The present study examines cultural representations in two widely used AFL textbook series, namely "Al-Kitaab" and "Arabiyyat al-Naas." Fundamentally, three main issues motivate this study: (1) the cultural politics of language textbooks underlying the construction and dissemination of cultural knowledge and its prioritization…

Crisis leadership regained importance when the World Health Organization's Director General declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020). Though some research was emerging, a gap remained regarding an examination of crisis leadership from the perspective of those on the frontline of the pandemic--the…

Colleges and universities play an important role in training a skilled workforce and generating knowledge for society, but we know little about exactly how universities choose the skills and knowledge they provide to students. In my dissertation, I introduce novel data that allow me to document new facts about the supply of courses at a large…

Given the current political climate of division, the study of history is important now more than ever, but the value of the study of history has been marginalized. This study used student focus groups to understand ways in which history could be taught in such a way that its importance is emphasized through relevance and connection to current…

Effective social studies education involves inquiry into and discussions of controversial social and political issues and difficult topics. In the current polarized political climate, exemplified by the emergence of divisive concepts legislation, the ability of social justice-oriented social studies teachers to provide highly effective instruction…

Arab faculty faced challenges building collegial relationships and positive classroom environments due to the discrimination they faced from colleagues and students. This discrimination took the form of microaggressions which included: microassaults; microinsults; and microinvalidations. This phenomenological study concluded that Arab faculty…

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…

The unprecedented racial justice movements of 2020, intensified by George Floyd's tragic murder, catalyzed a global mobilization. This dissertation investigates the intersection of these movements with sociotechnical tools that shaped the movement, focusing on the youth deeply engaged with socioalgorithmic systems and their developmental…

This study focused on the lived realities of two undocumented students where they comment on political cartoons that provide viewpoints on immigrants and topics of immigration. Immigration topics and immigrants have historically, and contemporaneously, been featured frequently in political cartoons, and the messaging of political cartoons…

This qualitative interview study examines challenges college students may experience in extracurricular dialogues on contested sociopolitical issues. It also discusses approaches that students claim support them through the challenges of contested issues dialogues. This study found that college students encountered challenges including difficulty…

Teacher turnover, or those teachers who either move between schools or leave the profession entirely, is a growing problem in today's education system. Though education research is flush with studies about turnover's causes and the success of certain policy initiatives, little attention has been paid to the perspectives of those policymakers often…

Polarization in the United States and controversy over the teaching of content some deem "divisive" has resulted in the enactment of restrictive legislation in many states. Such constraints contribute to a fraught environment in schools today and significantly impact the work of teaching. Utilizing frameworks of "ambitious…

Following experts' calls that information literacy interventions can inoculate against misleading political information, this study examines how students who have undergone an information literacy training evaluate political information one year after the classroom training. The intervention consisted of a one-semester information literacy course…

This case study explored the impacts of school shootings on K-12 school principals. Eleven school principals and assistant principals from rural, suburban, and urban areas in all regions of the United States were interviewed. The study answered two research questions: What impact do school shootings have on school principals? and What do…

This qualitative, multi-site case study examines two cases focusing on the dialogic relations of secondary English students and their teachers, as they interact with print and non-print pop culture texts related to sports and/or music as part of a curriculum unit on a politically sensitive topic. The purpose of this inquiry is to examine…