The overarching theme of this thesis is the establishment of a moral community in schools. Several areas of interest were identified as this theme developed. These included moral community building, school leadership, and the professional development needs of teachers. Each area is examined through documented research work, published articles and conference presentations. All areas are intertwined within the concept of moral community and the need for school leaders to engage community members in the establishment of a moral community. Three conceptual theories underpin the work of this thesis and form a significant part of the overarching theme. These are the interrelated theories of transformative learning, transformational leadership, and moral community. / Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Previous studies have reported high attrition rates in large-enrollment science courses where teacher-centered instruction was prevalent. The scientific literature provides strong evidence that student-centered teaching, which involves extensive active learning, leads to deepened learning as the result of effective student engagement. Consequently, professional development initiatives have continually focused on assisting academics with the implementation of active learning. Generally, higher education institutions engage faculty in professional development through in-service workshops that facilitate learning new teaching techniques in a specific context. These workshops usually do not include self-scrutiny concerning teaching or do they provide continuous support for the implementation of strategies learned in the workshop. The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of a professional development program that consisted of a workshop focused on the implementation of active learning in large science courses and extended to include post-workshop activities, on participants’ enactment of teaching practices introduced in the workshop. More specifically, through a qualitative methodology and employing transformative learning theory, this work evaluated the influence of science instructors’ engagement in dialogue and critical self-reflection on their teaching approaches and practices. Engagement in critical reflection was facilitated through watching of teaching videotapes followed by participants’ engagement in dialogue about teaching with the researcher. Findings suggest that providing continuous post-workshop support by fostering engagement in critical self-reflection and dialogue, can lead to transformative learning about teaching. More specifically, participation in the program led to the transformation of teaching practices, while teaching approaches remained unchanged. While some obstacles to the transformation of teaching approaches were identified, major outcomes indicate that meaningful professional development can go far beyond learning how to use new teaching strategies through faculty engagement in critical reflection and dialogue on teaching.

In dieser qualitativ rekonstruktiven Studie wird an Hand der empirischen Rekonstruktion von Gruppendiskussionen der Fragestellung nachgegangen, welchen handlungsleitenden Orientierungen die Mitglieder der untersuchten Initiativen im Umgang mit ihrer Heterogenität folgen und wie diese Orientierungen mit Lern- beziehungsweise Bildungsprozessen korrespondieren. Diese Fragestellung ist mit unterschiedlichen theoretischen Kontexten verwoben. Zum Einen geht es hier um Heterogenität und Pluralität. Der Umgang mit Heterogenität und Pluralität gilt als eine zentrale Herausforderung in modernen stark ausdifferenzierten und hochkomplexen Gesellschaften, die mit fluiden mikro- und makrogesellschaftlichen Strukturen (vgl. Schäffter 1998) und vielfältigsten Formen kultureller Pluralität (vgl. Nohl 2006) einhergehen. Ein Reflexionsangebot für die erziehungswissenschaftliche Diskussion bietet die Denkfigur der egalitären Differenz. (Vgl. Prengel Ein Reflexionsangebot für die erziehungswissenschaftliche Diskussion bietet die Denkfigur der egalitären Differenz. Zum Anderen ist eine rekonstruktive Untersuchung bürgerschaftlicher Initiativen nicht ohne Bezug zu ihrem zivilgesellschaftlichen Kontext zu denken. So sei hier stellvertretend für andere zeitdiagnostische Überlegungen auf Giddens Position (vgl. Giddens 1996) verwiesen, der die gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen in der reflexiven Moderne mit weitreichenden Prozessen des sozialen Wandels verbunden sieht. In dieser Studie wird im Anschluss an die strukturale Bildungstheorie von Marotzki (vgl. Marotzki 1990) zwischen Lern- und Bildungsprozessen unterschieden. Vor dem Hintergrund der Theorie Mannheims zu konjunktiven existentiellen Erfahrungen und der damit einhergehenden Seinsverbundenheit des Wissens (vgl. Mannheim 1980) werden diese Prozesse im Anschluss an Schäffers qualitative Studie zu generationenfundierten Bildungsprozessen (vgl. Schäffer 2003) als kollektiv fundierte Prozesse verstanden. Das von Karl Mannheim entwickelte Konzept des „konjunktiven Erfahrungsraums“ (vgl. Mannheim 1980) wird im Anschluss an andere Studien der qualitativen Bildungsforschung (vgl. Schäffer 2003, Nohl 2006) für die Rekonstruktion von Bildungsprozessen genutzt, die auf der Transformation konjunktiver Erfahrungen beruhen. In der vorliegenden Studie werden die in den untersuchten Initiativen relevanten habituellen Muster des Umgangs mit Heterogenität rekonstruiert und ihre Bedeutung für Lern- und Bildungsprozesse zu erhellt. Bürgerschaftliche Initiativen werden als lebensweltliche Lernorte in den Blick genommen, mit der Auswertung nach der dokumentarischen Methode wird ein Verständnis zu Grunde gelegt, dass auf die Verwobenheit gesellschaftlicher Strukturen mit dem Erleben der Akteure und damit den Prozessen der sozialen Genese von Interaktion und Identität verweist. (Vgl. Bohnsack 2003, Kubisch 2008) / This qualitatively rekonstruktive study develops in hand of the empiric reconstruction of group discussions the question which action-leading orientations the members of the examined initiatives follow in dealing with her heterogeneity and how these orientations are connected with learning processes or educational processes.

