Michael Apple's scholarship on curriculum, educational ideology, and official knowledge continues to be influential to the study of schooling. Drawing on the sociological insights of Pierre Bourdieu and the cultural studies approaches of Raymond Williams, Apple articulates a theory of schooling that pays particular attention to how official knowledge is…
Michael Apple's scholarship on curriculum, educational ideology, and official knowledge continues to be influential to the study of schooling. Drawing on the sociological insights of Pierre Bourdieu and the cultural studies approaches of Raymond Williams, Apple articulates a theory of schooling that pays particular attention to how official knowledge is incorporated into the processes of schooling, including textbooks. In an effort to contribute to Apple's scholarship on textbooks, this study analyzed high school American history textbooks from the 1960s through the 2000s with specific attention to the urban riots of the late-1960s, sixties counterculture, and the women's movement utilizing Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic concept of abjection to augment Apple's theory of knowledge incorporation. This combination reveals not only how select knowledge is incorporated as official knowledge, but also how knowledge is treated as abject, as unfit for the curricular body of official knowledge and the selective tradition of American history. To bridge the theoretical frameworks of incorporation and abjection Raymond Williams' theory of structures of feeling and Slavoj iek's theory of ideological quilting are employed to show how feelings and emotional investments maintain ideologies. The theoretical framework developed and the interpretive analyses undertaken demonstrate how textbook depictions of these historical events structure students' present educational experiences with race, class, and gender.
This thesis aimed to create a curriculum for college students to increase their health insurance literacy and to evaluate the impact of the curriculum on participants' confidence. The curriculum for college students consisted of pre-recorded presentation slides covering six health insurance topics, pre- and post-tests, and evaluation questions. Canvas was…
This thesis aimed to create a curriculum for college students to increase their health insurance literacy and to evaluate the impact of the curriculum on participants' confidence. The curriculum for college students consisted of pre-recorded presentation slides covering six health insurance topics, pre- and post-tests, and evaluation questions. Canvas was used to house the curriculum. At the time of evaluation, a total of 12 participants had completed all aspects of the curriculum. The curriculum was evaluated through questions provided at the end of each module. It was found that participants felt the curriculum to be clear and helpful. Moreover, participants reported an increase in confidence, decreased confusion, and were interested in learning more about health insurance such as enrollment. Both the creation of a curriculum and the impact on participants' confidence was successful. At a later point in time, an analysis of the pre- and post-tests will be assessed to determine if the curriculum was effective at increasing health insurance literacy.
In this dissertation I attempt to find elements of education and curricular perspective in the Qur'an. I argue that there is little research in the field of curriculum instruction that discusses the Qur'an's educational aspects and, as a result, much ignorance of the Qur'an's material that deals with education and…
In this dissertation I attempt to find elements of education and curricular perspective in the Qur'an. I argue that there is little research in the field of curriculum instruction that discusses the Qur'an's educational aspects and, as a result, much ignorance of the Qur'an's material that deals with education and curricular perspective in the Qur'an. Researchers may find many materials that deal with reading, memorizing, and reciting the Qur'an, along with references that deal with science and math in the Qur'an. Therefore, this dissertation answers the question: What curriculum exists within the Quran? This dissertation is divided into five chapters exploring various aspects of the curriculum. The word "curriculum" is used in one chapter to mean developing the person as a whole in all aspects of life whether spiritual, social, or mental while in the other chapter curriculum is used to refer to methods of instruction. I concluded that curriculum in the Qur'an uses different methods of instructions to develop the individual as a whole in all aspects of life while granting freedom of choice.
In this study, the Arizona State University Mathematics and Science Teaching Fellows 2010 program was analyzed qualitatively from start to finish to determine the impact of the research experience on teachers in the classroom. The sample for the study was the 2010 cohort of eight high school science teachers. Erickson's…
In this study, the Arizona State University Mathematics and Science Teaching Fellows 2010 program was analyzed qualitatively from start to finish to determine the impact of the research experience on teachers in the classroom. The sample for the study was the 2010 cohort of eight high school science teachers. Erickson's (1986) interpretive, participant observational fieldwork method was used to report data by means of detailed descriptions of the research experience and classroom implementation. Data was collected from teacher documents, interviews, and observations. The findings revealed various factors that were responsible for an ineffective implementation of the research experience in the classroom such as research experience, curriculum support, availability of resources, and school curriculum. Implications and recommendations for future programs are discussed in the study.
A growing number of jobs in the US require a college degree or technical education, and the wage difference between jobs requiring a high school diploma and a college education has increased to over $17,000 per year. Enrollment levels in postsecondary education have been rising for at least the past…
A growing number of jobs in the US require a college degree or technical education, and the wage difference between jobs requiring a high school diploma and a college education has increased to over $17,000 per year. Enrollment levels in postsecondary education have been rising for at least the past decade, and this paper attempts to tease out how much of the increasing enrollment is due to changes in the demand by companies for workers. A Bartik Instrument, which is a measure of local area labor demand, for each county in the US was constructed from 2007 to 2014, and using multivariate linear regression the effect of changing labor demand on local postsecondary education enrollment rates was examined. A small positive effect was found, but the effect size in relation to the total change in enrollment levels was diminutive. From the start to the end of the recession (2007 to 2010), Bartik Instrument calculated unemployment increased from 5.3% nationally to 8.2%. This level of labor demand contraction would lead to a 0.42% increase in enrollment between 2008 and 2011. The true enrollment increase over this period was 7.6%, so the model calculated 5.5% of the enrollment increase was based on the changes in labor demand.
