Changing orientations to language, informed by poststructuralism and postcolonialism, challenge modernist representations of languages as bounded entities, tied to particular territories and identities (Canagarajah, 2019; Makoni and Pennycook, 2007). Viewing language as a hybrid and fluid practice, these developments question the theoretical…

Global emergencies resulting from conflict, human rights violations, and natural disasters have displaced more than 90 million people worldwide, half of whom are under 18. While the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) calls for sustainable (i.e. long-lasting) access to inclusive and quality education for all people by 2030,…

Schools serve both to connect and separate people within society. Therefore, the landscape of school reform presents an opportunity to explicate the opposing forces of connectedness and competition that are entrenched in twenty-first century society. It can serve as a laboratory in which to study foundational social issues. This study is an…

Community schools and other approaches to Alternative Primary Education or APE have increased access to primary education for underserved populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as a major goal of the Education for All (EFA) movement. In Zambia, a country where an estimated 20 percent of the basic education enrollment now attends community…

This dissertation examines how stakeholders in an Appalachian Kentucky high school addressed educational problems that they targeted for reform. Set against the backdrop of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), this ethnographic study describes the challenges of effectively coupling top-down state mandates with bottom-up advocacy and…