The purpose of this study was to bring more clarification to the concepts of spirituality and happiness, their meaning, attainability, and position in the field of Multicultural Education. In general, people think they will find joy and happiness if they graduate from a post-secondary educational institution with an undergraduate or graduate degree, find a good work environment, position, salary, living standards, status, etc. Yet, in the real world there may be a different way to find genuine happiness and joy which is fair, simple, easy and equal for all human beings even those who cannot afford higher levels of education. In order to present the data, the study discussed the life, philosophy and teachings of Imam Sheikh Iskender Ali Mihr, president of Mihr Foundation in Turkey, International Mihr Foundation in the United States and University of Allah in Virginia, and utterly an Ottoman. The review of literature was also included to assist the readers to grasp the different perspectives of the subject matter. Education should be inclusive and equal for all and so should joy and happiness! In today's world where diversity is the key factor for almost every community, it is important for educators (teachers/instructors/administrators) to know what shapes students' lives. This study encompassed the idea that only educating our students' minds and bodies is not enough, and without spirituality the education is not complete. As Pamela Leigh (1997) stated, "...acknowledging that people come to work with more than their bodies and minds, they bring individual talents and unique spirits" (p. 26). Students also come with their unique spirits and we should take them as a whole and value them with all the qualities they possess. Nurturing their spirit should be part of our school system. No matter if they believe in God or not, educators should be ready to address the aspect of spirituality and religion. The research was to bring a greater understanding to questions such as how we can better accommodate students' different spiritual beliefs, what the pros and cons are of bringing them together or keeping them separate. In order to answer these questions in a fashionable manner, we need to know "how much the spiritual beliefs of these students shape their cultures and their lives." In a greater context, the questions like; what we really know about 'true' Islam as one of the fastest growing beliefs in the U.S., is it any different than other beliefs or is it the same, is there a way to eradicate the Islam-phobia that occurred after the 9/11 attack, what was the Ottoman Islamic model, were also answered. As educators, how do we cope with students who hear voices and start shooting around in a schoolyard, or students who binge drink or get suicidal? Even more importantly, how do we help the remaining population live a healthy and happy life without thinking of ending their own or others' lives, as these examples turn out to be a daily life for us all! The remainder of this study looked at the "neutrality" of the school systems in the United States. Should educators stay neutral or not will be each individual's decision to make.

This dissertation addresses the problem of how best to teach undergraduate literature courses in the climate of challenge and hostility which surrounds traditional literary studies today. The practical purpose of the dissertation is to recommend that teachers of undergraduate literature classes not only become thoroughly familiar with current academic debates over how and which literature to teach, but that they incorporate these debates into the curriculum. The dissertation further recommends that undergraduate literature courses teach the historical circumstances which shaped literary study in America and subsequently created the issues and positions with which the current debate is concerned. The five chapters of the dissertation present an historical account of the development of literary studies in American higher education. Particular attention is paid to the influences of power and class which were brought to bear on this process from its origins in classical Greek education to its institutionalization in the late nineteenth century. This history is intended to serve as resource material for literature instructors who wish to expand their curriculum and teach undergraduates that the historical and cultural background to any text is essential to understanding its purpose and meaning. The dissertation concludes with recommendations for how teachers can incorporate cultural history into the undergraduate literature curriculum.

This dissertation describes the design, implementation and assessment of a staff development project to develop a cooperative whole language approach. The foundation for this staff development project for elementary school was the recognition that language development is crucial to a child's ability to succeed in the school environment. The educational objectives of this project were to motivate and encourage students of low income, African American families to write imaginatively and productively, and to teach writing to those same students to help them develop their own stylistic competence. These objectives necessitated the organization of three components. First, a staff development program focused on a whole language approach so teachers could share cooperative learning strategies for improving selected aspects of writing instruction. Second, a language experience approach in which the language, experience, and feelings of minority students could be used to advance motivation, accuracy, and pride. Third, the creation of a positive school climate to help students overcome difficulties in communicating in standard English by developing a "school way of communicating" without forcing the student to conclude that the way the family converses at home is wrong. Cooperative learning staff development sessions, predicated on a whole language approach, combined five underlying principles: (a) Distributed Leadership; (b) Heterogeneous Grouping; (c) Positive Interdependence; (d) Social Skills Acquisition; and (e) Group Autonomy. These prompted the preparation of writing activities for the African American students in all aspects of the curriculum. Ongoing monitoring of students' progress and completed tasks were compiled in both a group and individual portfolios. Basic to the success of this project was overcoming six beliefs: (a) a single set of subcultural customs shape the behavior of African American members of our society; (b) language programs should involve only instruction in using standard English; (c) all African American children are apathetic and their classes are seldom exciting; (d) discipline is a unique problem in the African American classroom; (e) African American learners cannot become involved in inductive, inquiry centered learning; and, (f) staff development sessions are not required for teaching English to the African American child. The proposed goal of this effective staff development project was not to change, but, to add a new dialect to an existing one by using a child centered, whole language, cooperative learning approach. By mixing the students' own experiences and the presentation of new experiences, a new dimension was introduced. The students were meeting established norms of success and were eager to accept additional challenges. Class improvement was clearly visible in a low income, urban elementary school.