This project created a teaching curriculum resource guide for using the popular series, The Hunger Games, in 6th-8th grade classrooms to introduce cultural issues such as child soldiers and international development to students. Studies have shown that literature can cultivate empathy and encourage youth to act. This combined with the…
This project created a teaching curriculum resource guide for using the popular series, The Hunger Games, in 6th-8th grade classrooms to introduce cultural issues such as child soldiers and international development to students. Studies have shown that literature can cultivate empathy and encourage youth to act. This combined with the expanding phenomenon of participatory culture and fandom activism as outlined by Henry Jenkins demonstrate the potential for youth to learn and act when given the opportunity and resources to do so. The curriculum is composed of three units: The first is a three-week reading of the books with various activities for students to really understand the narrative and source text. The second and third units address the issues of child soldiers and international development using The Hunger Games as a framework and a keystone to build connections so that these complex issues are accessible to youth. This project is a first step in the development of a curriculum that spans the full trilogy and covers a variety of current event topics.
DescriptionThis project largely focuses on the Latino population and how Hispanic parents should become more involved with their student's education in order to have them prosper in today's society.
This project covered different components to strengthen Model United Nations organizations, especially programs in Arizona itself. The lack of strong programs in Arizona can be attributed in many ways to a lack of resources, and this project's work aims to bolster programs by providing some resources. The written component contains…
This project covered different components to strengthen Model United Nations organizations, especially programs in Arizona itself. The lack of strong programs in Arizona can be attributed in many ways to a lack of resources, and this project's work aims to bolster programs by providing some resources. The written component contains a write-up of a 2013 High School Model United Nations Conference at Arizona State University; a write-up of a 2014 Middle School Model United Nations Conference at Arizona State University; a guide on how to run such a conference, focused at the high school level; a university-level curriculum that integrates a Model United Nations organization into a classroom setting, including assignments and; a grade school lesson plan with seven lessons that focuses on teaches students about international relations and global affairs while preparing them for a Model United Nations conference.
This paper describes a thesis project in which the author developed an eight-session, after-school curriculum to teach journalism basics to Desert Mountain High School's newspaper in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wolf's Print, the school's paper, moved to an after-school basis in the 2011-2012 school year as a result of budgetary constraints. The…
This paper describes a thesis project in which the author developed an eight-session, after-school curriculum to teach journalism basics to Desert Mountain High School's newspaper in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wolf's Print, the school's paper, moved to an after-school basis in the 2011-2012 school year as a result of budgetary constraints. The topics covered in these sessions ranged from the current state of journalism to learning more specific skills, such as news writing and copy editing. The paper begins with a discussion of the efficacy of after-school programs as a whole. Though these programs have been shown to benefit students, there are also challenges \u2014 most notably attendance and commitment on the part of students \u2014 to a club that is operated on a solely after-school basis. The paper ends with an evaluation of the program and several recommendations to strengthen after-school journalism programs. These recommendations include robust community involvement and teacher commitment to the club.
While women constitute a majority of the U.S. population, they still make up only a minority of political officeholders. Some of the literature in political ambition argues that one of the reasons for the dearth of women in elective office is that women are less socialized than men to…
While women constitute a majority of the U.S. population, they still make up only a minority of political officeholders. Some of the literature in political ambition argues that one of the reasons for the dearth of women in elective office is that women are less socialized than men to want to run for political office. The same literature suggests that such disparity can be traced back to high school. This exploratory paper examines the possibility that the disparity may be due, at least in part, to the different ways in which men and women are represented in civics textbooks. Specifically, because some works already suggest that women are less represented than men in civics textbooks, this work examines whether there are any differences between the way that regular and AP civics textbooks represent men and women. This was done using content analysis on AP and regular textbooks from three schools each from different districts in the state of Arizona. The findings from the content analyses were consistent with the first three hypotheses: that (1) the AP civics textbooks have a higher percentage of women than do the regular civics textbooks, (2) the AP civics textbooks devote a higher percentage of pages to women’s names than do the regular civic textbooks, and that (3) that both the AP and regular civics textbooks discuss women and men with a neutral tone. However, findings were not consistent with the fourth hypothesis, (4) that there will be more female role models among the top mentioned women in AP textbooks than there will be role models among the top mentioned women in regular textbooks. The manifest content analysis revealed that the percent of women mentioned in the AP textbooks sampled was 2.8 to 3 times higher than that of regular textbooks. That ratio increased to 4 to 4.5 times when the percent of pages mentioning women were taken into account. The latent content analysis, which assessed the tone of each sentence, revealed that men and women were generally treated neutrally when compared with one another in all of the textbooks studied—thus strengthening the substantive significance of the aforementioned ratios. Further analyses conducted for Hypothesis 4, however, revealed that in the regular and AP textbooks studied, female role models were mentioned both less often and less strongly than were male role models.