It is the purpose of this thesis to show that the pragmatic philosophy is basically responsible for present-day developments in various teaching techniques.

<p> This case study on Crellin Elementary School in Oakland, Maryland, examined the pedagogical practices of 7 teachers/administrator from the school. It examined implementation of placed-based education (PBE) using researcher observations and teachers&rsquo;/administrators&rsquo; narratives, two learning partners, and the former superintendent about the efficacy of the PBE learning model. This study also examined the commitment level of adopting critical pedagogies of place to meet the learning needs of students, many who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Community members provided narratives of their connections to placed-based educational activities with Crellin and their insights on the impact on the community and the participating organization. The research study indicated that PBE can be a contributing factor in narrowing the achievement gap by focusing on the lower socioeconomic subgroup, using data from students who receive free and reduced-price lunch. Measurement tools included the Maryland State Assessment and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers assessments scores between the years 2003 through 2010 and 2017. Other contributing factors determining the efficacy of PBE included leadership and sustainability and the number of highly qualified teachers, specifically at Crellin Elementary School. Benefits of PBE were also discussed, including teacher empowerment, community empowerment, and an enriched curriculum due to partnerships with academic experts. Recommendations included replication of a study on middle and high schools implementing the PBE learning model and its effects on student achievement. A recommendation was to track alumni student achievement including a longitudinal study of Crellin students&rsquo; academic performance through middle school and high school (e.g., Advanced Placement, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career, SATs, and ACTs). </p><p>

<p> This study investigates the influence of the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program on participants who have taken it as an elective course for at least one year in high school and who have gone on to complete at least two years of higher education. Participants describe their experiences in terms of the way they saw/see themselves as learners, as students and as members of communities. Using a narrative inquiry approach to analysis and a poststructuralist theoretical framework influenced by Judith Butler&rsquo;s work in the field of gender identity, participants&rsquo; experiences are examined with an eye toward the ways in which their AVID participation had a role in the way they perform their identity and how they see themselves as acting and reacting in the performative aspects of their home selves, high school selves and college selves. In examining the narratives of participant experiences, particular attention is paid to the ways in which they mold their views of themselves and others&rsquo; views of them into a set of values that, in their telling, sets them apart from who they had been and from others similarly situated who did not have the AVID experience (the high school self). It also sets them apart from their families (the home self), whose lack of knowledge and understanding of the process of becoming first-generation college students inhibited their ability to understand and effectively advocate for their children. It did, however, connect them to the kinds of cultural capital that would improve their ability to perform as higher education expects of undergraduates (the college self). </p><p> The findings of this research center on the interplay between internal agency and external influence as they combine to create participants&rsquo; views of their own identities and can be seen through their attitudes and actions as they pursued undergraduate degrees. An implication of this work is the idea that AVID serves as a bridge of sorts which connects the agent desiring to be with the society which expects it to be. This is brought forth as participants describe their progression through AVID and college and the changes they underwent in their perceptions of themselves first as novitiates in the academic world, then as junior partners and finally as capable doers of deeds who had not yet come to appreciate the incompleteness of their agency. </p><p>

<p> The purpose of this grounded theory research study was to better understand the experiences of emergent bilingual Cape Verdean Middle School students as they navigate internal and external borderlands. This study was conducted in an urban middle school in New England. Nine female, emergent bilingual Cape Verdean middle school students participated in this study. This study was also completed with the assistance of the school district&rsquo;s middle school language acquisition coach. The participants contributed to student surveys, focus group discussions, participant observations and member checking. All data was analyzed using coding and grounded theory, which lead to development of theoretical constructs. </p><p> This study documents some EB students&rsquo; experiences and feelings pertaining to language, as well as their cultural, social, and linguistic identities while they navigate different linguistic and social worlds. In addition, this study documents how ideologies of linguistic superiority in different worlds or spaces can affect EB students&rsquo; sense of identity and connections to others. The evidence provided in this study is useful to help teachers, administrators, and anyone else involved in education to better understand some realities and challenges many EB students face, as well as how facing these challenges and differences can affect student&rsquo;s sense of self, linguistic, and cultural identities. This study concludes that it is necessary for schools to work from a to create linguistic democracies. </p><p>

