In the United States' technologically advanced society, high school students should be educated in life skills to help them understand the context and impacts of decision-making that will assist and develop a more effective transition to young adulthood. Life skills have been largely defined as skills and abilities that improve behavior, critical…

Public schools, and education in general, were founded on the principles of preparing young people to participate in civic life as active and informed citizens. Yet, civic competency scores are consistently low and demonstrate that students are not prepared for the civic engagement required of them when they leave school. The purpose of this…

The current study examines the relationship between suspensions and attendance rates concerning the school environment of four whole-child and Traditional public schools. The concerns were the disparity of social-emotional skill outcomes needed to develop the whole child. As American educational policy is aimed at Preparing students for competing…

Citizenship education is the bedrock for the (re)making of future adult citizens in mono and multicultural democratic nations, and social studies is typically and optimally the premier discipline that primes students for engaged citizenry. Anti-immigrant sentiments towards fourth wave immigrants and the nearly absent research on and training for…

I set out to understand the teaching and learning of immigration in social studies classrooms through a comparative case study of four veteran public school teachers and their students in a single district located in a post-industrial city in the upper Midwest. I hoped to better to understand the content that teachers addressed, the pedagogy and…

This dissertation study investigated how immigrant youth attending two different high schools for late-arrival immigrants in New York City constructed civic belonging by attending to their everyday enactments of citizenship across the contexts of school, neighborhood and home. Civic belonging refers to the embodied social practices by which…

The study examined the reading and character growth of elementary school students (n = 2144) in urban public charter school classrooms (n = 88), focusing on the relationship between the students' growth and a character-focused lesson. Reading growth, as measured by in-classroom reading assessments, and character growth, as measured by self- and…

This constructivist study investigates and captures the lived experiences of three social studies educators as they make sense of civic education in a climate of high stakes testing and accountability. In spite of the deterioration of civic education over the years (Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, 2011), Florida was among the first…

This dissertation examines state-level efforts to mandate the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, especially following 9/11. Despite longstanding Supreme Court precedent declaring mandatory flag salutes unconstitutional, various state legislatures sought to institute or strengthen pledge mandates irrespective of students' civil liberties.…

In an interdisciplinary, hermeneutical study using primary and secondary documents from history, philosophy, political theory, and critical pedagogy, the dissertation focuses on dialogue, friendship, and citizenship. The philosophical foundations of friendship in the works of Epicurus and Ralph Waldo Emerson are discussed. Included in the study is…

This study examined the relationship between servant leadership of the principal with Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and school climate. Servant leadership, a leadership behavior that emphasizes personal growth of followers, has a useful research history in business but limited exposure in public schools. Organizational Citizenship…

The nationwide focus on standardized testing, as outlined in the No Child Left Behind Legislation (NCLB, 2003), has prompted many public schools to focus their instruction on preparing students for high-stakes tests in literacy, math and science. While NCLB may be lauded for its intent to ameliorate achievement inequities among subgroups of…

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the use of Character Education in South Carolina's public high schools. Every high school in South Carolina is given a yearly survey from the South Carolina Department of Education that deals with both character education and violence in the school. This quantitative study used public accessed data,…

An emergent research base suggests that teacher perceptions of fairness with respect to interactions with school administrators, decision-making processes, and decision outcomes have much to contribute to our understanding of effective schools. This study focused on the relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship…

For several decades, researchers have searched for school-level properties that can overcome the negative consequences of student SES on school effectiveness. Two promising constructs that have been identified are collective teacher efficacy (CE) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This study examined the relationship between these two…