Seamfulness is a narrative-based and arts-informed inquiry into young women's "depression" as pedagogy. Unfolding in rural Nova Scotia, this research is rooted in my experience of depression as the most transformative event in my life story. While memoirists tell me I am not alone, there is currently a lack of research on personal understandings of depression, particularly for young adult women. Through storytelling sessions and self-publishing workshops, I explored four young Nova Scotian women's depression as a productive site for growth. Participants include four young women, including myself, who experienced depression in their early 20s, and have not had a major depressive episode for at least three years. Aged 29 to 40, we claim Métis, Scottish, Acadian, and British ancestries, and were raised and lived in rural Nova Scotian communities during this time. At the seams of adult education, disability studies, and art, I ask: How do young women narrate experiences of "depression" as education? How do handmade, self-published booklets (or “zines”) allow for exploring this topic as embodied, emotional and critical transformative learning? To address these questions, I employ arts-informed strategies and feminist, adult education, mental health, and disability studies literatures to investigate the critical and transformative learning accomplished by young women who experience depression. Through a feminist poststructuralist lens and using qualitative and arts-informed methods, I situate depression as valuable learning, labour, and gift on behalf of the societies and communities in which women live. I argue that just as zines are powerful forms for third space pedagogy, depression itself is a third space subjectivity that gives rise to the "disorienting dilemma" at the heart of transformative learning. I close with "Loose Ends," an exploration of depression as an unanswered question. This thesis engages visual and verbal strategies to disrupt epistemic and aesethetic conventions for academic texts. By foregrounding participant zines and stories, I privilege participant voices as the basis for framing their experience, rather than as material to reinforce or contest academic theories.

The purpose of this dissertation was to analyze the impact of international experiential education on life choices, specifically those related to career and educational goals. This was accomplished through two main phases of research. In the first phase, a web-based survey was used to explore the question of whether international experiential education did, in fact, impact life choices. Responses from this initial phase were used to identify a purposive sample of eight respondents with whom telephone interviews were conducted in the second phase of the study. The goal of the interviews was to determine, for those who indicated that their life choices had been impacted by the abroad experience, when and why it had happened. The evaluation was done by applying Mezirow’s transformative learning theory to the analysis. The self-reported responses indicated that there was an impact on life choices related to educational and career goals in almost 80 percent of the 74 survey respondents. These data were used as the foundation for the second phase of the study, which examined the catalysts for, and the process of, transformation through the lens of transformative learning theory. Almost all respondents indicated that the international experience had transformed their perspectives on their identity and purpose in life. Seven out of eight respondents discussed how they had gained an understanding of the fact that where one is born defines his or her perspective. One’s sociocultural environment defines who one is and how he or she sees the world. The international experience allows a person to see themselves through the eyes of others. While the timing and specifics of the catalysts varied, each of these seven had gone through the phases of transformation--disorienting dilemma, critical reflection, changed frame of reference--with some relation to the abroad experience.

