Thesis (Ph.D.)--Simon Fraser University, 1996. / Theses (School of Communication) / Simon Fraser University. Includes bibliographical references. Bibliography: p. 300-325. Available in PDF via the World Wide Web.

This study focused on the perceptions of six superintendents regarding the state of the profession as of 2012, and it reports their thoughts and suggestions as to what preparation is needed by superintendents for the 21st century. The participating superintendents, who were all members of the Western States Benchmarking Consortium, were employed in six school districts in five states. Data were collected through surveys and telephone interviews. The findings of this study clearly indicate a lack of cohesion between what superintendents learned in their university professional preparation programs and what they practice in their day to day activities. The superintendents involved in this study tended to favor a hybrid approach – rigorous theoretical insight grounded in real world practice. Since superintendents typically spend a good deal of their time solving challenging problems including funding shortfalls, competition from other educational institutions, and the constant scrutiny of the media; their preparation needs to provide opportunities to develop their leadership skills and solve real world problems in an environment where they can take risks. Mentoring and participation in professional consortiums were recommended as key elements for the preparation of the twenty-first century superintendent. This study contributes to the discussion of how to best prepare school leaders for the current and future demands of superintendency.

Although Catholic schools are the largest sector of the national private and faith-based educational market, the overall student enrollment in Catholic K-12 schools has steadily declined. In order for Catholic schools to remain sustainable and competitive among the many different educational options in the twenty-first century, they must set themselves apart from other schools by offering unique learning opportunities that support twenty-first century education while promoting Catholic educational values. Recognizing the need for updated teaching practices, balanced pedagogy with Catholic educational values, and focused research on Catholic education, this two-year multiple-case study explored the instructional practices of eight middle level Catholic teachers during an initiative focused on shifting instructional strategies to support twenty-first century education supported by educational technology integration. Teaching practices were documented through participant observations, interviews, survey, and historical and field evidence. Data illuminated much variability in teachers' interpretations of twenty-first century education, classroom practice, and levels of technology integration. All teachers encouraged creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration in their instruction, however these specific domains of learning were primarily supported through an emphasis on lower order cognitive skills and processes. Although evidence suggested consistent technology integration in classrooms, technology was primarily used to substitute or augment instruction as opposed to the transformation of teaching and learning to support twenty-first century education. Data also revealed a balance between Catholic educational values and new teaching pedagogies except in Religion classes or instruction. This finding suggested content subject culture was a confounding aspect to instructional practices. This study highlights suggestions for teacher practice that include rethinking the purpose and structure of assessment, balancing personal opinions of technology with twenty-first century instruction, and shifting teacher-student classroom roles to foster teaching and learning environments that support creativity. Furthermore, additional implications for teachers and policy makers center on collaboration as a model for student learning, and to promote a shared vision for Catholic education in the twenty-first century. The implications for future research focus on expanding the study to include school level influencing factors and participants, centering on Religion class as the context, and the inclusion of students' perspectives.

