As Western schooling continues to expand and reach remote communities, it is imperative to understand rural parents' beliefs about formal education and the ways in which they can support their children's schooling. Sociodemographic changes in rural communities have been connected to shifts in parents' cultural values and practices (Greenfield,…

This dissertation is a qualitative study that analyzes diverse views on the popularity of Educational Graphic Novels (EGNs) in Korea and children's use of this medium. In order to elicit voices of children who are the main readers of EGNs, in-depth focus group interviews were conducted with fourteen Korean children ages seven to eleven. Interviews…

This case examines the reading and identity practices of three highly literate adolescent boys from an elite all-boys school in Singapore, focusing on how they constructed their identities as global and local citizens through their reading practices. There have not been any studies examining the reading and identity practices of adolescent boys…

This study used archival data to explore the impact of the rural village library and other factors on the academic achievement of secondary school students in the Ugandan village of Kitengesa, and related these findings to rural library development currently taking place in Uganda and other African countries such as Burkina Faso and Ghana. A…

This dissertation focuses on a key challenge facing developing countries intent on enhancing their human capital base--namely, the issue of quality. One of the chapters evaluates the effectiveness of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative in Nepal's primary and lower-secondary schools. Although the OLPC program is being heavily promoted in…