Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759
Browse
6 results
Search Results
Item SQUARING THEIR ROOTS: LEADERSHIP PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF SOME U.S.-TRAINED AFRICAN PROFESSIONALS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR(2010) Dant, William Patrick; Herschbach, Dennis; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This qualitative study looks at the leadership perceptions and practices of career professionals in the public sector across three countries of sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana and Madagascar). All participants were alumni of the Humphrey Fellowship program, a year-long mid-career fellowship in the United States for professional development and leadership. The study sought to understand the participants' perceptions of leadership and how they apply it in their professional practice. The research questions were How do U.S.-trained Africans perceive the relevance of their U.S. leadership training in their home-country practice? To what extent can they incorporate U.S. leadership approaches into their leadership practice there? The literature review includes the history and current state of leadership research and theory, the field of intercultural communications and recent scholarship and program evaluations on leadership and leadership training across cultures. Noteworthy are the lack of recent scholarship on public sector leadership in Africa and the transference of western-developed models in most international training. Data collection consisted of in-depth interviews with 16 primary research participants who were mid- to upper-level career professionals in their respective countries' public service. Additional related data were gathered from participants' fellowship documents; data gathered from primary participants were reviewed with focus groups including primary and secondary participants. Data analysis followed a grounded theory method, allowing themes to emerge directly from the data collected. Findings were compared across participants within and across research sites considering professional sector, gender, cultural and educational background and political/economic contexts. The substantive grounded theories emerging from the study identified as the central theme the importance of "operating space" as an environment around individual capacity to exercise leadership practices, and its interaction with issues of culture. Results reflected the importance of the macro-context and levels of democratization within which participants operate on the micro-context of their own professional leadership practice. The study recommends that future research on leadership in Africa pay more attention to the importance of macro-context and culture in developing leadership capacity in such individuals, and recommends specific approaches for enhancing leadership training for individuals from such backgrounds, including peer mentoring, case study and experiential exercises.Item Attending to Stories of High School Displacement: The Lived High School Experience of GED® College Graduates(2009) Snyder, Mary Grace Catherine; Hultgren, Francine H; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry is called by the question, "What is the lived high school experience of GED college graduates?" GED college graduates are people who have dropped out of high school, used the GED Tests to earn their jurisdiction's high school diploma, then graduated from a four-year institution. If these individuals have the intellectual acumen and personal commitment to earn a bachelor's degree, then why did they drop out of high school? Conversations with seven GED college graduates uncover the displacement that drove them out of a traditional high school program. The hermeneutic phenomenological methodology is grounded in the philosophical work of Heidegger, especially as developed by Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, which elicits an awareness of our embodied being's struggle to embrace Being and the moral necessity of responding to that presence. Van Manen's work guides the "doing" of this philosophy as human science research in education. The stories of the lived high school experiences of the seven GED college graduates reveal the disquiet of their displacement. They each felt that they did not fit the mold that high school wanted: they felt they were different, outcasts, not part of the "in crowd." They felt the inequitable treatment and bodily discomfort caused by this difference. They report only a nominal, caring presence at school, and this disregard further alienated them. School was disappointed in their lack of commitment and enthusiasm for traditional coursework, and the students, in turn, were disappointed that school cared so little for their needs. Dropping out protected them from the pain of further displacement. Attending to these stories of displacement may help educators imagine a different way of creating high school. Smaller high schools might make each student a more significant part of the student body, better known to teachers, and more likely to feel implaced. Additionally, alternate programs might allow students to deviate from the traditional K-12 timeline into work experiences, to follow compelling interests, or to gather into community around similar questions about their world. Teacher preparation programs that offer multiple visions for high school could be instrumental in making such change a reality.Item Community and Educational Opportunity in the US: The Relative Utility of Technology and Digital Literacy in a Transcultural Community(2008-11-21) Pruitt-Mentle, Davina; Finkelstein, Barbara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This ethnobiographic study explores the ways in which five low income transmigrants living in an urban Mid-Atlantic transcultural community made use of technology and digital literacy. Specifically, the study focuses on the ways in which participants defined the purpose, importance, and utility of technology and digital literacy in their lives. The stories reveal complex and often heroic efforts to become digitally literate and apply technological learning to their obligations as parents, breadwinners, and community participants in widely dispersed social networks that cross family, community, and national boundaries. Their stories reveal: 1) the desire for digital literacy to participate in our modern society; 2) limitations in concepts of access and equity as currently conceived in scholarly literature; 3) trust as a key component of successful programs; and 4) the importance of technology in sustaining transcultural networks. The voices of the participants reveal that immigrants recognize the need for technology training, not only for jobs, but also to aid and enhance their everyday life. They shared the need for training to include: basic classroom skills instruction for children; learning opportunities for adults; programs that include authentic tasks and design features that consider cost, time and day of the week, location, language options, and word of mouth confirmation regarding the quality of content and trust in instructors and training location. Their search for safety extends to protecting their personal information and children by acquiring cyber safety and security knowledge. This study adds to transcultural scholarly work, and also expands both digital divide and digital inequity literature that only rarely focuses on the relationship between participants and transcultural community constructs. Increasingly, computer based forms of communication are taking the place of letters, telephone and travel to maintain and expand ties to family and friends dispersed throughout the globe. Technology becomes a way to support their transmigrant identities and strengthen the networks of friends and family used to identify places to live and work. Rather than creating a homogeneous global society, technology may actually serve to strengthen national identities across borders.Item Examining the Status of Equity in Undergraduate Enrollments for Black, Latino and Low-Income Students at Public Four-Year Universities and Flagship Campuses(2007-11-27) Gerald, Danette Stacie; Milem, Jeffrey F.