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This research sought to explore the link between mandatory school uniforms and a positive school climate. Beginning in the late 1980's public schools implemented mandatory school uniforms policies in urban school districts. The trend gained momentum when President Clinton included school uniforms in his 1996 State of the Union Address. Directly following the speech was a publication by the United States Department of Education on school uniforms that was distributed to all school districts in the country. Often the primary reason for implementing school uniforms was gang violence. Other reason included increased school safety and decreases in violence. Further, proponents believed uniforms would increase academic achievement and improve school climate. Research on the effects of school uniforms is limited and conflicting. Most studies available to date were conducted in urban settings. However, school uniforms have infiltrated rural and suburban schools districts as well. Two school districts in suburban Eastern Pennsylvania participated in this study. One school district had a mandatory school uniform policy. The other did not. Using a school climate survey and school uniform questionnaire, students in grades 4-6 and elementary school teachers rated the school climate in their respective schools. School climate was rated on seven subscales on the student school climate survey and 10 subscales on the faculty school climate survey. A t-test was performed on the data set to determine the difference between sample means and a factor analysis was conducted on the student school climate survey. Further, three themes emerged from the short answer questions on the student uniform questionnaire. The results of the research found that there was not a statistically significant relationship between a mandatory school uniform policy and elementary school students' perceptions of school climate. Of the seven subscales, students who wore school uniforms rated their peer relationships higher than students without school uniforms. Additionally, they rated the required rigor higher. Students that did not wear school uniforms rated the teacher-student relationship higher. When responding to the open ended questions, three themes emerged. They were expression, atmosphere and family. In essence, students were not in favor of wearing uniforms and believed uniforms suppressed their freedom of expression. Teachers responded similarly. The results showed no statistically significant relationship between a mandatory school uniform policy and teacher perceptions of school climate. Only two subscales showed any significant difference between the two groups of teachers. They were teacher-administrator relationship and student achievement. In both respects, teachers in the district without uniforms responded more positively. The results of this study should be used when reviewing current policy or considering new policy on school uniforms. / Educational Administration

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Dress Code is a written thesis accompanying a series of figurative paintings that investigate the relationship between institutions, uniforms, gender, and social interactions.

Dress and appearance constitute the visual realm in the dialectic of identity construction and are powerful communicators in this process, since dress and appearance are the symbolic means by which we locate ourselves and others through interaction within social contexts. Dress is used to differentiate and create boundaries for group belonging and exclusion, and in the uniform has been understood to have a capacity to suppress individuality and to identify the wearer with objectives beyond the self. Adolescence is a time of intense identity work and in New Zealand coincides with secondary schooling during which school uniforms are usually worn. Is freedom in dress necessary for development of personal identity? The effects of same-dressing on identity development in adolescence were investigated in the context of the history, practice, and meanings of school uniform in New Zealand secondary schools. This was investigated through a nationwide survey, analysis of selected school photographs and records, interviews with students, review of legal and bureaucratic structures supporting the practice, and review of the literature of school uniforms, and education and social history of New Zealand. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods contributed to analysis of both dress practices in wider New Zealand contexts, and more personal use of dress in the formation of personal identity. Analysis of school uniforms as mechanisms of power, constituting both the student and the self, drew on symbolic interactionist theory and on Foucault�s later interpretations of power, while also linking material culture and social structures. New Zealand has a strong and continuing tradition of school uniform in secondary schools, yet this practice is characterised by change, variety, and differences, challenging the sameness which uniforms are supposed to embody. Meanings and functions of uniforms have changed considerably over the twentieth century, evolving through extreme and diverse expressions of the expectations of social, political, and education systems towards their young people, and mediated in turn by students themselves. While school uniforms both manifest and mediate the power of the school over the bodies of children, the power embodied in uniforms is not always and only a repressive power, but is also a generative, productive power. Students described uniforms as a form of shelter and protection, embodying belonging and participation in the school and a projected future of success and engagement in adult society and work. Uniforms also maintained a breadth of possibilities consistent with a fluid class system and egalitarian ideals of New Zealand society. While students believed self-expression essential for the formation of a self, they believed this need could be met through the use of minor differences in uniforms, while uniforms allowed them to retain the advantages of group belonging. Schools allowing some personal expression effectively strengthened the sense of belonging and participation, by maintaining the individual in positive relation to the group. The interaction that creates a self consists in symbols, involving meanings, appearances, and communication: differences and similarities from part of these complex interactions.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 63 p. Includes bibliographical references.

