College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Perspectives on Power Structures in U.S.-Funded Foreign Aid(2024) Bloom, Heidi Nicole; Lin, Jing; Ginsburg, Mark; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research explores U.S.-funded foreign aid policies and practices from the perspectives of foreign aid professionals, focusing on their views regarding the impact of neocolonialism, obstacles in decolonizing the sector, and power dynamics within crucial aspects of foreign aid practices. Historically, U.S.-funded foreign aid has prioritized national interests, reflected colonial dynamics, and perpetuated neocolonial legacies. Using a decolonial lens as its conceptual framework, the study examines the discursive construction of meanings and relationships within the foreign aid sector. Through a mixed-methods approach involving 91 survey responses, 15 interviews, and post-interview questionnaires conducted one year later, the research gathers diverse perspectives across various foreign aid sectors. The findings underscore neocolonial practices, stressing the importance of local consultation in program design and highlighting challenges in funding allocation and political imperatives. While positive shifts prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement suggest progress toward power redistribution and diversity initiatives, skepticism remains about their depth. The study concludes with a systems approach, advocating for interventions at individual, organizational, and governmental levels to disrupt neocolonial practices, promote anti-racism, empower local counterparts, and reform policies. This comprehensive approach aims to enhance equity and effectiveness in the foreign aid ecosystem through self-reflection and critical analysis from the perspectives of foreign aid professionals.Item PAST AS PROLOGUE TO PEACE IN POST-GENOCIDE CAMBODIA: A STUDY OF MEMORY CONSTRUCTION AND MEMORY EDUCATION BY THE EXTRAORDINARY CHAMBERS IN THE COURTS OF CAMBODIA AND CAMBODIAN CIVIL SOCIETY(2022) Rappeport, Annie; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Genocides demonstrate the worst of humanity manifest and created difficult pasts for future generations to contend with. What societies choose to remember is one of the most crucial choices made in the aftermath of mass atrocities. Looking to the Khmer Rouge regime and genocide from 1975-1979, the role of transitional justice and civil society is pioneering new ways to educate and remember the genocidal past. Recently, memory and education relation to memory have been an emphasized part of transitional justice processes including prioritization set by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) which was established in 2003 after much negotiation. The hybrid tribunal allocated significant funding and staffing towards outreach, education and survivor participation opportunities as a means to address and contend with the Khmer Rouge genocide. The following study centers the experiences of those on the frontlines of the work being done at the intersections of transitional justice (ECCC), civil society and education. The research features 25 in-depth interviews with key informants combined with a complementary document analysis. The key informants represent leaders in Cambodian scholarship, the tribunal process, education, NGO and civil society memory and peace work. The findings show many relevant lessons learned in relation to outreach programs, victim-centered transitional justice, culturally competent modes of reconciliation and education, participant centered archiving, the benefits of using performing arts and the function of moral and symbolic reparations in the Cambodian context. Keywords: Cambodia, Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Peace Studies, Memory Studies, Genocide, Peace Education, Civil SocietyItem The racial grammar of South-South cooperation: Vietnamese development experts in Mozambique(2022) Le, Hang Minh; Klees, Steven J.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In recent years, mounting criticisms of international development aid to education have led many policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to look to South-South cooperation (SSC) as an alternative. This study problematizes the current fascination with SSC through a critical narrative inquiry of six Vietnamese education and health development specialists in Mozambique. Since the 1980s, hundreds of Vietnamese teachers, policymakers, and education experts have been sent to Mozambique to support educational policy and practice, rooted in the spirit of Third World socialist solidarity. Yet these Vietnamese development experts have been largely invisible in normative accounts of international development and education aid. This study examines whether and how the Vietnamese-Mozambican program of expert cooperation recognizes, reproduces, and/or resists the typical racial hierarchies in international development, and whether their experience suggests more ethical forms of engaging in international aid and cooperation. On the one hand, as a bilateral governmental exchange, the Vietnamese-Mozambican case of SSC has a more balanced structure that is significantly different from traditional Western aid, and the Vietnamese experts enter the field with complex motivations focusing on themselves and their families rather than on the need to help strangers abroad. On the other hand, the experts’ stories reveal how this is also an Asian-Black encounter underwritten by the global racial grammar of development which continues to govern who can count as developed and who continue to be the ‘backward Other’. Through centering issues of racialization and racism in education and international development, with an explicit focus on de-romanticizing SSC, this study provides an important contribution to our understanding of international education development policy and practice as well as attempts to strive for a better world.Item The Pinkaiti Partnership: A Case Study of Transnational Research and Education in the Brazilian Amazon(2021) Aruch, Matthew; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1991, Barbara Zimmerman visited the Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó community of A’Ukre. A’Ukre and Zimmerman came up with an idea to create the Pinkaiti Ecological Research Station (Pinkaiti) within the federally demarcated Kayapó Indigenous Territories in Brazil’s Pará state. Pinkaiti was conceptualized to: (1) preserve Kayapó forests; (2) strengthen Kayapó culture; (3) create an economic alternative to regional mahogany logging; (4) initiate a tropical ecology research program; and (5) strengthen Kayapó transnational networks. After leaving A’Ukre, Zimmerman recruited Conservation International, an international environmental nongovernmental organization (NGO) as an