1+1=3 : pursuit of the public good in the neoliberal university.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2015.There are multiple constructs of the public good leading to tensions regarding the cost, quality, and mission of higher education. University-community partnerships are one place where these tensions are enacted. This qualitative case study of a public and private institution in New York State used critical realism to examine the causal mechanisms informing participants' constructs of the public good. This study asked: How is the public good constructed within U.S. institutions of higher education, and how do these constructs influence university-community partnerships? Five complementary data sources were used. First, a survey was used to explore attitudes about the cost, value, quality, and mission of a college education so as to understand how participants construct the public good and to identify mechanisms that inform these constructs. Second, focus groups were conducted to compare how participant attitudes influence perceptions of campus-community partnerships. Data collection for phase three consisted of audiotaped interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the construct of the public good. I simultaneously conducted other research activities, including note taking and the collection of documents pertaining to partnerships. A final focus group was held with administrators and community members that addressed study implications. This research is grounded in ontological realism and social constructivist epistemologies, articulated in the theoretical framework of critical realism. Critical realism necessitates the examination of both the world that is observable and the structures in the social and natural world that exist independently of our knowledge of them. An iterative analysis was employed to develop each case and constituted the empirical domain. Via the critical realist strategy of retroduction, a neoliberal lens guided the second level of analysis so as to illuminate the structures that frame concepts of the public good in higher education. Results from the empirical analysis employed in this study suggest that differences in how administrators and community partners understand the mission of higher education inform the ways that university-community partnerships are entered into, as well as the perceived benefits and challenges of those partnerships. Analysis at the abstract level engages the tension between structure and agency, moving from a description of experience to an examination of the reflexive interaction between the individual and social context. Combined, findings from this dissertation suggest that neoliberalism is the dominant paradigm influencing higher education across contexts, and that within the neoliberal university service learning has been marginalized to a rhetorical commitment to the public good

The Impact of early childhood poverty on academic achievement and the influence of supportive parenting

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2008.Socioeconomic disadvantage affects child development. Persistent poverty has more detrimental effects on socio-emotional functioning, cognitive functioning, and academic achievement than transitory poverty. Research on the effects of poverty suggests that the timing and duration of poverty has significant impact on children’s academic achievement. The impact of poverty is complex and transacts across multiple contexts including family, home, neighborhood, and school. It is important to understand the influence of one context on another in order to identify strategies to counteract the adverse effects of disadvantage. Research examining the link between child development and these factors is critical because this understanding is needed to inform policy development and social, educational, and health services. A major concern of existing studies are the inconsistent results regarding income effects, either due to design or measurement issues based on the construct of poverty, inclusion of social and environmental variables, or lack a longitudinal design to capture the effect of poverty over time on academic achievement. There are also inconsistent findings from well designed studies regarding the magnitude, if any, on the effect of poverty on academic achievement. Income and other highly intercorrelated aspects of socioeconomic status (maternal education, home learning resources, parental interaction, neighborhood influences, school environment, and biological determinants need to be controlled in order to understand the separate contribution of each. Second, it is important to understand whether supportive parenting moderates the influences of early childhood disadvantage on subsequent academic outcomes. This study is a secondary analysis of existing data from the control group from The New Mothers Study, which is a longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial for low-income families raising young children in Memphis, Tennessee. The overall aim of this secondary data analysis is to examine the role of supportive parenting in the context of the effect of early childhood poverty, children’s home environment, neighborhood, and school on academic achievement, using a bioecological model. Specifically, this study examines the following relationships controlling for maternal and child biological determinants of cognitive ability, (1) the impact of the duration and severity of early childhood poverty on academic achievement at the third year of school, (2) the role of neighborhood, family/home, and school in mediating the effects of early childhood poverty on academic achievement, and (3) the effect of supportive parenting on moderating the relationship between neighborhood, family/home, and schools on academic achievement. This analysis explained 26.3% of the variance associated with levels of academic achievement. Controlling for maternal and child IQ, none of the predictors for income, neighborhood, family/home, school, or supportive parenting had a direct effect on levels of academic achievement. Three explanations are possible for the findings: (1) the restricted range of values from this impoverished sample affected statistical analysis, (2) child IQ is not an exogenous variable and child intellectual ability is mediated by social influences, and (3) there is a reverse causal relationship between biological determinants and poverty on academic achievement. The predictive influence of child IQ negated the influence of other variables in the model on academic achievement. Additional research is indicated to investigate whether child IQ is an endogenous variable rather than an exogenous variable. Most of the studies in the literature do not control for child IQ when examining the influence of early childhood poverty on academic achievement. Few studies are longitudinal, even fewer examine the impact of poverty from birth to elementary school, and rare if any, control for child IQ. .Do environmental influences such as family/home environment predict child IQ scores