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study extends prior research (e.g., Bensimon, Hao & Bustillos, 2006; Perna, et al., 2006) that has examined postsecondary access and equity in enrollments for underrepresented student groups. Descriptive statistics are used to examine the status of equity in undergraduate enrollments for Black, Latino and low-income students, as well as trends in the status of equity for these groups from 1994 to 2004, at public flagship campuses and at other public four-year universities. Multivariate regression analyses are used to test the study's conceptual model which explores whether a relationship exists between variables shaped by human capital and institutional isomorphism, and institutions' equity indices. This study advances understandings of the degree to which the public four-year sector is adequately enrolling students from underrepresented groups, the relationship between institutions' flagship status and the enrollment equity indices for various groups of, the relationship between the pursuit of prestige and equity in undergraduate enrollments, and how variables within institutions' purview of control are related to their enrollment equity indices. The study's findings suggest that Black, Latino and low-income students do not achieve equity in undergraduate enrollments at public four-year universities or flagship campuses in a majority of states. In most states, Black and low-income students are more likely to achieve equity at public four year universities than at flagships, while Latinos are more likely to achieve equity at flagship campuses than at other public four-year universities. Of all three student groups, however, low-income students are most likely to be underrepresented in undergraduate enrollments at both public four-year universities and flagship campuses. The descriptive analyses also show that, over a 10-year period, the enrollment equity indices for Black and Latino students have decreased at public four-year institutions and flagship campuses in a majority of states. Conversely, the enrollment equity indices for low-income students increased at public four-year and flagship universities in a majority of states during the same time period. However, despite the upward trend in the enrollment equity indices for low-income students, in 2004 this group achieved equity at public four-year universities in only five states and at the public flagship university in only one state. The results of the multivariate analyses suggest that a relationship exists between human capital and institutional isomorphism variables, and the enrollment equity indices for Black, Latino and low-income students. The analyses also reveal a statistically significant negative relationship between institutions' flagship status and their enrollment equity indices for Black and low-income students, but not for Latino students. The study's findings have implications for policy, practice and research. Specifically, the findings underscore the need to examine the status of equity within state-specific contexts, and to calculate separate equity indices for different institutional sectors. The study also identifies several directions for future research.Item THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A CASE STUDY OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS IN SENEGAL(2005-01-25) Nordtveit, Bjorn Harald; Klees, Steven J.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The World Bank and other international institutions often promote market-based solutions for implementation of public services. This research examines the set-up, implementation, and results of public-private partnerships and outsourcing, using a World-Bank funded literacy project for women in Senegal as a case study. The case is analyzed from a critical and welfare economics perspective, as well as from a neoliberal view, and shows how the analytical approach conditions the understanding of the project. The World Bank implements much of its development projects in the belief that the market is more cost-effective than government implementation. In this case, literacy education was not funded by the World Bank until the Senegalese state had formulated a project that fit the Bank's neoliberal policy vision. The requirement of private implementation strategies was a way to impose marked-based solutions that in the end proved to be unreasonable and ineffective. Analysis of enrollment, success and drop-out rates shows that the project enrolled approximately 180,000 learners, of which only about 44,000 learned to write and read. The literacy courses offered very cheap and very ineffective schooling (whereas the state-implemented primary school system offered much more expensive but also a somewhat more effective education). Literacy education offered in Senegal therefore appears to be poor education for the poorest of the citizens. The literacy providers offered low-quality literacy learning because they wanted to make money from the service delivery, and therefore cut costs. The government and the World Bank failed to correct these negative aspects of the public-private partnership system. The outsourcing affected civil society in Senegal. The project created and structured civil society by helping to establish women's associations in the villages. However, outsourcing also had a negative effect, since provider associations increasingly became businesses that were dependent on politicians, and corrupt practices multiplied. In order to improve literacy education in Senegal, it is necessary to acknowledge the inability of the market to solve literacy problems on its own, and to adopt a more balanced distribution of responsibilities between the public and the private sectors.Item Sailing Mid-life's Seas: The Journeys of Voyaging Women(2003-10-27) Schaefer, Barbara Anne; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and LeadershipABSTRACT Title of dissertation: SAILING MID-LIFE'S SEAS: THE JOURNEYS OF VOYAGING WOMEN Barbara A. Schaefer, Doctor of Philosophy, 2003 Dissertation directed by: Professor Francine H. Hultgren Department of Education Policy and Leadership The purpose of this study is to understand the meaning of mid-life women's everyday life as amplified by the experiences of those who have chosen to live on board sailboats. Significant themes are revealed through hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and developed using the powerful metaphor of the sea. Nine women took part in several in-depth conversations with the researcher about their experiences of sailing and living on board a sailboat. Their stories and reflective thoughts, coupled with literary and philosophic sources reveal the deeper meaning of the ordinary experiences of this extraordinary way of being in the world. Voiced by mid-life sailing women, the metaphor of the sea and the ways sailors navigate through "God fearing" forces provide the slate for the writing of this work's main themes The research opens us to a deeper understanding of this phenomenon in such themes as relationships with Nature, others, self and possessions; simplification of life; realization of total freedom; and the reconsideration of women's perceptions of time and place. Through the unique voice of sea women, the knowledge created from within these themes illuminates ways familiar patterns of existence can be opened up to yield new meaning. Through this research we come to know ways in which various educational venues of a lived life can serve as a forum for reshaping women's perspectives and supporting their personal growth. We learn that the mid-life woman's reconsidered images of self as revealed through her lived experience will reshape the ways she interacts in the world. This work is also a personal accounting of the lived experience of the researcher who went to sea in order to experience the life as described by the study's participants. Her voiced echoing of the themes identified by the women in the study brings their meaning to further depth. The lived themes resonate with new meaning as mid-life women come to a new way of thinking about fundamental issues which, in turn, makes them agents of change in a global community.