (created for this study) and a set of demographic questions. Eleven of the twelve participants also provided interviews in which they described their self-managed learning practices.Findings contradicted the premise in the literature that the learning environment fortuitously determines the learning experience. Participants primarily relied on the internet and computer to manage their learning and made deliberate choices about which tools to use depending upon the purpose of the constituent process of self-managed learning in which they were engaged (assessing, planning, implementing, monitoring, evaluating or producing). Zonebee Trails evidenced participants' engagement in considerable planning before generating focused queries to locate specific materials. Thus, this study suggests that the organizing circumstance operates, not through happenstance alone, but through the confluence of four factors influencing the direction the learner takes: funds of knowledge for learning; learning demands (proximity of the learning object, proximal or distal), conditions for learning (affordances for and constraints on learning); and motivation or purpose of activity. The re-conceptualized organizing circumstance of learning, then, offers a methodological and theoretical way to redefine context and understand how learners manage their own learning.

Many of the international, supranational, national, and grassroots development organizations working in the field of education channel their efforts into capacity-building for teachers. My research examines the nexus of such international development by US-based organizations with national schooling systems by naming and theorizing this process as a new field called cross-border teacher education. "Cross-border" is the term employed by UNESCO (2005) and OECD (2007) to describe international cooperative projects in higher education, synonymous with "transnational," "borderless," and "offshore" education (Knight, 2007). I use a critical lens to compare two distinct models of cross-border teacher education: a small locally based non-profit development organization in Guatemala that has worked with one school for several years, and a US government-funded program whose participants are trained in bilingual teaching methods and critical thinking at US colleges and universities, then return to their home communities throughout Mexico and Guatemala. These are programs for inservice teachers and are henceforth referred to as cross-border professional development or CBPD. The research questions for this study are: What institutions shape cross-border professional development in these cases? How are language policies enacted through CBPD? How do teachers make meaning of their CBPD experiences when they return to their classrooms and communities? And finally, What do these case studies tell us about cross-border professional development as a process? These questions generate understandings of national education systems, US-based international development, and cross-border education. Utilizing ethnographic approaches to educational policy that locate regional, class, and ethnic asymmetries (McCarty, 2011; Tollefson, 2002), data was gathered according to the distinct organizational structures of the two agencies. For the larger organization data collection was initiated with electronic open-ended questionnaires and supplemented by semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and program documents. Data on the smaller organization was collected through participant observation in professional development workshops and classrooms, semi-structured interviews, and textual analysis of teacher reflections, organizational emails and documents. The research focuses on the voices of teachers as the target of cross-border professional development efforts, but also maps out the dialogic perspectives of education officials and the organizations‘ administrators to illuminate tensions within the process as well as highlights some surprising roles for teachers as agents of change.