Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759
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Item TEACHING CITIZENSHIP & DEMOCRACY IN A NEW DEMOCRACY: PEDAGOGY, CURRICULUM & TEACHERS’ BELIEFS IN SOUTH AFRICA(2017) Fogle-Donmoyer, Amanda; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 2014, twenty years had passed since the first free elections, the birth of democracy and implementation of transitional educational reforms in South Africa. While efforts to create an education system based on human rights, democracy, equality, and unity were made, questions remain about how teachers should address these principles in their classrooms. It is difficult to determine, therefore, how citizenship and democracy education should be taught and how teachers perceive their role as educators of South Africa’s new generation of democratic citizens. Using Davies’ and Jansen’s concepts of post-conflict pedagogy, this dissertation investigates how teachers responsible for citizenship and democracy education in South Africa perceive the abstract topics of citizenship and democracy and how their beliefs, backgrounds, and life experiences influence how they present the national curriculum to their learners. In order to answer these questions, a multiple and comparative case study of sixteen teacher participants at three schools was carried out in Durban, South Africa. Using in-depth interviews, classroom observation, and document review as data collection methods, the dissertation investigates how teachers’ beliefs, the national curriculum and teaching methods intersected. Data analysis was conducted through thematic coding. Results suggest that teachers’ beliefs and experiences with democracy shape how they teach civic education topics, especially concerning their racial background and experiences during apartheid and the democratic transition. Inequalities in school resources also limit pedagogical choices, especially in methods designed to educate active and informed citizens.Item Promoting Citizenship in a Postcolonial Space: A Study of Teachers' Beliefs and Practices in Jamaica(2011) Williams, Dierdre Alicia; Klees, Steven J; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Evidence suggests that the values, attitudes and skills teachers emphasize in preparing students to participate as adult citizens in wider society are informed by the meanings teachers ascribe to citizenship and these meanings can in turn be traced to the contexts of teachers' lives. Given that teachers' practices are informed by their beliefs, these beliefs must first be understood. However, few studies have examined teachers' beliefs about citizenship or the underlying factors that inform those beliefs. This research examined the beliefs about citizenship espoused by a group of secondary teachers in the nation-state of Jamaica and the factors informing those beliefs. This qualitative case study utilized an analytic framework incorporating literature on conceptions of citizenship; and literature on teacher beliefs, including belief formation. The findings of the study highlight the ways in which the postcolonial context of Jamaica problematizes these teachers' understandings of citizenship and this in turn has implications for research and practice in the field of citizenship studies. The study illuminates the connections among: (i) teachers' beliefs about citizenship and about their students' needs, abilities, and life trajectories; (ii) teachers' lived experiences; and (iii) traditional race and class hierarchy in postcolonial Jamaican society.