This study of how higher education leaders see the free speech phenomenon, i.e., how they are experiencing and responding to free speech issues, is significant because universities, perhaps more than any other democracy's institutions, are considered to have a special responsibility for safeguarding democratic values, such as free speech. The…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the impact of political polarization on public school leaders and how they lead their districts. The central research question being explored is: how has the increased divisiveness and political polarization of issues in the United States impacted public school superintendents and how they…

The United States has a long history of political tension around education at the federal, state, and local level. District and school leaders must balance students' learning and social needs while working to address political tension barriers on education decisions. Political tension involves the feeling of strain or anxiety around topics aligned…

This qualitative, phenomenological study examined the experiences of public high school social studies teachers in 11 U.S. states in teaching democratic principles in their classes since the 2016 presidential election. The study utilized semi-structured interview questions and inductive analysis to assess teacher experiences, including instances…

From coeducation to integration, institutions of higher education in the United States of America have been the regular target of politically driven criticisms. Chief among these criticisms in recent years has been the idea that institutions of higher education are lacking in ideological diversity. These critiques have had significant impacts on…

In 2020, as the nation experienced a racial reckoning, the North Carolina State Board of Education was in the process of adopting new social studies standards. The racial reckoning constituted a policy window to advocate for standards that better included marginalized experiences. In response, conservative lawmakers engaged in a political…

Bullying, a complex phenomenon impacting virtually every school, can be damaging both in the short term and long term (Nansel et al., 2001; Solomontos-Kountouri et al., 2017; Wolke et al., 2013). About 20% of students aged 12 to 18 years old report having experienced bullying while 20-25% of college students report having experienced bullying…

While the capstone experience of student teaching is sometimes perceived as a time where everything from one's teacher preparation neatly comes together, that is often not the case. Student teachers frequently find themselves positioned at the intersection of competing discourses as they consider: who am I, and what does that mean for how I teach?…

Scholars like Foa and Mounk (2016) have demonstrated that democracy is feared to be in decline in the United States, especially amongst younger generations. This research study identified lessons learned about building democratic values from community engaged and politically engaged U.S. college students and detected differences in perceptions of…

There has been an increase in political policies banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in colleges and universities in the United States. In the current research, I focused on examining how two different types of communication strategies influence White people's attitudes toward political policies. The first communication…

The United States (U.S.) is in the midst of a paradigm shift in who creates news. It is widely known that the internet has in the past few decades displaced television and print newspapers as the primary medium where news is consumed. However, the past two decades have also seen a shift in "who" is communicating the news. People…

Formalized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have been implemented at predominantly white institutions over the last 50 years to address student demands for equitable campus environments, changing student demographics, and to comply with federal law. This narrative inquiry explored how DEI staff in cultural centers storied their…

"The Laboring Scholar: Community College Geographies and the Politics of Care" is an institutional ethnography that investigates the personal, political, and economic costs to student caregivers seeking a college degree. Through a critical analysis of student interviews and a close examination of community college structures and…

This dissertation aims to explore whether, amidst the significant trend of social individualization, Chinese citizenship education can achieve its goal of cultivating the so-called 'loyal socialist citizens'. Unlike citizenship education in Western democracies, which fosters constitutional patriotism, Chinese citizenship education seeks to…

This dissertation investigates whether social identity information modulates the interpretation of non-entailed clausal complement content (CC) in utterances of sentences such as (1): (1) Ken didn't hear that the minimum wage is too high. The focus of this dissertation is the listener 's inference that the speaker is committed to the truth of the…