It is undeniable that schools and classrooms must function according to some conception of authority, but contemporary educational theory often overlooks this concept. This ‘forgetting’ of authority can lead to misconceptions about the concept itself or to conflating it with other concepts such as autonomy, agency, self-regulation, or power. In turn, these misconceptions can then diminish the role that students play in education by ignoring or overlooking any authoritative aspect of it. The authority relationship between student and teacher in educational theory—and in classrooms—then often defaults to an unbalanced binary structure in which teachers hold authority but students do not. To rectify this problem, authority and its importance in the classroom must be remembered and reconsidered. This thesis undertakes a critical analysis of authority to state its complex features clearly. Moreover, this analysis will show how authority is distinct from importantly related concepts like autonomy, agency, self-regulation, and power. The analysis then moves to examine the education models of Peters, Dewey, and Neill, with the purpose of highlighting the prevalence and importance of authority in education. With these distinctions and boundaries drawn, the final section of this thesis will describe the strengths of an authoritative student role in epistemic, political, and moral realms, positioning student-held authority alongside the socio-critical theory of Freire, Apple, and Giroux. / Graduate

<p> A Paut Neteru Journey: An Autoethnographic Study of a Black Female Charter School Leader Using an Africentric Approach by Patricia Linn Williams This dissertation seeks to examine the obstacles and experiences of a Black female charter school leader using an Africentric approach to educating Black children, and ways in which social and material inequalities may have shaped her journey. A conceptual framework that blends African-centered pedagogy, African womanism, and transformational leadership is used to guide this qualitative autoethnographic study. Use of the autoethnographic method provides an opportunity to examine the relational dynamics of the experiences of this Black female charter school leader in the cultural context of the Black community and neoliberal education. Data analysis is captured from autobiographical storytelling within three key time periods or epochs of her 17-year experience starting, operating, and closing a charter school. Data analysis includes coding based on themes that emerged from the data collection process. Findings indicate how attempts to implement an African-centered approach to educating Black children in a DC charter school in the U.S. Eurocentric education model in the neoliberal era was compromised by neoliberal policies, particularly high-stakes testing, a history of separate and unequal education, the lack of support for African-centered education, and the lack of access to facilities. These findings also support the need to continue to examine how non-European children can be educated, not just schooled, in a manner that places them at the center of their learning, builds agency, and develops them into creative and critical thinkers and future builders.</p><p>

abstract: This study explores the relationships and implications of Foucault's genealogical analytic, his most recently published course, The Punitive Society and its connections to Discipline and Punish through an analysis of productive power, and the potential offerings for educational research. The purpose of this study is to clarify Foucault's genealogical approach in making it more accessible to educational researchers, to investigate the applications and significance of Foucault's most recently available lectures to education, and to analyze Foucault's reimagining of the notion of power as it is developed throughout the lectures and fully realized in Discipline and Punish to better develop an analytic lens from which to interrogate relations of power in pedagogical practices. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2016

