As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience--an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers--is in…

This dissertation explores teacher preparedness to engage with a diverse Westo, Georgia, student population effectively. The study emphasizes the pivotal role played by teacher training and ongoing professional development in shaping this preparedness. Employing a quantitative research approach, the investigation evaluates the preparedness levels…

It is generally accepted that education is a powerful enabler of social mobility in the modern world. However, access to quality and specialized education is still highly unequal, creating pathways for some groups of people and barriers to others. This dissertation explores three approaches to understanding and addressing inequalities of…

Given the importance of Public Policies for social transformation, the document explains why and under what circumstances they constitute a decisive factor to promote or inhibit social transformation. A policy is a purposeful, intentional, planned behavior, not just reactive, casual. It is set in motion with the decision to achieve certain…

In line with global trends, China experienced a rapid expansion in its higher education system in the second half of the twentieth century, and has seen especially large growth since the early 2000s. The expansion of higher education means an increase in the total quantity of educational opportunities. Although it is expected that education…

Teachers' use of online social networking to support their learning may have important implications for classroom teaching practices. This mixed methods study investigated how elementary schoolteachers used Twitter professionally. Teachers described what they learned from Twitter and how they applied their new learning to their teaching.…

The document shows that the world still faces a learning crisis and a skills crisis that is leaving girls ill-prepared to develop critical knowledge to participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This risks reversing gains in women's participation in the workforce. This report seeks to call attention to the potential of STEM education to…

The quality of care children receive from birth to kindergarten sets them on a trajectory for successful entry to school. Children who receive high-quality care, which is provided by qualified early educators with demonstrated mastery of the essential early learning core competencies, enter school ready to learn. Shortages of credentialed early…

Drawing from humanizing pedagogies (Bartolome, 1994; del Carmen Salazar; Freire & Ramos, 1993) and humanizing research (Paris & Winn, 2013), in this article I propose an approach to "humanizing assessment" that begins with the position that inclusive and equitable educational opportunities and assessment practices that meet the…

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is rapidly emerging as a transformative force in Latin American higher education, bridging diverse cultures and reshaping pedagogical practices to meet the region's unique challenges. Inspired by Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy--which emphasizes education as a means of social transformation and…

This study explored the unfreedom of Grade 10 isiXhosa learners, highlighting the complex language, teaching, and assessment dynamics in Afrikaans classrooms. The study draws on them Capability Approach (CA) of Sen (1999) to assess the unfreedoms of learners in Afrikaans Grade 10 classrooms. It underscores the experiences of isiXhosa learners and…

The cost-of-living crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have had profound consequences on young people, with potential implications for their future life chances. To look at these consequences in-depth, this report analyses interviews with 22 young people from the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities (COSMO) Study cohort in Winter 2023.…

Few studies explicitly examine how opportunity structures impact school safety, school climate, or bullying. This article applies school-centered ecological theory as a heuristic conceptual framework that links opportunity structures and school safety. Historically, opportunity structures identified how institutional characteristics such as labor…

The concept of educational opportunity is ubiquitous yet ambiguous; it is frequently discussed within the education world, yet there is no commonly shared understanding of what it means or how to measure it. To address this void, we conducted an integrative review of the literature on school inputs and student outcomes from 2010 to 2019. A total…

While the United States is simultaneously recovering from a global pandemic and facing a national reckoning of racial injustice, the effects of COVID-19 continue to exacerbate academic and opportunity gaps that were decades in the making in K-12 systems. Most students are performing worse than before the pandemic. For students of color, there is a…