The Paradox of Concern: Nationalist Discourses and the Education of "Immigrant" Youth in a Danish Folkeskole
Year of Dissertation:
2011
This dissertation, drawing from an ethnographic study of the experiences of Muslim first and second generation Muslim youth in a Danish Folkeskolen, examines the conflicting narratives of immigration in Danish society and how these discourses influence the schooling and the identitification processes of Muslim immigrant youth. Prior to 1960, Denmark was, ethnically, a relatively homogenous country that prided itself on its commitments to social equality, humanitarian aid and openness to refugees. However, since the 1990s Denmark has experienced the emergence of nationalist discourses that construct immigrants as racialized outsiders. This dissertation explores how social stereotypes of Muslim identities are produced, circulated and debated within the media and education policies and how they are taken up within everyday school practices of teaching and learning as well as in interactions between different actors in schools. It considers how Muslim immigrant youth position themselves and are positioned within hierarchies of racial and cultural difference that influence their access to resources in school and society. However, it also explores how immigrant youth and teachers create critical counter-narratives that challenge and reframe negative social stereotypes in ways that forward new conceptions of belonging within Danish society.
LEARNING TO STAY: A CASE STUDY ON AGROFORESTRY EDUCATION FOR THE SUSTAINABILITY OF RURAL YOUTH IN DARIEN, REP. OF PANAMA
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Attending and completing upper secondary school in Darién, located on the eastern side of Panama, presents several challenges for the youth; these are largely attributed to: 1) lack of access to upper secondary schools, caused by geographic and socioeconomic factors; 2) poor regional education policies; and 3) inadequate infrastructure (e.g. transportation, potable water and electricity) that supports inconsistent school attendance.
Creating Collaborative Partnerships to Support Teacher Growth: Mapping the Partnership Process
Year of Dissertation:
2009
The urban setting has tremendous resources for the support of teaching and learning social studies and history but many teachers do not know how to make use of them. Collaborations centered on teacher professional development between cultural institutions such as museums, historical societies, historic houses, libraries, etc., universities and k-12 schools can create wider communities of practice that can support the professional growth of history and social studies teachers from their pre-service education throughout their careers.
ARE BLACK GIRLS THE NEW NUMBER RUNNERS? AN ANALYSIS OF BLACK GIRLS AND HIGH SCHOOL MATHEMATICS
Year of Dissertation:
2013
According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), one out of every 100 employed scientists and engineers in the United States is a Black female. This statistic prompts the examination of Black females and mathematics. How do individual-level (educational aspirations), familial-level (support), and school-level (school characteristics) variables impact Black female students' proficiency in high school mathematics as well as predict their enrollment in postsecondary math courses?
Navigating the Gaze: Young People's Intimate Knowledge with Surveilled Spaces at School
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Advisor:
Nicholas Michelli
The 1980s introduced numerous state and federal policies that created a similar ideology of discipline and punishment in the educational system and the criminal justice system, a phenomenon known today as the school-to-prison pipeline. Several critical elements are involved in the production and maintenance of the school-to-prison pipeline, such as zero tolerance regulations, surveillance technologies, and strengthened in-school discipline practices. In this dissertation I argue that these elements of the pipeline maintain a strong presence and occupy the physical spaces of public schools. Moreover, surveillance cameras and police officers are most often installed in the cities' most under-resourced public schools, and poor, immigrant and students of color are most likely to attend these same schools.
Authoring Mathematical Selves
Year of Dissertation:
2013
How do middle school kids develop identifications with mathematics over time, seeing themselves as agents in the figured worlds of their math classrooms (or not)? This ethnographic and interview study followed nine focus Latino/a kids though their sixth and seven grade inclusive mathematics classrooms in a high-poverty urban school. The kids participated in two kinds of mathematical pedagogy that differently constructed ability and disability in mathematics. Individual kids constructed unique self-understandings as math learners over time, using the cultural resources of multiple figured worlds (mathematical, social, special education, friendship). Most of the focus kids used conceptions of competence forged in memorization to understand themselves as learners who either get it fast or struggle slow. Other kids used alternative conceptions of competence such as persistence and creativity in mathematics. Kids narrated the critical importance of relationships and emotions in their experiences in mathematics classes.