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As universities increasingly offer online nursing education, the transition that faculty members must make to their new instructional role is often overlooked. This phenomenological qualitative research involved the use of semi-structured interviews with 16 nursing faculty from four Florida public universities, who were asked to describe their experiences transitioning from classroom to online teaching. Interview questions focused on their prior assumptions about online education, their preparation for online teaching, their current teaching methods, and the identification of information they would recommend as vital for successful online teaching. Participants were voluntary and selected by both criterion and network sampling. Interviews were conducted in-person, audio-taped, transcribed, and analyzed for recurring themes. Data were validated using member checks, peer reviews, and Atlas.TI software. Participants reported that teaching online was more difficult than expected. Most frequently mentioned issues were time and effort required to design and teach due to factors such as students' needs, class sizes, and designing learning activities. Faculty preparation varied among institutions, but regardless of training most reported the significance of mentors or colleagues as critical for success. While some faculty reported feeling disconnected from students, many reported having better relationships with online students than with their face-to-face counterparts. Over half the faculty discussed the importance of their role as becoming facilitators of learning. Results support the need for institutions to provide both an adequate technology infrastructure and sufficient faculty support. From this study faculty recommended that mentoring and collegiality are vital components of the faculty development process. Administrators need to address issues of time and effort, and faculty need to learn different ways to work that include team approaches and flexible scheduling. Suggestions for future research include identifying the degree to which these findings transfer to other disciplines. Identifying strategies for developing, sustaining, and implementing online mentoring programs for faculty, and information on sustaining better communication in the online environment. Finally, looking at cost-efficient models for delivering quality services is a factor often overlooked by administrators.

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Capoeira is a Brazilian fighting art with roots in slavery that blends live music, dance, play and ritual. It is also an embodied form of knowledge that is holistic and sometimes profoundly transformative - a way of seeing and being that embraces an Afro-Brazilian vision of the world. Using personal lived experience and collected oral testimony related in a story-telling form, the study explores the knowledge embedded within capoeira through the lives of practitioners and through practitioners' explanations of their teachings. The question of whether capoeira has a common essence, or more specifically, whether the capoeira of twentieth century Bahia from which all modern schools ultimately trace their origins has an essence, is explored. In the thesis, capoeira is discovered to be an expression of resistance and transformation. Capoeira, the author discovers, is a form of resistance in that its traditional teachings reflect a communal, non-materialistic and sensuous stance, in opposition to the dominant individualistic, capitalistic, techno-scientific approach that has dominated the industrialized West. Capoeira is also a source of transformation in that it allows individuals to develop to their fullest expression - a self that encompasses the physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual dimensions - and helps people integrate within a web of relations, human, animal, or other. Using a Transformative Learning approach informed by an Indigenous framework, this dissertation attempts to bring the reader on a journey of the mind, body and spirit. In three books, each one describing a separate fieldwork trip to Brazil, the author weaves a tale that is both personal and profound in its planetary implications.

The U.S. Census bureau projects that by 2023, minorities will comprise more than half of all children. The population of school-aged Hispanic children is already the largest ethnic group, and the sheer number and rate of increase of these linguistically and culturally different students creates unfamiliar cultural challenges for school leaders. School districts are confronted with diversity-related issues and school leaders, who are predominantly white and middle class, are often ill-prepared to meet the challenges. Effective professional development aimed at preparing school leaders to better understand the social and academic needs of culturally diverse students is a topic receiving much attention in recent years. Studying the social, cultural, and political circumstances of diversity in its natural setting offers particular advantages that other methods cannot replicate. One suggestion is for school leaders to spend time in the local communities of their Hispanic students. Another option for learning about culture, albeit a more difficult and costly one to achieve, is to have school leaders visit the home country of their Hispanic students and immerse themselves in the local culture for a short period of time. A school district in Georgia decided to provide authentic culture learning for some of its school leaders through a short term cultural immersion experience. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an eight-day cultural immersion trip to Xalapa, Mexico on school leaders from the Mary County School District in Georgia. Because this short-term cultural immersion experience was aimed at increasing the cultural awareness of school leaders and improving relationships with Hispanic students and their families, the primary focus of this study is to explore the meanings attached to the experiences of administrators participating in the trip.