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The purpose of this study is to listen to teachers' stories and reconstruct their classrooms in the midst of the global upheaval of people's movements in the 1960s-70s through teachers' narratives. The primary research questions are: How did social movements in the 1960s-1970s influence their teaching practices? What was their intention and how did they carry out their daily teaching practice? In the educational research field, narrative inquirers explore teachers' stories, their life experiences and teaching practices, in order to understand how teachers view the world. I collected stories, through in-depth interviews, of ten Japanese teachers who taught in Japanese public school system, and were active in social and educational movements during the 1960s-70s in order to understand how teachers understood and resisted dominant oppressive forces which create and perpetuate social inequality. Teacher narratives were analyzed using two complementary methods: contents analysis and interactional positioning theory. First, stories of teachers' struggles in their classrooms and schools were contextualized in a wider social struggle for humanity and a more just society, in order to explore teachers' understanding of social oppression and their resistance, and multiculturalism in Japanese classrooms in the 1960s-1970s. Through their stories, an indigenous multicultural nature of Japanese classrooms was revealed, even before the multiculturalism became an imported educational topic in the 1980s. Furthermore, using interactional positioning theory, I discussed how teacher activist identities were constructed during the narration, at the same time, uncover how social stigma of being an activist possibly suppressed the participants overtly constructing an activist identity in narratives.

This research identifies those practices and/or conditions that facilitate (or hinder) school and/or system based innovation in ACT high schools. It examines teachers� ways of making meaning of change in their working lives. It draws on narrative inquiry and teacher in-depth interviews. The work story is used to engage teachers� individual agency as a way to conceptualise the requirements of innovation. The data is represented as teachers� narrative categorized as the Red Hots and Unfreezables. The primary themes or motifs emerging in the teachers� talk�teacher agency, resistance and leadership�provide collective insight into teachers� working lives and the capacity of schools to cope with change. Analyses of the �lived experiences� of teachers suggest that innovative practice is linked to teacher agency and the presence of professional learning communities, and that those leading change must focus on the realities of the teachers implementing change. This study also explores the culture of teacher resistance, supporting the research that school cultures are characteristically and strongly resistant to change from within the organization. As a result of this study, we have an improved understanding of the conditions that contribute to effective school change, and the importance for teachers to conduct their own research. This study contains important recommendations for governments and education systems implementing change initiatives.

This study examined factors related to the implementation of a School Wide Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support (SWPBIS) program at a large middle school in the United States. Parent Teacher Student Association volunteers at the school reported that teacher fidelity to implementation of SWPBIS activities was inconsistent, threatening the SWPBIS program's effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to identify barriers that hindered teachers' fidelity in implementing SWPBIS. Teacher resistance to change, change leadership framework, and the model for effective professional development were used in this case study to explore the perceptions of 16 participants. The research questions focused on teachers', SWPBIS coaches', and administrators' perceptions and experiences with barriers to implementing SWPBIS in the third year of implementation (2013-2014). Emergent themes derived from coding participant interviews revealed 7 major barriers to teacher implementation fidelity including confusion about priorities, peer and student influences, philosophical differences, and weaknesses in leadership and professional development. The interview data were triangulated with data from archived documents to ensure the credibility of the study. A project recommendation for 6 professional development modules was made to address study findings. Positive social change implications include the efficacy of using the project study as an example for other schools to improve teacher effectiveness by responding to teacher weaknesses and facilitating improved student outcomes.

Teachers’ voices have been largely excluded from the academic and political debates regarding the aims and merits of financial literacy education. Through case study research, this project examined the beliefs, practices, and lives of 10 teachers in Québec and Ontario who teach financial literacy at the intermediate and senior levels. Specifically, the teachers in this study report taking a critical approach to financial literacy education–a subject that tends to be framed in simplistic and individualistic terms as mere personal financial decision-making. In an analysis of in-depth interviews and deliberative inquiry focus groups with self-identifying critical teachers and investigation into various documentary sources, I detail the ways in which some of these teachers adhere to mainstream understandings of financial literacy education while others work to reframe it towards more critical and economically just ends. This research results in the development of a framework for critical economic literacy education, documenting the intellectually demanding set of skills, knowledge, and pedagogical strategies a critical economic literacy requires of students and teachers. Findings also bring forth distinctions in teachers’ ideas about criticality, revealing that teachers navigate between common, critical, and transformative sense orientations in sophisticated ways to achieve their pedagogical aims. Last, I investigate how criticality emerges in teachers, narrating the ways in which their personal biographies, professional and political activities, and intellectual pursuits inform their critical teaching in relation to financial literacy. This case study is further contextualized by the current political moment in which escalating economic inequality and the widening racial wealth gap, the current financial crisis, impending climate disasters, and antidemocratic politics worldwide convey a sense of urgency and a timely relevance for a more critical and transformative financial literacy education.

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