This critical action research study demonstrated the importance of creating liberatory learning environments for Black and Brown student scholars through culturally relevant pedagogy. Decolonization paradigms were employed to understand the impact of colonization and how it currently influences educational structures for Black and Brown students…

The current music education paradigm may be considered an oppressive experience for both students and teachers through its historical foundation, standardized nature, and focus on Western art repertoire and its associated skill building. Realizing the oppressive nature of many aspects of music education, some scholars and practitioners have sought…

This dissertation explores the dynamics of a formal classroom and an informal nature-based learning environment, focusing on their impact on student subjectification and knowledge authority. The study, conducted with a cohort of 27 fifth-grade students and their teacher, employs a comparative case study methodology to analyze how teaching…

Given the significance of school leaders and leadership to teaching, learning, and student success, research on school principal leadership has expanded from its foundations in Western Anglo-American nations to international, diverse, and historically marginalized contexts. However, an enduring critique and limitation of the educational leadership…

Black male students discover themselves in a quandary with respect to schooling. Although, there is a need and desire to be educated therein also lies a systemic dominant culture within higher education that works to devalue Black male students' culture, voice, and lived experiences. Even though abundant programs have been carried out in colleges…

The purpose of this project was to lift up the stories of Filipinx staff and their meaning-making, meanings, and enactments of decolonization. Through journaling, an online group meeting, and individual interviews with five staff in higher education in the United States, I aimed to answer the following research questions: How do Filipinx higher…

Youth of Color sit at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression--classism, racism, and sexism. Too often, Youth of Color are pushed out of traditional schools and are further marginalized by being assigned to alternative education programs, including continuation high schools. To address a recurring issue of dynamic inequality in which…

The purpose of this study was to better understand the influence of educators' attention to identity construction as tenth grade Emergent Bilinguals and native English-speaking students develop mathematical, social, and epistemological empowerment in a mathematics classroom. I incorporated a framework detailing critical consciousness as a mediator…

Talk is at the heart of classroom instruction and, according to the vast research on classroom talk, the teacher that does most of the talking. Thus, an asymmetry of power is created between teachers and students. These asymmetrical relationships are most obvious in urban elementary classrooms where test prep literacy curriculum has become the…

By utilizing the data from 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), this dissertation examines the extent to which countries vary in the pattern and magnitude of the discrepancy in civic outcomes among adolescents from differing family backgrounds. Among the many family background characteristics that may shape adolescents'…