Surviving inclusion : a critical discourse analysis of a middle school co-teaching relationship

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2010.Since the passage of PL 94-142, also known as the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, in 1975, special and general educators have been urged to work together to improve the education of children with disabilities through increased access to the general education curriculum. Over the years, the evolution of a collaborative approach to educating students with disabilities has resulted in the increased implementation of co-teaching as a service delivery model and a significant change in the role of the special educator. Co-teaching in inclusive education has been a topic of interest in academic research for more than 10 years and much of the existing research has been limited to exploring programmatic conditions for success or failure in collaboration and co-teaching and developing models of exemplary co-teaching practice. Despite the prevalence of these models and the research evaluating their efficacy, implementation of effective co-teaching in inclusive classrooms, particularly secondary level remains largely elusive. In this dissertation, I use critical theory and critical discourse analysis to theorize my research, as it allows for the examination of aspects of co-teaching that go unnoticed in traditional models and evaluations of co-teaching. In looking at co-teaching through this critical lens, I hope to begin a conversation about the importance of considering discursive aspects of teacher practice as a way to complement current models of practicing and evaluating co-teaching practice. In conducting a study of this nature, I sought to explore the discursive aspects of co-teaching that were immanent in the co-teachers’ language and actions. Foucault’s critical theories on discourse, power, dominance, and construction of the subject formed the theoretical basis for this study. Derived significantly from Foucault’s conceptual work, Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis provided a complementary methodology to structure the majority of the analysis. Specifically, in the first phase of this study I studied their interactions at the local level of the classroom, the institutional level of the school district, and the societal level of governmental policy and legislation. The next phase of analysis extended on the first by exploring the patterns of dominance in the power relations between the two teachers. Finally, this study examined seven critical theoretical concepts that were prominent in the data- discourse, the institution, identity, inequality, ideology, agency, and historicity. Taken together, the three phases of analysis in this dissertation represent an in-depth examination of the co-teachers’ professional relationship from a critical discursive perspective unlike any other study of co-teaching currently published. The participants in this qualitative case study included a New York State certified special education teacher and a New York State certified secondary math teacher who were assigned as co-teachers for a class of students with and without special education needs. Data for this study came from field notes and a series of videotaped interviews and observations involving the co-teachers, which were subsequently transcribed and coded for analysis. Extensive qualitative coding was used to locate patterns and themes in the data. The three phases of critical analysis presented in this study revealed that what superficially appeared to be a successful inclusive co-teaching relationship was in fact a marginalizing and exclusive arrangement for the teachers and students alike. However, this marginalization was not a conscious attempt to exclude Val or the students with IEPs from the educational benefits of Keith’s general education math class. Rather, Val and Keith both resorted to traditional special education practices of segregation in an attempt to ensure their own survival as well as that of the students with IEPs in an educational environment that prioritized uniformity, high-stakes testing, and traditional conceptions of normalcy

How elementary teachers’ beliefs about the nature of science mediate implementing prescribed science curricula in their classrooms

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Warner School of Education, 2014This is an in depth study of two elementary school teachers, who are generalists because they teach multiple subjects to their classes, in addition to science, respectively in grade 3 and grade 6. The teachers taught and their students learned using a contemporary understanding of the nature of science (NOS), which they learned by actually doing science investigations, rather than being explicitly told about NOS (contrary to what some scholars claim). Neither teacher completed any formal/informal science training/experiences, especially connected to the construct NOS. Even though the teachers did not explicitly reference NOS in the classroom, their teaching about NOS was made possible through their implementation of the FOSS (Full Option Science System) curriculum. Although their students enthusiastically demonstrated competence in both science process and content, as prescribed by the FOSS curriculum, the teachers’ felt undermined by the state mandated assessments and the inclusion of student performance as a criterion for the state teacher evaluation system. This research was designed to answer the following questions: (1) What are elementary teachers’ conceptions about NOS? (2) How are the teachers’ NOS views manifested in their implementation of the FOSS program and their choices of instructional methods/materials? (3) What factors may have enhanced or hindered how the teachers sustained their NOS conceptions as they implemented the FOSS program? To explicate the relationship between teachers’ views of NOS and the extent to which constructivist practices were employed in their science instruction, a multiple research methodology using grounded theory as the foundation and employing both quantitative and qualitative measures, was needed. Sources of quantitative data were written survey results using the Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry Questionnaire (SUSSI; Liang et al., 2008) Likert scale responses and constructed responses. Face validity was determined through correlation of teachers’ NOS conceptions from their written responses with their verbal responses during semi-structured interviews. Sources of qualitative data were coding of field notes (audiotapes of interviews and classroom observations) and artifacts (instructional materials and student work). Following qualitative analysis, data were compared and validated through triagulation, and the results were summarized. The results indicate that teachers may develop contemporary NOS conceptions without explicit instruction and may fortify such perceptions in their students by teaching science using FOSS investigations without explicitly mentioning NOS (also contrary to what some scholars claim). These results have important implications for the successful implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards and future elementary science teacher education programs