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:28:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2004-11-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:57:50Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 alves_cer_me_mar.pdf: 346479 bytes, checksum: a75f1322851961c733686164b64ca04b (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / A escolha desse tema se justifica na medida em que, há um número razoável de produções teóricas sobre o pensamento e as propostas político- educacionais de Fernando de Azevedo, poucos foram os estudos capazes de explicitar as fontes teóricas e a concepção humanista nas quais seu discurso e a sua prática se assentam.. Assim, partiu-se da enunciação do problema geral do humanismo enquanto movimento histórico e concepção filosófica, diagnosticado no debate filosófico contemporâneo, e de forma com que esse problema repercutiu entre as concepções humanistas denominadas de moderna contra aquelas acusadas de tradicionais. Nesse aspecto, este trabalho monográfico procurou, de um lado, compreender as particularidades da ação e do pensamento de Fernando de Azevedo ao longo de sua trajetória, assim como focalizar a sua concepção de humanismo, explicitada em sua obra produzida entre 1944 e 1955. E, de outro, elucidar as singularidades dessa ação e desse pensamento embasado numa concepção de humanismo cientifico, frente aquelas filosofias da educação que estiveram presentes no movimento de renovação educacional, entre 1930 e 1955, contribuindo para a compreensão da constituição da filosofia da educação no Brasil. Assim, esse trabalho analisa a trajetória de Fernando de Azevedo de forma didática, porém a ênfase principal é no terceiro momento, o qual temos um Azevedo mais maduro e com a sua concepção de humanismo formado. No entanto, para cada um desses períodos tentou-se estabelecer as similaridades e as divergências de seu pensamento sobre a educação. Por essa razão, esta pesquisa pretende reconstituir o sentido humanista presente no discurso político-educacional de Fernando de Azevedo, compreendendo suas bases filosóficas e a filosofia da educação que o fundamenta. / The choosing of this theme is backgrounded in so far as, although there is an acceptable number of theoretical productions about Fernando, de Azevedo's thinking and political- educational proposes, a few studies were able to explicit the theoretical sources and the humanist conception which his discourse and practice were established. Therefore, it was started of the enunciation of the humanism general problem as a historical movement and philosophical conception diagnosed in the contemporaneous philosophic debate and, so that, this problem becomes reflected between these humanist conceptions named moderns contrary to those accused traditional. In this regard, this monographic work, at first, aims to understand Fernando de Azevedoþs movement and thinking particularities along of his trajectory, as well as to focus his humanist conception expressed in his work produced between 1944 and 1955 and, on the other side, to elucidate the uniqueness of these movement andthinking based on a scientific humanism conception, in accordance with these educational philosophy which were present in the educational renovation movement between 1930 and 1955 contributing to the understanding of the educational philosophy constitution in Brazil. Therefore, this work analyses Fernando de Azevedoþs trajectory in a didactic way. Nevertheless, the main emphasis is in the third moment, in which we have a more mature Azevedo with his humanism conception formed. However, in every one of these periods, it was attempted to establish the uniqueness and disagreements of his thinking about education. On this account, this research intends to reconstitute the humanist sense presents in Fernando de Azevedoþs political-educational discourse, understanding its philosophical bases and the eduational philosophy that bases him.

<p> Rather than offering honors courses in English, Cooper High School (CHS) provides students in grades 9 and 10 with an opportunity to pursue an Independent English Honors Project (EHP) as a means of earning Honors credit on their high school transcript. While most schools utilize a more traditional Honors class system that often identifies students as early as 3rd grade, the lack of Honors courses in English leads directly to English classes that are heterogeneously grouped. Cooper High School&rsquo;s atypical approach to Honors English instruction, controversial among some CHS parents, raise important questions about the potential value of independent student work and the benefits, if any, of heterogeneous instruction. This model of Honors instruction, unlike other subject areas within CHS, is also a cause of great consternation for many within the community and district. </p><p> This qualitative study, based on interviews and focus groups with students and teachers, seeks to better understand the perceptions of the EHP and its place at CHS. The study also addresses how students and teachers experience/perceive the EHP, those who choose to undertake it (or do not), and the heterogeneously grouped English classes that come with it. This study examined both those presently engaged in the EHP, and reflections of older students on their past experiences with it. Additionally, this study reveals student and teacher perceptions of smartness, the often challenging influence of parents and the value of being an Honors student at CHS. Although understandably complex, the core findings of this study are that students benefit academically and socially from their participation in the English Honors Project and that, despite the EHP&rsquo;s limitations, it lays foundation for addressing issues associated with tracking, an important issue for the CHS community and district. </p><p>

<p> This project offers a counter narrative to some accepted theories regarding graduate learning practices. By using Scholarly Personal Narrative to present my classroom experience I consider how knowledge is produced in higher education. I suggest that the use of feminist theory, postmodernism, and disability studies combined with other higher education theories may expand the limits of current graduate education. This project suggests that my story is useful to the field of higher education and graduate studies, and that by making intentional connections between higher education and feminist theory as well disability studies, new perspectives can emerge about how higher education practices regarding instruction, administration, and policy can be created.</p><p>