This report describes a year-long practitioner-research study documenting the challenges and successes of a first grade teacher’s attempt to increase her students’ sense of agency in the classroom. Through the insight gained from my classes in graduate school, I decided to alter my practices into a more child-centered approach. Throughout the 2011-2012 school year, I have documented the reactions to these changes in my students and myself. I have altered my practice in three main areas. These areas include: implementing a project-approach time period in the classroom schedule entitled, “Discovery Time;” taking a supporting role (as opposed to a directing role) in peer-to-peer conflicts that occur in the classroom; and providing students with more of a voice when learning new concepts which enables them to teach each other more than I teach them. Each of these three areas has required me to give up a substantial amount of control in the classroom and reallocate this control to my students in order to allow them more ownership and direction in their own learning and development. This, in turn, has given my students a greater sense of agency in our classroom. / text

This study investigates how Canadian youth, nationally recognized as eco-civic leaders, perceive their own sense of agency and their capacity to effect ‘change.’ More specifically, this study explores how these youth are interpreting change (i.e., attitudinal, behavioural, social, political, etc.), and what their perspectives reveal about the relationship between school and community-based environmental learning experiences and their capacity to make change in society. This project explores the notion of ‘student agency’ as it relates to an emerging trend of environmental action learning aimed at active citizenship within the fields of environmental education (EE) and to a lesser extent, civics education. Drawing on different qualitative research methodologies, such as but not limited to narrative inquiry, 34 past recipients/finalists of the Toyota Earth Day Canada Scholarship participated in this study. I used three different dimensions of environmental action learning to construct the conceptual lens through which the findings were interpreted. My findings suggest a critical gap exists between how EE is widely practiced in Canadian schools (i.e., environmentally responsible stewarding), and how it is currently being taken up in recent EE policy and research (i.e., developing capacity to effect broader socio-ecological change). In turn, this research asserts that although we are cultivating ‘good stewards’ and ‘good citizens,’ we are not educating youth toward becoming ‘change agents.’ As such, the majority of youth in this study demonstrate an egocentric perception of their identity and capacity as young eco-civic leaders. Consequently, my research suggests that specific learning conditions, including youth and adults serving as co-participants in community-based action projects aimed at broader social, political, and environmental change, are important in the development of student agency.

Diplomová práce se v teoretické části zabývá marketingem služeb, marketingovým mixem s akcentem na přepravní služby, připraví teoretický základ pro výzkum trhu. Dále obsahuje základní data o autobusové přepravě v ČR. V praktické části je proveden výzkum u spol. Student agency a Touring Bohemia. Výsledky jsou interpretovány a nakonec je přidáno hodnocení a doporučení.

The aim of this thesis is to perform Stategic analysis on the STUDENT Agency company.The analysis is one of the tools which help to create a succesfull strategic plan of the company.The first part is theoretical and it is focused on describing methods applied in the second part. Analysis in the second part is contains macro environment analysis and analysis of the micro environment, analysis of internal resources and capabilities.

This diploma thesis deals with the communication strategy of STUDENT AGENCY Company. The main aim is to analyze and describe all the principles, possibilities and targets of marketing communication, as well as show how the communication mix can be set and optimized. The theoretical part of the paper shows basic instruments of marketing known as 4P, one of which is promotion (as well known as marketing communication). Here we can find all the instruments of communication mix which can be used, as well as other needed information about the factors which affect the management of marketing communication. The practical part deals with a concrete situation in STUDENT AGENCY Company, explains relationships between the competitors and the whole transportation industry. Because the company operates also in tourism sector, these business activities are mentioned, too. The basic promotional mix of STUDENT AGENCY is introduced, as well as the most important reproaches. At the end the future line of marketing communication is foreshadowed. The main benefit of this paper is the complex vision of the company and its marketing communication, which helps to create a compact opinion to the present and future condition of the communication strategy of STUDENT AGENCY.

