Chinese identity is perceived by education researchers is a confluence of deliberations on questions such as who is Chinese, how they are Chinese, how they come to identify as Chinese, and who gets to say who is and is not Chinese. This dissertation's task is, as a result, not to define Chinese identities or Chineseness. Rather, I unpack the…

Care is something we expect educators to demonstrate towards their students, but are they themselves being taught the importance of care in education and prepared to enact it in their classrooms? The existing literature on care and care theory in education is limited, but shows a link between care and student success; many educators also point to…

This single embedded case study utilized a content analysis of syllabi and other documents, along with interviews and observations, of two California teacher education programs to explore how social justice-oriented and transformative practices were conceptualized. The courses - topics, text, assignments, and instructional practices - were…

Despite teachers being centrally implicated in teacher evaluation policy reform, we know little about the effects of its policies and procedures on teachers' work in their school district, and we see limited discussion about the possibility of teachers as policy actors to reflect upon and possibly improve or overcome teacher evaluation. Using data…

Neoliberalism is a pro-capitalist ideology that cycles money and power to the elite class by deregulating or privatizing the public sphere and is fueled by economic exploitation and oppression. This dissertation examines the neoliberal construct at work in the privatization of Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) from an ethnographic lens using the…

A growing number of state and district education agencies collect staff ratings (SR) using multiple-choice item questionnaires to evaluate the quality of working conditions (QWC) in schools. Agencies often report school-level metrics derived from these data to the public, and some use these to inform decisions about practice and policy. Although…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous influence on higher education in America. While college presidents have led through multiple crises in the past several decades, this challenge is unique for both the depth of its influence (e.g., revolutionizing course and service delivery methods, financial upheaval and institutional closures, political…

This study addresses current trends in theological higher education by proposing a potentially viable mechanism for institutional reform, namely the Montessori method. Although Maria Montessori is widely known as an early childhood educator, this study suggests that her approach aligns quite well with the telos of theological education, the…

Advocating for the laboratory method was a distinguishing feature of textbooks as "physics" displaced "natural philosophy" in American schools during the second half of the nineteenth century as the dominant tradition of teaching physical science. This dissertation examines digital editions of textbooks in common use during the…

The 21st-century job description for school principals requires greater areas of leadership and accountability utilizing student data to improve instruction as mandated by state legislative reforms. The Principal's accountability is measured using the principal evaluation system. The general problem is that many principal evaluation systems are…

Researchers have suggested that the implementation of Common Core State Standards has the potential to influence school leadership styles and practices. It was not known, however, how implementation of Common Core State Standards influenced school superintendent leadership styles and practices and overall school culture in the state of California.…

In light of the recently published Common Core State Standards Initiative, public school curriculum has once again come under scrutiny. While curriculum debates have taken place since the very beginnings of public schooling in the United States, too few have taken more than a passing notice of the textbooks that, in many cases, comprise the…

As journalism educators wrestle to keep programs up-to-date in an evolving news landscape, there is value in understanding how education in an early form of multimedia journalism--photography--came to be. Little attention has been paid to the intersection of journalism education and photojournalism. This subject furnishes a unique perspective on…

A number of approaches and methods are being used to assess higher cognition within online threaded discussions, as evidenced by the corpus of scholarship. However, a review of the literature suggests that current strategies relating to asynchronous discourse have tended to focus on cognitive processes that are mostly driven by task-oriented…

While program-level assessment has become common in higher education, questions remain about the impacts of assessment on teaching and learning in academic programs. Despite the considerable assessment activity happening in higher education, assessment scholars still have difficulty finding evidence of programs "closing the loop," that…