Reading aloud : constructing literacy in an early childhood classroom

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2010.Imagine an active, happily engaged, communicative, curious group of four-year-old children investigating and discovering as they play together in an early childhood classroom. Imagine yet again, the teacher beckoning them to gather on the rug to listen to a story. What happens next? Are the children allowed to continue in this curiosity-seeking, meaning-making mode before, during and after the read aloud session? Or, are the children silenced physically, socially and cognitively as they sit upright, listen to the teacher read a story from beginning to end with no participatory dialogue? Both of these scenarios exist in present-day early childhood classrooms. This study examines how the read aloud event is utilized to its maximum potential considering all its variables. This study was designed to investigate the practices of a Master’s level teacher and how she uses scaffolding and mediational strategies before, during and after reading aloud to a group of four-year-old children. These children participate in a half-day Reggio-inspired early childhood classroom in a private school, along with a teacher and teacher-assistant. I spent three weeks in the classroom as a participant observer. Using one major question as a guideline, I then looked at what specific scaffolding and mediational techniques were used by the classroom teacher to promote socially constructed dialogue. I looked at several variables inherent in reading aloud, allotment of sufficient time during the day, size of the read aloud group, whether the teacher allowed dialogue, and whether the book was read more than once, and coupled these to assess the scaffolding and mediational techniques used by the teacher. Data was collected from multiple sources. These included: daily observations, reflective journal, audiotapes of the stories, transcriptions of the audiotapes, photographs of the classroom, formal and informal teacher interviews, child focus groups, child and teacher co-produced webs and charts, the parent handbook, and a re-visit to the classroom. I used qualitative observational case study research methods to collect and analyze the data. This data allowed me to code the data according to emerging themes and categories. I used Vygotsky’s Social Learning Theory as the lens through which to focus this research study. Using selected parts of this theory, the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), scaffolding and mediation, I was able to ascertain how this theory can be applied to reading aloud in an early childhood classroom. Application of the theory was evident when several children re-told a familiar story, when the children replicated animal habitats on a wall mural, and when the children worked collaboratively to reconstruct a local farm market in the classroom

Becoming foreign language teaching assistants: a case and action research study of a university course

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2014.This dissertation examined how seven foreign language teaching assistants changed their pedagogical approaches to language teaching. The teaching assistants participated in a six-week course design to support them in understanding language teaching and reflective practice. The teacher for the course used a constructivist and collaborative approach to encourage the teaching assistants to use similar approaches in their own teaching. Data on how the teaching assistants’ thinking and practice changed came from reflective journals, teaching narratives, classroom observation notes, interview transcripts, and the researcher journal. Sociocultural theory, social constructivism, and second language theories of acquisition are used as lenses to analyze and interpret how the teaching assistants build on prior learning experiences to acquire new knowledge and skills. The study revealed that the foreign language teaching assistants face many challenges in becoming reflective university teachers. Most had little experience teaching, immigrating to a new country and higher education system challenged some, and several received little formal support from the department in which they were teaching. Therefore, the research supports recommendations for university foreign language departments to develop formal, structured systems to support their teaching assistants in becoming comfortable in their new situations and more reflective about what and how they teach

“Not for everyone, but kind of amazing”: institutional friction and the nature of sustainability education

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2014.Human activities on the planet are having an unprecedented effect on the natural and social systems that sustain life. As a result, sustainability has become a popular normative social and ecological goal to address conditions of unsustainability. These terms are definitionally vague and contextualized by diverse cultural actors to mean particular things within different contexts. The dissertation study reported here explored the theory and practice of sustainability education in an institutionalized educational setting, including its varied ecological, educational and infrastructural implications. By using an institutional ethnographic methodology, I explained how one educational institution socially constructed and physically operationalized a particular conception of sustainability education. Using ecosystem complexity theory, ecological communication dynamics and political ecology as theoretical lenses, and phronetic case and abductive gestalt analyses as analytic tools, I detailed how this institution engaged in elite-driven change with social, cultural and material implications in the community. In particular, the emergent ideation of sustainability education manifested as a down-shifting of social and ecological responsibility to the local scale and represents a larger trend in the neoliberalization of environmental education. I also argue that sustainability education represents a privileged eco-chic discourse and discuss the implications of this nascent phenomenon as it relates to green capitalism. Findings speak to the emerging fields of sustainability studies in general, and sustainability education in particular, and inform future sustainability research and practice

Re-politicizing higher education and research within neoliberal globalization.

