Let's congratulate the following six Ed.D students of their graduation in May 2016!

1. Szu Yang Chu

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Dissertation: "Locating Elementary Teachers' Professional Communities in a Structured Collaboration Environment."

Abstract: This qualitative case study explored how teachers participated in collaborative work, the outcomes of collaboration, and supports and obstacles to productive collaboration in an elementary school that maintains an ideological and structural commitment to collaboration, where teachers collaborated through interdisciplinary teams towards the goal of producing a shared, integrated curriculum.  Through in-depth interviews and analysis of produced curriculum materials, the researcher sought to understand how teachers mutually engaged in collaboration and how they learned within the context of a professional community.  The study found that collaboration was constant amongst elementary teachers and lines between formal and informal collaboration were blurred.  Further, collaborative exchanges were not sporadic and disconnected; rather, teachers engaged in networks of interactions that were formal and informal, authentic and contrived, and productive and unproductive to varying degrees.

2. Shenila Khoja-Moolji 

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Dissertation: "The making of educated female MUSLIM subjects in colonial india and postcolonial PAKISTAN (1857-2015)."

Abstract: Girls’ schooling is often presented today as a panacea for wide-ranging societal problems from poverty to terrorism, especially in relation to the global South. In these discourses, the figure of the ‘Muslim girl’ looms large. She appears as a silent victim who needs education so that she can be saved from local customs, Islam, and failed states. This study seeks to de-stabilize these naturalized assumptions about Muslim women and girls by historicizing and politicizing calls for women’s education in South Asia. It focuses on three moments: turn of the twentieth century colonial India, the first decade after the establishment of Pakistan, and contemporary postcolonial Pakistan, to examine the social conditions that have given rise to calls for women and girls’ education, the types of knowledges considered appropriate for women and girls, and the corresponding educated female subjects that were/are imagined. The study reveals how calls for reforming women and girls through education are not just about that – they are also about redefining respectability, forging a homogenous nation, and producing neoliberal citizens. Imaginations around what constitutes an educated female subject, thus, change as the discursive networks change.This entanglement of education with practices of power introduces specific forms of populational- and self-governance. However, this governance is never complete – Muslim women and girls of the past and present have and continue torigorously critique their subjection. This study contributes to academic inquiry within the fields of education and gender studies that interrogate the increasing focus on education as the solution to societal problems and excavate women’s voices to disrupt present-day certainties.  

3. Yasmin Morales-Alexander

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Dissertation: "Mexican immigrant mothers in a New York City neighborhood: reconceptualizing family engagement from a sociocultural perspective."

Abstract: The purpose of this grounded theory study was to understand, within the context of a sociocultural theory and funds of knowledge conceptual framework, the family engagement practices of six Mexican immigrant families whose child(ren) were enrolled in a local Head Start program in a New York City neighborhood. Data analysis of 20 in-depth interviews evoked a proposed theory which I identified as the theory of Family Engagement and Cultural Accommodation.This proposed theory asserts that the Mexican immigrant families of this study were wholly engaged in their young children’s development and that they relied on their “cultural knowledge” to understand and enact their family engagement practices. Moreover, as they engaged with their children and their children’s schools, their “cultural knowledge” expanded, creating an “additive” effect to their existing cultural frameworks. Based on the subject families’ conceptualization and enactment of their family engagement practices, this study offers specific recommendations regarding (a) the cultural accommodation process of immigrant families, (b) the cultural competence of preservice teachers, and (c) preservice teacher education programs. Having a better understanding of how and why Mexican immigrant families did what they did in the context of their children’s development has the potential for providing us with insight that can inform our practice and future research in early childhood education.

4. Megan Lawless

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Dissertation: “Professional Development for University-based Student Teaching Supervisors in New York Elementary Preservice Teacher Education Programs”

Abstract: As educators, scholars, and policy makers call for teacher education programs to prepare preservice teachers in “clinically rich” programs, and as research articulates more about the potentially vital role and work of university-based student teaching supervisors within preservice teacher education, more research is needed about how teacher education programs are providing initial preparation for the role of supervisor within their programs and how they are supporting supervisors’ ongoing development. My three-phase mixed methods study utilized survey and interview data from coordinators and supervisors connected with elementary preservice teacher education programs across New York State to: (1)  “map” the landscape of the professional development practices employed for supervisors (i.e., supervisors for whom the professional development was intended, practices reportedly in use, participants’ views on the practices, reported constraints in providing professional development; and, thoughts on additional professional development); and (2) depict “instructive practices” (i.e., those that participants deem contributive to supervisor learning and professional development). Overall, the findings suggest more professional development opportunities are available than much of the literature and common perception indicate. A few central characteristics of professional development deemed particularly instructive or contributive were also identified.

5. Deborah Anderson

6. Vasiliki Stavropoulos

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Dissertation: “How the student teacher and cooperating teacher relationship influences pre-service students’ thinking and attitudes during the student teaching process”

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to take a closer look at student teacher dispositions and how they are shaped and transformed throughout the student teaching experience, while specifically taking into account the relationship between student teachers and cooperating teachers. The student teaching experience is the culminating opportunity for student teachers to have a chance to work intimately with a seasoned cooperating teacher to practice teaching. The student teaching experience is one of the most influential pieces of teacher preparation. With this in mind, I studied how the relationship between the student teacher and cooperating teacher shaped the student teacher’s attitudes and dispositions towards teaching.The critical and formative experiences described by the participants informed, reaffirmed, and transformed the opinions they held about the technical piece of teaching as well as the personal relationship between the student teacher and cooperating teacher as they entered the classroom for their first student teaching experience. The participants’ beliefs about teacher attitudes and dispositions were challenged as they began to develop, question, and affirm their beliefs about teacher attitudes and dispositions.

Published Sunday, May. 15, 2016