Recent scholarship has suggested that evaluation is becoming increasingly institutionalized and entrenched in problematic discourses, leading to a narrowing of possibilities for evaluators to contribute to meaningful social change. At the same time, evaluation approaches which are grounded in values of social justice and equity are receiving…

Language ideologies can powerfully shape language learner perceptions and progress. This qualitative study investigated and reports findings based on analysis of interviews with 14 participants who self-identify as advanced users of Spanish. While dominant language ideologies in the U.S. often undermine learners reaching high levels of language…

Since the earliest colonial institutions, Christianity and higher education have maintained a complex relationship. While initially dominated by Protestant intuitions, the landscape of U.S. higher education expanded denominationally, including Catholic institutions, after the Civil War and into the 20th century. As public institutions…

The field of Environmental Education (EE) is facing multiple crises around the climate crisis and an overdue recognition of the racist and ableist assumptions within EE spaces (Bang et al., 2014; Miller, Schmidt). These two issues are profoundly intertwined with emotions of anger, fear, shame, and disillusionment. In EE teaching and learning,…

This dissertation seeks to answer the question: what were the social and cultural effects of Rudolf Flesch's thoughts and writings on late 20th-century American literacy education? The purpose is to provide an understanding and articulation of the cultural and educational ramifications of Rudolph Flesch's books "Why Johnny Can't Read and What…

Social information is cognitively linked to linguistic information, evidenced by bidirectional influences on perceptual processing of speech. Models of sociophonetic cognition theorize that the way linguistic experiences are interpreted and stored in memory is mediated by listener attention, which is guided by ideology. This relationship, however,…

This creative nonfiction dissertation study sought to describe the process by which three self-identified White teachers--who are engaged in structural initiatives in their schools, districts and/or communities for racial equity--transitioned from colorblindness to understanding white supremacy and structural racism. The following overarching…

This study investigates the integration of content and language in a Mandarin immersion program, focusing on the interplay between teacher beliefs and pedagogical practices. It examines how these practices align or diverge from teachers' stated educational ideologies through interviews, observations, and a questionnaire. This qualitative case…

Public-facing statements about anti-racism and linguistic justice have become common tools for educational organizations to promote values of criticality and openness. Such statements often explicitly reject practices that equate language difference with deficit and continue to harm marginalized groups that speak languages or use pronouns that…

This dissertation delves into the profound impact of the Second Great Awakening on American higher education and its enduring social consequences. Examining the period from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, the research uncovers the core belief that drove the Awakening--that America and its citizens were chosen for a…

The K-12 teacher demographic is over 80% white, female, mono-lingual, and middle class, and many reported being under-prepared to work with and serve marginalized students. In response, teacher education programs added one or two semester-long multicultural education classes to their curriculum that present marginalized communities as problems and…

The field of teacher education is dominated by whiteness, perpetuating the influence of white ideologies in designing and implementing teacher education at each phase of the continuum (pre-service teaching, in-service teaching, teacher educators). This study employs a critical autoethnographic approach to examine how my experiences as a Black…

This ethnographic study interrogates youth understandings of the concept of "monstrosity" as presented in young adult speculative fiction novels and as it pertains to contemporary U.S. politics. The monster is a popular figure in fiction for adolescents, and it often serves a metaphorical political function within its narratives. This…

Education technology, commonly referred to as EdTech, is used to provide an immersive mediated learning experience for students. Earlier scholarship has suggested that education technologies are more than instructional materials containing factual information (Apple & Christian-Smith (1991). They have become channels of communication…

This project aimed to understand the relationship between theoretical interpretations of multiple values and ideas of the universities from within and across different disciplines and their influence on higher education and its internationalisation within the real international organisation (IO) policy context. With this foundation, I derived a…