As part of America’s cultural traditions, sports have become one of the most followed and widely appreciated aspects of entertainment and enjoyment for generations. The one consistent part of sports, that all fans and non-fans can understand, is the practice of team uniforms serving as identifiers and connectors to the city, franchise, and history they obtain. Look Good, Play Good: The World of American Sports Uniforms informs of the sports realm in the context of clothing. Four parts of the uniform world help describe and explain the teams and locations that wear them. They do this through historical, influential, and forward thinking distinctions. / text

This dissertation is a critical engagement with the myth of the reified modern state - that Leviathan that seemingly exists outside of the social while residing within the natural. In doing so it joins an effort to move the field of critical geopolitics beyond critiquing classical geopolitics to one that includes a transformative component, as expressed in the overarching field of critical theory. The undergirding methodological and theoretical approaches of this dissertation are rooted in the interplay between the semiotic, the performative, and the visual, an eclectic framework that grapples with the shifting representational practices of geopolitics - practices that are centered on maintaining a particular meta-narrative of the state - i.e., the myth of the state as a reified subject. As a means to demystify this particular paradigm of the state I look at the contradictions and the challenges proffered by a unique set of actors, soldiers and veterans. I accomplish this: military actors. This is accomplished by bringing to the forefront, through imagery, the visual and communicative performances of their everyday geopolitical practices as military actors and citizens. The three cases that make up this dissertation each address particular interconnections between soldiers, veterans, and the myth of "the state," with each employing an approach that visually interrogates the spatial and material relationships as a means to explore "the everyday" performances of their geopolitical practices. Soldiers and veterans are uniquely situated in geopolitical discourses about the state, as they are framed and/or frame themselves, depending on the context, as both "state" and "non-state" actors and, as such, through their conjoined identities can collapse the meta-narrative of the state-as-object by their very "being." In this interrogation, therefore, I add to an effort to push for a reconceptualization of the state, arguing that "it" should be re-imaged or reframed as an everyday relationship between citizens - a state as relationship rather than a state as object. This shift moves a critical geopolitical inquiry away from reproducing what it critiques, to critically engaging with the practices that produce the representations that help to constitute it.

Domestic workers are commonplace in South African society, with most middle to upper-class homes employing a domestic worker. Recently the area of domestic work in South Africa has gained much needed attention with regard to legal issues. Many domestic workers in the past and even currently, are exposed to exploitation and abuse in many forms. The main concern of this dissertation, however, is the woman that does the domestic work. Women have always been concerned with their bodies – the form and shape, dieting, clothes worn, amongst many other things. Although many may not think so, this concern has not escaped domestic workers. This group of women are extremely concerned with their dress and how their clothes and bodies are perceived by the public. This study addresses this issue paying close attention to the woman behind the uniform. Domestic workers often travel daily to get to their place of work. Commuting to work holds a sense of occasion for them, where, since they do not have much in the way of social lives, they dress up to travel to work. This dressing up is two-fold. Firstly the domestic workers in this study dressed up to impress others (especially other domestic workers) and improve their self-esteem. Secondly, their dress is linked to their past and their future aspirations, many of these women have aspired to become professionals in certain fields, but their goals had become unachievable due to their unfortunate circumstances. These issues are explored and discussed in the dissertation below, situated within the context of the domestic workers lives in South Africa, both during and after work. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.