Education is a moral enterprise, and higher education has the accountability to produce skilled learners with cognitive, psychological, and social-emotional competences. Formal and informal approaches of character education increase in demand. On the one hand, students should be guided to gain character strength and moral compass to confront the…

Social studies education provides unique opportunities for students to learn about the democratic process and, more importantly, how to engage in civic life to become active citizens. It is through meaningful social studies education that students are deliberately helped to understand the world, and are provided space to discuss, deliberate, and…

In this dissertation, the researcher examined teachers' and students' discourses through a social constructionist framing of democratic education to understand how they disrupted or maintained traditional schooling discourses. Data were generated during four consecutive days of video and audio recording of teachers' and students' discourses. Other…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and describe the perceptions of participants of PeaceJam towards personal and collective power, service learning, social justice and democratic education as examined through participant observations, interviews, focus groups, artifacts, and documents of individuals engaging with the non-profit…

What are the attitudes, mindsets, and capacities that promote the full flourishing of individuals as well as our collective society? Based on a review of the literature on democratic education, the researcher posits a humble theory (i.e., a local theory in educational research) of the dispositions of democracy and then asks educators from…

Youth today are participating in political and civic life in new and emerging ways--some positive and some negative--but there is scant evidence that these new forms of engagement spawn enduring forms of participation to enhance democratization at all levels in society. How, then, do we educate for democracy and for what type of democracy,…

The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of a democratic school leader and understand how his conception of leadership is congruent or incongruent with notions of democracy and democratic leadership. This small, participant-observer case study follows a democratic school leader and his staff for a year and examines those challenges…

Short-term service-learning experiences such as alternative breaks are increasing in popularity due to the focus on service in higher education and the institution's responsibility to ensure students are graduating with the skills needed to succeed in an increasingly competitive, global economy and contribute to a democratic society as citizens…

By engaging in an interdisciplinary examination of the democracy-education relationship, this humanistic inquiry will identify and explore the principles that define journalism educators' special obligation to do good work. My thesis is prefaced on the notion that determining the principles that guide what it means for educators to do good work in…

This dissertation investigates the effect of expanded tertiary education on collective civic and political participation. The expectation is that increased participation by educated individuals would result in increased levels of participation overall. However, studies that examined this relationship have presented mixed findings with no…

In the current political climate, where many politicians in both Europe and United States have proclaimed that multi-cultural education has failed as an educational paradigm, there is a growing fear that the very idea of a democratic, multicultural society is untenable over time. In this dissertation, I explore three responses to the question of…

The aim of this study is to conduct an exploratory baseline survey of West Bank students to assess student attitudes and practices towards Human Rights and Democracy (HDR). To achieve the goal of this research, a survey of 3450 youth was conducted that included students from the 8th, 10th and 12th grades throughout the West Bank. The specific…

This study addressed the gap between teacher beliefs studies that claim beliefs of teachers influence practice and the recommendations for democratic practice presented in much of the literature on democracy in education. A collective case study methodology was selected to explore the processes and ways in which three beginning teachers'…

This dissertation explores the issues related to the development of national identity amongst middle school students in Japan, from both macro and micro perspectives of the state's educational policy and the students' conception. While it is impossible to understand a national education without placing it in the larger context, the concept of…

Looking through the philosophical lens of love, this study seeks a deeper understanding and appreciation of how postsecondary social justice educators use storytelling, in the context of critical peace education, to create social change. This research explores the guiding question of how storytelling is used to encourage social change and to…