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of talk in peer instructional writing groups. It is concerned with the relationship of talk and various writing process activities to the construction of the community within the group and to the definition of social identity by the members of the peer group. The research question asked was "what norms of language use can be identified in the talk of peer writing groups, and for what purpose are the norms used by the group members?" The study was conducted in an English class at a regional vocational high school over a two and one half year period. The same peer writing group of four adolescent males was observed from tenth grade through twelfth grade. Data in the form of audio tapes, fieldnotes, and student writing was collected and then analyzed using a sociolinguistic based method of conversational coding and analysis. The purpose of the analysis was to identify norms of language use established by the members of the peer writing group, and to evaluate the purpose for which the norms were used. Eighteen norms of language use connected to writing process activities and storytelling in the group were identified. The findings suggest that talk within a peer writing group is being used for more than the accomplishment of the assigned task; the talk connected to the writing process activities is also being used to accomplish the construction of a language community within the group and to define the individual social identities of the peer group members. That the group established norms of language use for directing the talk within their group is significant, and that those norms were based upon aspects of the writing process and storytelling is important in that it indicates the existence of a means through which writing and social identity are connected.

James Berlin, Stephen North, and other leading historians of composition have implied that nothing very interesting happened in composition classrooms before 1960. To counter that assumption, I offer my description of English 1-2 at Amherst College, an innovative and challenging freshman writing course directed by Theodore Baird from 1938-1968. Although no one published much about this course while it was a going concern, several members of its staff, including Walker Gibson and William E. Coles, Jr., later wrote about similar courses they designed elsewhere. My observations about English 1-2 are based on interviews with its faculty and graduates and on a study of materials now held in the Amherst College Archives. English 1-2 was taught collaboratively by a staff of eight or ten men who devised a new and demanding sequence of 33 assignments each semester, calling on students to write from experience. The instructors, who otherwise used no text, mimeographed their students' papers and made these the focus of classroom discussions. The instructors invited students to explore the relation between language and reality and to view themselves as makers of meaning. Paradoxically, English 1-2 seems both to have generated a potentially disempowering mystique and to have enabled many students to claim new measures of authority over language.

This dissertation describes in-depth, using participant's words, experiences of undergraduate college writers. The study was undertaken in an attempt to understand from a student perspective what it is like to write in one's major course of study and throughout the university curriculum. There were seven students, representing different academic majors at a large university. Each were interviewed in a series of three open-ended interviews totaling four and one-half hours. Key questions followed Seidman's (1987) protocol for phenomenological in-depth interviewing: What was writing like for you before college? What is writing like for you now? And, What does your writing mean to you? Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, Three participant's transcripts were edited into profiles of the individual writers while other interviews were used to illumine themes common to all the participants. Insights from this study suggest students are "practitioners" and possess a certain "practitioner-expertise" in being student writers. This practitioner knowledge reveals student experiences are more complex than indicated by previous research. Among these complexities are students' interactions with their instructors, and their own procrastination, which produce tension about writing. Forms of this tension are explored in the histories and current experiences of different students. These experiences indicated that when student writing is perceived as a "task" which must be completed simply to comply with a course requirement, there is a tendency to approach writing in a formulaic way, with little attention paid to the writing processes. On the other hand, the participants expressed that writing is a positive experience at times when they are consciously aware it has contributed to their learning in a subject-area or when it has aided them in their personal growth. The study indicates writing in college is often shaped by the bureaucratic enterprise of grading and sorting students. Recommendations include making teacher-student interactions consultative and personable, teachers and administrators stronger advocates for smaller class size, and giving students choices of instructional approaches to writing so individual needs as writers are being met in composition courses and across the curriculum.

No description available.

This ethnographic study of an American community of high school poets frames poetry 'ideologically,' focusing on the tensions faced by students who were members of a particular community of poets as they constructed social identities in relation to poetry writing. The study begins in the public high school poetry writing classroom at the center of their school poetry writing community and moves outward to include community contexts for poetry writing beyond the classroom--a poetry club and poetry conferences--and the contexts of the students' homes. Seven students who were members of the poetry writing community were followed in depth, and their experiences with poetry writing from family stories of literacy and personhood to circumstances for the writing of particular poems are analyzed in relation to 'ideological' tensions around poetry writing and social identity. Portraits were constructed of each of the seven students to show the connection between poetry writing and social identity. In each portrait, the data analyzed includes: (1) a description of the particular stories linking personhood and literacy in the student's family; (2) what social tensions these represented for the student as a poet writing to fulfill classroom assignments; (3) how in their choices about writing particular poems, students sought to resolve these social tensions; and (4) how students seemed to have positioned themselves as poets of greater or lesser status by the standards of poetry as art in resisting or embodying particular topics or conventions of language. Five types of tensions are identified: (1) those involving the low status of poetry as art in the school (2) those involving the definition of poetry in detached terms which differed from the students' experiences with poetry in contexts outside of school; (3) those stemming from a perception of poetry as an 'effeminate' social practice of literacy; and (4) those involving the use of male-authored texts as models in the classroom, despite primarily female membership in the poetry community. Implications of the study for developing an 'ideological' model of poetry instruction are discussed.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

<p> A case study was performed using archival data from retained students in three rural Missouri school districts. The data were examined to determine if a correlation existed between grade level retention and improved student achievement in Math and English Language Arts. A t-test was used to determine the impact retention had on student achievement. Scores were collected from the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) data from retained students the year before they were retained, as well as the year following when they were retained. Data were collected from 2006-2014. Data from this study revealed students who were retained showed significant gains in academic achievement in both Math and English Language Arts. By running a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was discovered there was a difference in the performance of males and females after being retained. Retention was also revealed to play a significant role in determining the probability of a student dropping out of school. As a result of this research, it is recommended multiple strategies of instructional improvement and modes of student intervention or retention are implemented before a student is considered for grade-level retention. </p>