This article shows how universities, like education and social services in general, are increasingly pressured to adopt neoliberal principles that encourage privatization, entrepreneurship, standardization, assessment, and accountability. The authors examine recent efforts in the United States to develop measurement and accountability systems that commodify higher education, and show how they reflect a neoliberal rationale that undermines the historical purposes of higher education, reduces faculty autonomy, and harms the common good. However, they propose ways in which assessment and accountability might be implemented in higher education so as to promote teaching and learning responsive to the interests of students, faculty, the university, and wider communities

Parents’ musical habitus and its effects on a child’s involvement in an elementary orchestra program

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Warner School of Education, 2017.Since the implementation of the New York State Common Core Standards, two primary problems have arisen for elementary instrumental music teachers. First, instrumental music teachers’ time to work with students is diminishing. The demands of the rigorous curriculums developed to teach the Common Core Standards create a climate where English Language Arts and Math have precedence over all other subject areas. Music is a core subject in New York State but how it appears in the school day can vary from school district to school district. Second, students are assigned so much more homework causing parents to have reservations about engaging them in other activities but many still involve their children in music. These parents have a set of acquired dispositions of thought, behavior, and taste regarding music or a musical habitus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Rimmer, 2006). This study identifies and explores the musical habitus of parents of students at a K-5 elementary school within a large economically diverse suburban school district in upstate New York. General music classes are part of each elementary school’s master schedule and families have the option to participate in an elementary band or orchestra program. Specifically, the author seeks to understand the musical habitus of parents whose children are participating in the elementary orchestra. The analytical and theoretical framework used by the author for this research is grounded in Bourdieu’s (1986, 1992) theory of capital, with a focus on his notion of habitus and Epstein’s (2010) theory of overlapping spheres of influence. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus has been extended into the arts in general and to music in particular to examine the way in which people’s individual histories, class origins, family backgrounds and educational opportunities interact to compose their ongoing relationship with the arts. Rimmer (2006) describes a musical habitus as an active, adaptive and generative action in sustaining musical meanings, and the structures in which they are embedded. Epstein’s work focuses on one part of Bourdieu’s concept of field by uniting home and school for the families involved. Understanding the level at which these three areas must interact will be a focus in the analysis of data. Together, they served as a lens to understand the musical habitus of the parents and why music is valued. This study challenges orchestra directors and administrators to understand why parents encourage and perpetuate their child’s participation in instrumental music when balancing the daily schedules of their students

Pre-service career and technical education teachers’ perceptions of their subject matter and learning to teach it : an action research study

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2012.Our nation’s public schools have been given the task of preparing our students for success in college as well as future careers. Determining how to best prepare future teachers is not an easy task, and the current state of public education has had an impact on what it takes to be a successful teacher. Involving pre-service career and technical education (CTE) teachers in research on their student teaching experiences should help them in their student teaching and future teaching careers as well as aid CTE teacher educators in the preparation of future CTE teachers. With those goals in mind, the following two main research questions guided this study: 1. How do pre-service CTE teachers perceive CTE? 2. How can CTE teacher educators support pre-service CTE teachers in negotiating the differing messages regarding CTE? Four graduate business and marketing education students who completed their student teaching practicum experiences during the fall 2011 semester participated in this study. Using action research, the researcher employed written surveys, individual interviews, group discussions, participant reflection journals, and a researcher reflection journal to collect data. A grounded theory methodological approach guided qualitative analysis of the data to determine emerging themes that directly address the goals of the study and the research questions. Through interaction with the data three themes emerged that represent the perceptions of pre-service CTE teachers and what CTE teacher educators must understand to support pre-service CTE teachers: 1. Pre-service CTE teachers appreciate and advocate for CTE. 2. Pre-service CTE teachers lack understanding as to why others do not value CTE. 3. Pre-service CTE teachers are students first and teachers second. The concept of self-efficacy, as a part of social cognitive theory, serves as an ideal theoretical framework to analyze the findings because it contends that people are agents who have control over their behaviors and will act according to their best interests. Analyzing the data through this lens provides the opportunity to evaluate the impact of the study on the participants, the researcher, and other key stakeholders