The ways in which the language of reformers intersects with and informs reform implementation is important to our understanding of how education policy impacts practice. To explore this issue, we employed critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyze the language used by a 21st century skills-focused reform organization to promote its program…

This exploratory netnographic study describes how a sample of Ontario kindergarten teachers perceive the new Ontario Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) curriculum. Discussions from teacher message boards, the comment sections of online news articles, and interviews with kindergarten teachers were analyzed and coded using a qualitative approach. Analysis…

This dissertation studies the creation and implementation of service learning policy and the implications of these programs for democratic citizenship and political participation. The project focuses on service learning centers at three universities in the Los Angeles area, framing the creation and implementation of these campus-wide centers as an…

This article relates key findings from an ethnographic study into the implementation of the Rights-Based Approach in Tanzania. The Rights-Based Approach is a burgeoning approach in international development that emphasises the rights of citizens and the duties of the State to provide services to the poor. By using the theoretical frameworks of…

The 2007-2008 school year marked the first year Florida's Title I schools that did not made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for five consecutive years entered into restructuring as mandated by the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001. My study examines the perceptions of teacher entering into their first year of school restructuring due to…

Inclusion and detracking policies seek to remedy the pervasive inequality of educational opportunities in U.S. schools by building classrooms that are integrated across the lines of race/ethnicity, class, and disability and that offer all students access to a rich and challenging curriculum. In practice, however, teachers often struggle with the…

In an era of reductionist approaches to teaching and assessment, this dissertation returns to the fundamental question: "What is the value of writing, particularly poetry writing, in our society today?" The poet's central task, to abstract reality through symbols, requires profound cognitive and emotional work (Vendler, 2004; Steele,…