abstract: In 2010, the Arizona Legislature established a performance-based diploma initiative known as Move On When Ready (MOWR). The policy relies on an education model designed to evaluate students' college and career readiness by measuring their academic ability to succeed in the first credit-bearing course in community college. Move On When Ready is a structurally oriented, qualification system that attempts to attain a relatively narrow goal: increase the number of students able to successfully perform at a college-level academic standard. By relying on a set of benchmarked assessments to measure success and failure, MOWR propagates a categorical binary. The binary establishes explicit performance criteria on a set of examinations students are required to meet in order to earn a high school qualification that, by design, certifies whether students are ready or not ready for college. This study sought to reveal how students’ perceptions of the policy and schooling in general affect their understanding of the concept of college readiness and the college readiness binary and to identify factors that help formulate those perceptions. This interpretivist, qualitative study relied on analysis of multiple face-to-face interviews with students to better understand how they think and act within the context of Move On When Ready, paying particular attention to students from historically vulnerable minority subgroups (e.g., the Latina (a)/Hispanic sub-population) enrolled in two schools deploying the MOWR strategy. Findings suggest that interviewed students understand little about MOWR's design, intent or implications for their future educational trajectories. Moreover, what they believe is generally misinformed, regardless of aspiration, socio-cultural background, or academic standing. School-based sources of messaging (e.g., teachers and administrators) supply the bulk of information to students about MOWR. However, in these two schools, the flow of information is constricted. In addition, the information conveyed is either distorted by message mediators or misinterpreted by the students. The data reveal that formal and informal mediators of policy messages influence students’ engagement with the policy and affect students’ capacity to play an active role in determining the policy’s effect on their educational outcomes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2015

Abstract The research investigates how student agency is inscribed as challenging or as misbehaviour in schools. The purpose is to open up and enable alternative ways of interpreting student agency. The empirical part of the research is based on reflexive ethnography and narrative methodology. The data is comprised of narrative and thematic interviews conducted during a period of 3 years (2006–2009), and 4 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the autumn of 2008. The context for analyzing the meanings inscribed in student agency is a northern Finnish village school. In the villagers’ narrations, the research villages were presented as centres of the people’s lives, dynamic even in their quietude, and life in the villages was presented as an active choice. These stories challenge the national representations that tend to derive from the discourse of social exclusion. These societal discourses ‘other’ the life in northern villages and direct children, through education, concretely, socio-culturally, and emotionally away from their villages towards southern cities. Based on the fieldwork and applying Mihail Bakhtin’s dialogism and interactionist approach to emotions, I find that the meanings inscribed in student agency are determined dialogically. The meanings and emotions with which student agency is inscribed in a particular situation is, thereby, not determined by the students but come from the broader social, cultural, and political contexts, and the histories of those involved in the dialogue. Thereby, for instance “bad behaviour” cannot be improved simply by targeting the student or by changing student behaviour. This derives from the fact that any action, for example smashing potatoes, can end up carrying historical, political, social, and cultural meanings, and thus, any action can become inscribed as contesting behaviour. I conclude that contesting behaviour of a student does not cause as much as it performs challenging emotions that derive from broader societal, sociocultural, and political contexts. Thereby the problem is not that challenging emotions take place in school but the illusion that they should not. If challenging emotions in school are imagined to indicate failure, it is assumed that they must be excluded rather than endured and managed. / Tiivistelmä Tarkastelen tutkimuksessa, miten oppilaan toiminta saa merkityksen haastavana tai huonona käytöksenä koulussa. Tavoitteenani on avata ja mahdollistaa vaihtoehtoisten merkitysten näkeminen oppilaan toiminnalle. Tutkimuksen empiirinen osa nojautuu refleksiiviseen etnografiseen ja narratiiviseen metodologiaan, ja aineistona on käytetty haastatteluaineistoa 3 vuoden ajalta (2006–2009) sekä hieman yli neljän kuukauden mittaista kouluetnografiaa syksyllä 2008. Oppilaan toimijuuden tarkastelun kontekstina on pohjoinen pienkylän koulu. Kyläläisten omissa kertomuksissa kylät näyttäytyvät hiljetessäänkin dynaamisina elämän keskuksina, ja eläminen kylissä aktiivisena valintana. Nämä kertomukset haastavat valtakunnalliset representaatiot, jotka rakentuvat usein syrjäytymispuheelle. Syrjäytymispuhe toiseuttaa elämää pohjoisissa pienkylissä ja ohjaa koulutuksen kautta lapsia konkreettisesti, kulttuurisesti ja kokemuksellisesti pois kylästään, kohti etelää ja kaupunkeja. Mihail Bakhtinin dialogismia soveltaen ja kenttätyöhön pohjautuen totean, että oppilaan toiminnan saamat merkitykset ja siihen liittyvät tunteet määrittyvät dialogisesti. Toiminnan saamat merkitykset ja siihen liitetyt tunteet eivät siis ole oppilaan omassa hallinnassa vaan tulevat laajemmasta sosiaalisesta, poliittisesta, kulttuurisesta ja yhteiskunnallisesta kehyksestä sekä dialogin osapuolten erillisistä ja yhteisestä historiasta. Näin ollen, esimerkiksi ”huonoa käytöstä” ei voida parantaa yksinkertaisesti kohdistamalla toimenpiteitä oppilaaseen tai tämän käytökseen. Tämä johtuu siitä, että lähes mikä hyvänsä toiminta, tutkimuksessa muun muassa perunan soseuttaminen, voi päätyä kantamaan historiallisia, poliittisia, sosiaalisia ja kulttuurisia merkityksiä ja tulla siten merkityksi haastavaksi käytökseksi. Tutkimuksessa totean, että oppilaan haastava toiminta ei niinkään aiheuta vaan pikemminkin performoi haastavia tunteita, jotka juontuvat laajemmista yhteiskunnallisista, sosiokulttuurisista ja poliittisista konteksteista. Tällöin ongelma ei ole haastavien tunteiden esiintyminen koulussa vaan luulo, että niitä ei pitäisi esiintyä koulussa. Jos haastavat tunteet erehdytään koulussa kuvittelemaan jonkin tai jonkun epäonnistumiseksi, ne yritetään sulkea pois sen sijana että ne kestettäisiin ja käsiteltäisiin.

