ERIC Number: ED630303
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2022
Pages: 221
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: 979-8-3684-6389-6
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Administrators' Perceptions of Censorship and Policy-Making Practices in One School District
Sterba, Alison
ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Oklahoma State University
Little scholarship exists on administrators' perceptions of censorship in specific districts and schools. I studied secondary administrators' perceptions of censorship in one, Midwestern suburban school district and how their perceptions and experiences affect their policy-making practices. Grounded in an anti-censorship stance, I conducted a critical qualitative case study with an action research orientation. My data sets include district documents, school board meeting observations, curriculum meeting observations, and interviews with nine secondary site and district-level administrators. I initially sought to make a change in administrators' censorship practices in this district but shifted to analyzing their complexity based on the study data. I used concepts from historian and philosopher Michel Foucault to analyze how and why censorship occurs in this school district based on the data I collected. This study provided insights into how censorship decisions work on the ground in one school district, revealing how power relations (Foucault, 1977) in one community influence how administrators manage their roles and decisions. In this school district, community members expect to be involved in school decisions leading administrators to inform and manage parents' concerns as part of their role. In censorship, administrators' awareness of parental surveillance of their actions leads to navigating mainly a subsect of parents who are vocal in their concerns about curriculum and policies. Some negotiations involve curricular decisions that censor the information students can access. Administrators also manage teachers as part of their role to lesser degrees and in different ways than community members. Although I discuss three significant stakeholders which administrators described as part of the community discourse, parents, teachers, and students, I noted that students are not invited to participate in curricular decisions to the extent that parents are. Secondly, on a holistic scale, the study renders discussions about censorship in schools more complex by illuminating how, through a Foucauldian lens, administrators are only one force involved in censorship decisions. Community expectations and perceived threats can dictate administrative decisions. Also, surveillance mechanisms in schools, such as the censorship of online and print materials, deny students access to information that can enhance critical thinking. Rather than focusing on one role, administrators, a holistic perspective of power relations reveals that all members of the community, both the vocal minority and the silent majority, are part of the censorship decisions in the district. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
Descriptors: Administrators, Secondary Education, Administrator Attitudes, Censorship, Policy Formation, School Districts, Educational Policy, Power Structure, Access to Information
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Publication Type: Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A