Thesis advisor: Christopher Wilson / Thesis advisor: Carlo Rotella / This dissertation explores traditional patterns of immigration narratives and reads them alongside not only their contemporary, divergent counterparts but also historical moments that contribute to the narrative transformations. By way of this examination, literary changes over time become readable, highlighting the speed at which the rhetoric and aims of many immigration narratives became patently anti-America in the twenty-first century, significantly departing from the traditions established in the twentieth century, which, at their core still held pro-America aims. The first chapter, "The Solution is the Problem: Immigrant Narratives of Internment and Detention," considers nonfiction narratives regarding immigration detention within the borders of the United States. I read Monica Sone's Nisei Daughter and Edwidge Danticat's Brother I'm Dying as narratives that explore detention as central immigrant experience, exposing a chronicle of national suffering after attacks on American soil. When paired with Sone's work, Danticat's Brother I'm Dying reveals a shift in traditional narratives, exposing links to criminality and a move away from affiliation. In my second chapter, "The Helpless Helper: Illegality, Borders and Family Reunification," I study Thomas McCarthy's The Visitor, Courtney Hunt's Frozen River, and Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over. In these films, the suffering of immigrant families designated as somehow "illegal" are often displaced onto a white, parental "helper" figure in order to scrutinize their processing and treatment. These three independent films probe the ways in which economic, judicial, and political interests negatively affect family reunification policies. Additionally, The Visitor, Frozen River, and Crossing Over rely on an alternative point of view - that of American citizens rather than immigrants - as a way to further fragment traditional immigrant narrative structures, which instead favored immigrant-as-narrator constructs. In chapter three, "Considering Conditions of Possibility: Canonical Modes with Modern Concerns," I transition back to the immigrant's point of view and turn to traditional "high" literature. The narratives studied in this chapter retell canonical American novels before placing an important twist on the story: the decision to leave America rather than assimilate and aspire to the American Dream. Saher Alam's The Groom to Have Been and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland both make use of the narrative mode of the novel of manners while H.M. Naqvi's Home Boy and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist draw upon the ethnic bildungsroman tradition. By treating immigrant experiences as literary through adaptations of canonical novels rooted in American success and integration, these four authors make the choice of writing their protagonists out of America all the more resonant. The final chapter of this project, "The End Product of Our Deep Moral Exhaustion: Alternative Genres and Immigration Narratives," pulls upon Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America to ground a discussion of the role of alternate history in contemporary immigration narratives. From there, the chapter pushes out to include Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story as an example of speculative fiction. In each novel, a commentary on America's global social position is revealed by means of the degree to which the protagonists and their families do or do not become assimilated Americans, placing these novels in an intermediary position on the continuum of post-9/11 immigration narratives. Via my close readings, I aim to demonstrate the ways in which patterns of departure from traditional narratives became both enhanced and more rapidly altered at the start of the twenty-first century. The comparative work of this dissertation project allows access to a unique vision of twenty-first century America that is only available through the lens of immigration narratives, critiquing the modern nation's strengths, shortcomings, political climate, and social realities all while attending to conscious and significant modifications to traditional immigrant narratives. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, conflict-of-laws theory lies in tatters. The determination of the applicable law could hardly be more disputed and insecure. At the same time, globalization requires a strong basis on which legal systems can be coordinated. It is therefore high time to reconsider the theory of choice of law. In my analysis, I have focused on the three major players in the conflicts dilemma: individuals, states, and courts. I have tried to show how their roles have changed or should change in order to allow for more justice and global coordination. I have started out with the individuals because they suffer most from the application of a certain law. Today, it is recognized in almost all legal systems that individual parties can choose the law governing their disputes. But this principle does not sit very well with traditional theory of conflicts, which is built on connections to states and state authority. That is why I have tried to give a theoretical justification for party autonomy. Second, I have turned to the states because the reason we have conflicts is the existence of different countries with different legal systems. States claim application for their law either because a case arises in their territory, or because it is connected to their nationals, or because it touches upon their interest. In the modern world, though, it becomes difficult to establish these kinds of connections as social relations are increasingly transcending state borders. In my second article, I have shown that the law of the states has reacted by "de-bordering" itself. The final actor I have examined is the courts. One of the main problems of conflict of laws, in my eyes, is that courts consider themselves as organs of a certain state. I argue in my third article that this is a misconception and that their main preoccupation should be to render a just decision. If that would be accepted, they could very well turn out to be the key organizers of a more just global legal order.

