Solid and resilient democracies rest upon an informed citizenry capable of critiquing societal issues and reimagining alternative scenarios. Traditional school-based civic and social justice education, however, often falls short of addressing the diverse needs of today's youth, often relying on instructionist pedagogies focused on factual…

Several scholars argue that higher education should play a central role in facilitating the development of interculturally competent, global citizens who participate actively and constructively in our interconnected world (e.g., Davies & Pike, 2009). However, little is known about if or how we are facilitating global citizenship development…

As today's youth is growing up in societies made more complicated by globalization, the argument grows for expanding the discussion about citizenship education. In increasingly multicultural and interconnected societies, young people are developing new civic attitudes as well as "attachments and identifications" as citizens within three…

In the current political climate, where many politicians in both Europe and United States have proclaimed that multi-cultural education has failed as an educational paradigm, there is a growing fear that the very idea of a democratic, multicultural society is untenable over time. In this dissertation, I explore three responses to the question of…

The purpose of this study was to determine if a Structured Online Intercultural Learning (SOIL) experience represented a viable form of global experiential learning (GEL) that can yield beneficial effects in student transformation of the kind that are reported to result from "traditional" GEL (involving mobility). Specifically, this…

Ecopedagogy is defined in this research as transformative environmental education which critically and dialectically deconstructs how social conflicts and environmental (socio-environmental) devastation are connected. Understanding these connections is necessary because environmental destructive actions are inherently political--benefiting some…

Today's preservice teachers must be well prepared to provide elementary social studies methods instruction to students. The United States and its democracy are constantly evolving and in continuous need of citizens who can adapt its enduring traditions and values to meet these changes. However, with the increased emphasis on raising test scores…

America's adult populace has failed to keep pace with the rapid inundation of science-centric advancements affecting nearly every facet of personal and public life. With deficiencies in areas of science knowledge, America's adult populace is characterized as civic science illiterate. This research constructed and employed the renewed citizen…

Although higher education institutions in the United States have long claimed to teach for civic purposes, only recently have explicit goals related to the development of civic capacity and engagement been included in college and university curricula. The purpose of the study was to advance theoretical and practical understanding of the role of…

This dissertation was undertaken to examine the effect(s) of charter school marketing on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) education landscape with respect to the stratification of charter schools. Information from four sources: school websites, a survey of charter school parents, existing online statistics and data, and various…

This dissertation examines the construction of the label Muslim as an emerging racial and political signifier. I explore how students who identify as Muslim understand their own racial and religious construction, as well as their own subjectivity within the American social, political and cultural landscape. This dissertation asks: (1) How do…

This descriptive study re-examines the graduate education of doctoral students in rhetoric and composition in light of the field's civic tradition. This project explores the current preparation of rhetoric and composition students in Ph.D. programs and then focuses primarily on how doctoral programs are preparing aspiring new faculty members to…

The purpose of the present research was to (a) develop a culturally-universal measure of implicit citizenship performance theories and (b) examine cross-cultural differences in the construct. The final measure consisted of four factors--Discourtesy, Interpersonal Harmony, Conscientiousness, and Initiative. Cross-country comparisons using the new…

Debates about nationality and identity have particular relevance for multicultural nations such as Singapore and the United States where recent trends in immigration and an increasing multiplicity of identities problematize the notion of citizenship. Given that a nation's schools are where the dominant discourse of nation identity and history are…

The relationships between a multidimensional model of school community and civic engagement were examined using survey data collected for the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study from large, nationally representative samples of adolescents in Australia and the United States. This study extends previous research by considering the extent to which…