Resisting Regulation: LGBTQ Teens and Discourses of Sexuality and Gender in High Schools
Year of Dissertation:
2009
This dissertation documents a participatory action research project designed to understand discourses of sexuality and gender in New York City high schools. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual high school students participated as co-researchers in documenting discourses in popular culture, news reports, youth development reports, and through writing exercises about their own experiences. Together researchers created a modified Q sort (the Queer Q Sort) and surveyed a snowball sample of 21 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) high school students about the discourses of sexuality and gender they encounter in their schools and the ways that they accept or reject discourses as they form their identities. In order to imagine other frameworks for understanding sexuality and gender beyond the discourses of safety, victimization, disease and raging hormones, researchers wrote counter-narratives of their experiences that challenge discourses that reference mental health, physical health, pedagogy and morality. Youth researchers created spatial representations of the ways discourses work I the spaces of their schools by drawing maps showing how the movement and behaviors of bodies are regulated. My analysis triangulates the findings of the Queer Q Sorts, the maps and the discussions and writings of the youth researchers to show that young people create alternatives to the official discourses of sex education materials and much of the media coverage of young people and sexuality. I show that young people make ethical decisions about becoming sexual and fashioning their bodies in certain ways to reflect the gender identity and sexual subjectivity they wish to inhabit. Students advocate for queering schools by creating curriculum and pedagogical practices that allow critical analyses of gender and heteronormativity with the goal of helping their peers understand that binary categories are not givens, but rather social constructions we are often forced to perform. Using Foucault's theory and methods, the researchers challenged assumptions about teens as victimized, rebellious, promiscuous or innocent in conversations about sexuality and gender in schools.
URBAN MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURAL LITERACY: A PERFORMATORY APPROACH TO TEACHING, LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY
Year of Dissertation:
2009
This auto-ethnography describes the development of exemplary teaching practices in the context of an urban middle school technology class with a socially and culturally diverse student population. The teaching practice that was studied was situated in a learning community of approximately 250 middle school students in New York City between 2007 and 2008. This study documents, through the use of vignettes, the development of everyday practices of using performance and technology as tools in the creation of technology infused learning environments that support the cultural literacy and social development of students and increases teacher responsiveness and receptivity to students.
ACCESS AND ENTRY TO HIGH SCHOOL CHEMISTRY IN NEW YORK CITY
Year of Dissertation:
2013
Advisor:
Nicholas Michelli
The purpose of this study was to determine quantitatively the impact of various school characteristics on access to and enrollment in high school chemistry in New York City and to identify the issues that may contribute to the inequities in high school education, specifically S.T.E.M. education. The context through which this issue is examined is the restructuring and accountability initiatives that have been underway in New York City public schools as well as the accountability of cohort graduation rates. The issue of social justice and accessibility to high school chemistry was the lens through which this study was conducted. Mixed methodology was used in conducting the research so that a holistic view of the issue could be analyzed. Results indicate that the demographic and socioeconomic status of the students in the school district strongly correlate to the access to chemistry in that district.
Urban Students in Suburban Schools: A Dialectic of Potential
Year of Dissertation:
2009
City-to-suburb migration has been a leading cause of suburban diversification over the last fifty years. However, the impact of this transition on urban student migrants and the nature of their experiences in suburban schools as youth from the urban diaspora have gone underexplored. This dissertation addresses the processes of suburbanization that urban students undergo when transitioning to a suburban high school, the institutional patterns of reception and rejection they experience within a suburban school upon arrival, and the ways in which those patterns of reception and rejection lead to student attitudes and behaviors that exemplify both engagement with and disengagement from the suburban school habitus. Qualitative research methods with a focus on ethnography and participatory research were primarily used to study a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diversified high school in a northern New Jersey suburb of New York City. Central to the data collection and resulting policy suggestions was the Transitions Project, an on-going focus group of urban student co-researchers who, themselves, had recently transferred to this suburban high school from various communities in nearby New York City. The data show that receptive elements such as an engaging school environment, supportive peers and teachers, interest-based and leveled course content, and a visible connection between schooling and one's dreams for the future, as well as plentiful extra-curricular options, authentic advisement, dedicated participation, and holistic extra-curricular recruitment allowed incoming urban students to become engaged within the suburban school culture. However, various elements of suburban school culture that served to reject incoming urban students led to their consequent academic and extra-curricular disengagement. These data illuminate the ways in which the unexamined, intersubjective, and dialectical relationship between urban students and a suburban school impacts the school's capacity to be a successful transmitter of social capital to its urban student newcomers. Furthermore, the suburban school achievement gap eradication narrative will only be as effective as the extent to which suburban schools critically examine the policies and practices that receive and reject incoming students from the urban diaspora.