This dissertation surveys the development of the Hawaiian higher educational system in the 19th century Hawaiian Kingdom as a strategy of Hawaiian leadership in promoting and protecting Hawaiian independence. This analysis revisits a Hawaiian educational history canon that overwhelmingly credits missionaries and foreigners as imposing an…

Westernization as a historical process of universalizing western cultural and societal norms has, in terms of global education, evolved into a narrative of competition, resource-hoarding, erasure, and general accumulation of capital by the few. Universities and colleges are hubs for the production and reproduction of ideologies and ways of knowing…

The initial question was innocent enough, at least on the surface: How do scholars and practitioners define child centered, developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive education in places distant from my home in the US? I was originally inspired to ask this question by my graduate students--aspiring and practicing Waldorf teachers--who were…

In this dissertation, I use a critical transdisciplinary approach to examine how the coloniality of Western Science impacts science education teaching, learning, and research. Weaving together Black geographies, settler colonialism, and decolonial theory, I illustrate how the historical, symbiotic relationship between colonization and Western…

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…

The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of West Africans who have completed their primary and secondary education in their country of origin, as it relates to westernized colonized curriculum and the affect it had on the West African educational system. Even though there has been limited research done on the subject of…

In California, Filipina/x/os continue to be overrepresented in the nursing workforce, with the percentage of nurses identifying as Filipino increasing from 13.4% in 1993 to 20.6% in 2018 (Spetz et al., 2018). While a particular ethnic group being overrepresented in a certain industry is not problematic on its own, certain careers come with greater…

The focus of my dissertation is the 'problem of the Other'. The central question is: how does one relate to the other without immediately taking away their alterity? If the Other is an absolute other, how can we relate in a way that is respectful and ethical? There are many examples of relationships among people that demonstrate ways that are…

The multifaceted influences of coloniality in higher education continue to be explored to reshape and transform spaces that can either reproduce structures of coloniality or bring about decoloniality. The University of Puerto Rico was founded in 1903 within 5 years of the end of the Spanish-American War, as a product of the law Morrill-Hatch. The…

This paper outlines a comprehensive project that used the Community Engagement and Social Innovation Model as a framework to drive a continuous quality improvement project focused on enhancing outcomes for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) college students. Recognizing the persistent impact of modern-day colonialism on NHPI communities…

This dissertation explores the well-being of public K-12 teachers in the United States who explicitly identify as anti-racist and/or anti-colonial teachers. Well-being has traditionally been conceptualized as attached to single human individuals in most Western academic scholarship. However, drawing on insights from the posthumanisms, community…

This dissertation sought insight into the experiences of queer undergraduate faculty's experiences with colonialism and neoliberalism in the academy. Using the interpretive phenomenological analysis as the methodology, homogeneity of the participants was sought by controlling for location that participants work, Central Appalachia, and their queer…

This case study examines Makerere University through the lens of U.S. land-grant ideal and normative domains in order to provide a deeper understanding of global higher education. A case study uses multiple types of data to create a holistic perspective. As well as interviewing Makerere stakeholders representing diverse sectors, numerous documents…

The purpose of this study was to unveil how school leaders, particularly school principals, navigate Eurocentric curricular structures in the implementation of bilingual programming. This is a relevant study given the widespread issues and concerns circulating around the achievement of English Learners, recent immigrants, and the politicized arena…

Scholarship on racial diversity initiatives outline the positive outcomes associated with initiatives, describes the types of initiatives, and the various ways faculty, staff, and university leadership can and do work together for effective outcomes. However, there is a need to understand how racial diversity initiatives are implemented, what…