institutional partner. The “Pinkaiti Partnership” has since evolved into a research and education-based multi-stakeholder partnership that includes a transnational network of community, NGO, university, and government actors. Over time, the partnership moved through four eras of activity: initiation (1991-1995); early research (1995-2000); international research (2000-2004); and the field course (2004 – present). Using an embedded comparative case study methodology, this dissertation unpacks the trajectory of stakeholder groups (A’Ukre community, NGOs, universities) as units of analysis to discuss the structure, process, and outcomes of partnership activities across partnership eras. To analyze partnership dynamics, I use Pinkaiti as a boundary object to trace Pinkaiti partner interactions across horizontal, vertical, and transversal axes. As a boundary object, Pinkaiti takes on multiple meanings and forms, depending on its use and context, as it is activated simultaneously or independently by one or more partnership actors. Partnership actors engage one another by navigating cultural, geographic, institution, or knowledge passage points. By tracing each actor group’s trajectory through the lens of Pinkaiti, the study illustrates how boundary objects both permit and restrict transnational collaboration. At the same time, the study reveals both the opportunities and limits of boundary objects as a conceptual tool. Boundary objects can be useful for tracking histories, clarifying the big picture, highlighting feedback loops, and illuminating invisible work. On the other hand, the Pinkaiti study shows that boundary objects can be limited in scope, reflect designer biases, and reinforce unequal power dynamics. Still, the Pinkaiti Partnership suggests important takeaways for actors interested in the design, implementation, or evaluation of education or research-based transnational partnership work.Item Embargoed Exchange: A Critical Case Study of Study Abroad Programming Between the United States and Cuba(2018) Woodman, Taylor C.; Klees, Steven J; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Internationalization continues to remain a central focus within the U.S. university environment. Internationalization motives are under question as neoliberal policies continue to limit sustained, long-term state funding for public universities and undermine the academic mission of these universities. Universities are leveraging internationalization practices, like study abroad programming, in response to the pressures of neoliberalism. Using both an academic capitalist and post-colonial lens, this dissertation seeks to understand how study abroad programming, specifically in non-traditional locations (viz., Cuba), operates within and is shaped by political and economic contexts. In this study, qualitative case study methods were used to critically examine study abroad programming between the United States and Cuba before, during and after the Obama Administration’s announcement changing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba on December 17, 2014. The perspectives of 12 of the main actors in the field, including educational administrators and faculty from U.S universities, Cuban universities, and study abroad program providers, were captured to provide a more comprehensive view of U.S. study abroad implementation in Cuba. The findings illustrate four key aspects of the political and economic context that significantly impact study abroad programming. First, the U.S. blockade (embargo) on Cuba is shown to hinder academic operation and impede international relationship building. Additionally, the neoliberal and neo-colonial university environment in which study abroad programming is situated leads to the reproduction of colonial dynamics and amplifies inequities and power dynamics within North-South study abroad programs. Yet, in the face of neoliberal and neo-colonial pressures, solidarity building emerged as a key area for resistance within these programs. Thus, two opposing approaches, market-based and solidarity building, are dictating how study abroad programming is developed and implemented. The tensions between these approaches provide insight into the liminal space within which educational administrators and faculty develop and facilitate study abroad programming. Therefore, this dissertation critically analyzes the political and economic environment in which study abroad operates to determine implications for internationalization practice and policy in an effort to guide the future international dimensions of the university.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 PERCEPTIONS OF GLOBAL MINDEDNESS IN THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE MIDDLE YEARS PROGRAMME: THE RELATIONSHIP TO STUDENT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND TEACHER CHARACTERISTICS(2014) Lope, Marjorie Dana; Klees, Steve; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate student perceptions of global mindedness between students who participate in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (MYP) compared to students who do not participate in the MYP or who are new to the MYP in the 9th grade. The study further analyzes the relationship between these students' perceptions of global mindedness and academic performance and course enrollment. It also explores teacher perceptions of global mindedness and relates the findings to specific teacher characteristics. There are mixed findings on student acquisition of global mindedness when comparing MYP students to non-MYP students suggesting that student development of global mindedness could evolve over time and is not significantly impacted by one experience, as previous research also suggests. Teacher and student understanding of global mindedness in the MYP could be underdeveloped and focused on global centrism and cultural pluralism. Findings from this research suggest that students participating in the MYP score highest on the global mindedness subscales of global centrism and cultural pluralism. The MYP could unintentionally be more explicitly focused on academics compared to explicitly teaching, learning, and assessing global mindedness because there was a significant relationship between participation in the MYP and academic performance and course enrollment over time. There are specific teacher characteristics that predict global mindedness and vice versa and these findings are aligned with previous research. The participant sample was from one school district and the survey was done at one point in time, which created certain limitations. The mixed findings of this exploration suggest that more research is needed to better understand the relevance and development of global mindedness on student and teacher perceptions in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.