2 resultados para Moral education (Early childhood)
em Duke University
Resumo:
*Designated as an exemplary master's project for 2015-16*
The American approach to disparities in educational achievement is deficit focused and based on false assumptions of equal educational opportunity and social mobility. The labels attached to children served by compensatory early childhood education programs have evolved, e.g., from “culturally deprived” into “at-risk” for school failure, yet remain rooted in deficit discourses and ideology. Drawing on multiple bodies of literature, this thesis analyzes the rhetoric of compensatory education as viewed through the conceptual lens of the deficit thinking paradigm, in which school failure is attributed to perceived genetic, cultural, or environmental deficiencies, rather than institutional and societal inequalities. With a focus on the evolution of deficit thinking, the thesis begins with late 19th century U.S. early childhood education as it set the stage for more than a century of compensatory education responses to the needs of children, inadequacies of immigrant and minority families, and threats to national security. Key educational research and publications on genetic-, cultural-, and environmental-deficits are aligned with trends in achievement gaps and compensatory education initiatives, beginning mid-20th century following the Brown vs Board declaration of 1954 and continuing to the present. This analysis then highlights patterns in the oppression, segregation, and disenfranchisement experienced by low-income and minority students, largely ignored within the mainstream compensatory education discourse. This thesis concludes with a heterodox analysis of how the deficit thinking paradigm is dependent on assumptions of equal educational opportunity and social mobility, which helps perpetuate the cycle of school failure amid larger social injustices.
Resumo:
In this dissertation, I explore the impact of several public policies on civic participation. Using a unique combination of school administrative and public–use voter files and methods for causal inference, I evaluate the impact of three new, as of yet unexplored, policies: one informational, one institutional, and one skill–based. Chapter 2 examines the causal effect of No Child Left Behind’s performance-based accountability school failure signals on turnout in school board elections and on individuals’ use of exit. I find that failure signals mobilize citizens both at the ballot box and by encouraging them to vote with their feet. However, these increases in voice and exit come primarily from citizens who already active—thus exacerbating inequalities in both forms of participation. Chapter 3 examines the causal effect of preregistration—an electoral reform that allows young citizens to enroll in the electoral system before turning 18, while also providing them with various in-school supports. Using data from the Current Population Survey and Florida Voter Files and multiple methods for causal inference, I (with my coauthor listed below) show that preregistration mobilizes and does so for a diverse set of citizens. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the impact of psychosocial or so called non-cognitive skills on voter turnout. Using information from the Fast Track intervention, I show that early– childhood investments in psychosocial skills have large, long-run spillovers on civic participation. These gains are widely distributed, being especially large for those least likely to participate. These chapters provide clear insights that reach across disciplinary boundaries and speak to current policy debates. In placing specific attention not only on whether these programs mobilize, but also on who they mobilize, I provide scholars and practitioners with new ways of thinking about how to address stubbornly low and unequal rates of citizen engagement.