One of the enduring characteristics of history and social studies curricula in the past century has been their continuous recycling of previous trends. From the progressive educators at the turn of the century to the "new social studies" movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the social studies curricula continued to demonstrate a lack of awareness of its own history. This trend continues today, but with a new twist. The culture wars have brought about an awareness of content that is different from past curricula. History has evolved over the course of the twentieth century from the grand narrative to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the past. This has migrated into secondary classrooms as teachers' help students grapple with various interpretations of historical events. The purpose of this dissertation is to review these historical changes, and to investigate what is being taught in American classrooms today. To learn this, I surveyed a group of teachers involved in a program sponsored by the College Board entitled Vertical Teams Social Studies (VTSS), a multi-grade approach to building student skills and content mastery to prepare them for the rigors of an Advanced Placement course in high school. One finding indicated that the issue of content versus process remains potent today. A second finding demonstrated that the teachers surveyed have strong reactions to standards-based testing. A third finding indicated that middle school teachers, with an academic background in history, were more likely to identify with the multi-disciplinary approach to history than their high school counterparts, who viewed their work more in terms of a federation of social sciences. Finally, the teachers surveyed raised questions about teacher education, and particularly what combination of disciplines secondary teachers should be trained to teach: history or social studies? Although sixty percent of the teachers surveyed claim they are social studies teachers, they are teaching more history (fifty-nine percent) than social studies (thirty-two percent). Because the culture wars appear to be far from over, the findings also provide fertile ground for future research as we strive to understand what is being taught and learned in American classrooms.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-172, 111-115).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Bethel Theological Seminary, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-187).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-172, 111-115).

This dissertation proposes a framework for analyzing musical interculturality—the processes through which musicians weave together multiple musical and cultural identities through performance—in twenty-first-century music. By attending to the specific sociopolitical contexts of the intercultural environment in which each performer takes part, I challenge multiculturalist assumptions of cultural purity, homogeneity, and authenticity that often undergird music theoretical analyses of non-Western music. My analysis of interculturality centers on musicians whose work risks being excluded from nation-state-based conceptions of cultural authenticity that have dominated music theoretical work on non-Western music. Through three case studies of active Japanese musicians, I explore how a collaborative project between shamisen player Honjoh Hidejirō (本條秀慈郎) and composer Fujikura Dai (藤倉大), performances by shō player Miyata Mayumi (宮田まゆみ), and the music of mixed-race Japanese American singer-songwriter Mitski present heterogeneous possibilities of national and cultural identity. Through close readings of musical recordings, videos, and scores, as well as through interviews and archival work, I demonstrate how cultural and musical identities are constructed through the particular historical and sociopolitical contexts within which performers operate. Focusing on how Honjoh, Miyata, and Mitski complicate and challenge strict dichotomies between Japanese and non-Japanese cultural, national, and musical affiliations, I pay close attention to how intercultural meanings are constructed through their performances, dialogues, and collaborations. In each case study, I argue that an analysis of interculturality necessitates a flexible, interdisciplinary, and transnational methodology that is tailored to the precise historical and sociopolitical circumstances in which the music is being created, performed, and interpreted. By understanding characterizations of Japanese, Western, and Japanese American as contingent categorizations that do not exist a priori but materialize through musical performance, I draw attention to the distinctive ways in which Honjoh, Miyata, and Mitski engage in intercultural music-making. This dissertation challenges essentialist narratives that continue to assume a rigid and homogeneous view of Japanese culture while fetishizing traditional music as a singular marker of authenticity. Given that oppositional binaries between the West/non-West and cultural insider/outsider continue to shape the interpretation of music by non-white non-Euroamerican musicians, I argue that it is crucial for music analysis to confront and complicate—rather than uncritically affirm—these narratives. First, I problematize monolithic and essentialist conceptions of Japanese music. Through analyses of performers who deviate from these narratives, I disconnect expressions of musical identity from ethno-nationalist assumptions and situate ethnicity as one of many factors that shape cultural identity. Second, I interrogate the underlying epistemological frameworks that produce reductive misrepresentations of Japanese music. This dissertation disrupts the underlying Eurocentric epistemological framework that essentializes—and therefore exerts control over—non-Western cultures. I therefore conceive of interculturality not only as an issue of representation, but also as a strategy for challenging the imposed authority of Western systems of knowledge. Third, by analyzing the agency of performers in negotiating and contesting dominant narratives of Japanese ethnic, cultural, and musical identity, I approach interculturality as an embodied and lived phenomenon rather than as only an intellectual analytical endeavor.