The main goal of diploma paper is to design marketing plan of established student agency, which will insure that will bring agency to potential customer's notice and during its existence will be competitive. Marketing plan is design to get maximum effect with minimum financial costs. To fulfill this aim I will draft a marketing strategy, where I specify individual marketing instruments of marketing mix, with accent on optimalization of communication mix. Paper has two parts. Theoretical part defines specifics of services and strategic management especially planning and marketing plan. In practical part, I present the company and its product. On basis of results of situational analysis of surroundings of the business, I define segment and with regard to marketing goals and positioning of company I draft individual instruments of marketing mix.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine a single modern band to discover how an ensemble director/facilitator implemented peer mentoring and other student-centered pedagogical approaches. Observations of an urban high school modern band were conducted over the course of five months of rehearsals with a summative performance. Participants included 12 high school students, one primary educator, and one student teacher. Qualitative data were collected through artifacts and observations as well as group, individual student, and individual teacher interviews. Data were coded and analyzed, revealing emergent themes. The facilitator encouraged students to share their knowledge, opinions, and suggestions for direction through peer mentoring. Students in the ensemble claimed there existed significant social aspects of participation and found interactions within to be a formative part of their school experience. Findings include substantial engagement in peer mentoring, social bonding through modern band, and the sharing of knowledge between students in a relaxed atmosphere in which student agency, autonomy, and democratic decision-making were key tenets. Data analysis revealed musical and social benefits with a facilitator who championed student-centered pedagogy within a relaxed environment. Modeling was found to be a key tenet of learning and communication and critique between peers were more easily understood and better received as compared to that from their facilitator. Peer mentoring opportunities seemed to be reliant upon music that was familiar to students presented in a manner that left room for subjective interpretation and reliance upon peers’ understanding. Peer mentoring was also identified as a definitive component of modern band instruction in addition to its benefit within the ensemble for students musically and socially. Pedagogical suggestions for music education include increased autonomy and student agency in all classrooms; the provision of pathways for teachers to develop facilitation and peer mentoring skills; frequent opportunities for performance; careful consideration of student proximity for peer mentoring; and finding balance between traditional and nonformal teaching methods. Other implications for the profession include implementation of facilitation in all ensembles; careful repertoire decision-making; the development of student leaders; avoiding false representations of popular music ensembles; and encouragement of socializing in modern band ensembles.

The accelerated growth of 1:1 educational computing initiatives has challenged digital equity with a three-tiered, socioeconomic digital divide: (a) access, (b) higher order uses, and (c) user empowerment and personalization. As the access gap has been closing, the exponential increase of 1:1 devices threatens to widen the second and third digital divides. Using critical theory, specifically, critical theory of technology and critical pedagogy, and a qualitative case study design, this research explored the experiences of a middle school categorized under California criteria as “socioeconomically disadvantaged.” This study contributes to critical theory on technology within an educational setting, as well as provides voice to the experiences of teachers and students with economic disadvantages experiencing the phenomena of 1:1 computing. Using observational, interview, and school document data, this study asked the question: To what extent do 1:1 technology integration uses and associated pedagogical practices foster Margins of Maneuver in an eighth grade comprised of a student population that is predominantly economically disadvantaged? Probing two key markers of Margins of Maneuver, student agency and participation, the study found: (a) a technology-enhanced learning culture; (b) a teacher shift to facilitator roles; (c) instances of engaged, experiential, and inquiry learning and higher order technology uses; (d) in-progress efforts to strengthen student voice and self-identity. Accompanying the progress in narrowing economically based digital divides, the data also demonstrated some tension with the knowledge economy. Nevertheless, sufficient margins existed, associated with one-to-one uses and practices, to result in micro-resistances characterized by assertion of student agency and democratization potential.