This research presents findings from a classroom-based case study to determine how a global competence framework influences first-year composition (FYC) students’ understanding of global competency and cosmopolitanism. Sub-questions included examining how participants demonstrated skills as global and cultural communicators, how their perceptions changed about the audience, and how they believe their global competence and cosmopolitanism practices will transfer to their personal and professional lives. For educators seeking ways to prepare students for an increasingly interconnected global society, Appiah’s new cosmopolitanism theory (2006) proposes moving beyond multiculturalism to global engagement and exchange, creating opportunities for students to engage in literacy practices with a global lens as they build skills in empathy and understanding of other cultures (Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2014). In this five-week writing unit, undergraduate students enrolled in this one-semester composition course at a large U.S. university created multimodal, research-based compositions for a global audience about issues drawn from the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Using the “U.S. Department of Education’s Framework for Developing Global and Cultural Competencies to Advance Equity, Excellence, and Economic Competitiveness,” this study examined participants’ growth in three framework domains: collaboration and communication, diverse perspectives, and civic and global engagement. Qualitative data were collected and analyzed at the completion of the writing unit to assess participants’ growth in global competence: 1) participants’ unit assignments, 2) participants’ reflections, 3) researcher teaching notes and observations, 4) participants’ demographic surveys, and 5) participants’ pre- and post-unit questionnaires. Findings suggest students’ perceived increases in their ability to communicate with diverse audiences through speaking and listening activities completed in the unit. Students’ perceptions of their understanding of audience also increased. Further, students’ understanding of global competence and cosmopolitanism increased which may transfer to their personal and professional lives in the future.

This qualitative study sought to answer the question, “What are the benefits and challenges of being a rural English Language Arts educator in grades 6-12?” Data collected through a questionnaire completed by nine teachers from five different states yielded four categories of benefits and challenges: geographical, social, professional, and financial. The data indicated that finances cause both personal and professional challenges in rural areas, with a lack of funding for schools being particularly challenging. In addition, respondents reported high levels of community involvement as a benefit to being in a rural school district. While the data is limited due to the small group of participants, it and the literature have implications for teacher recruitment to and retention in rural areas. Aside from the results indicating that finances need to be addressed, there are also implications for teacher preparation programs, such as needing to provide rural field experiences for preservice teachers, and for creators of professional development, such as needing to provide more accessible professional development and more spaces dedicated solely to rural English Language Arts educators. One challenge this study presents for future research is to create strategies for recruiting study participants from rural areas, specifically focused on building trust between researchers and teachers in these spaces.

Methodological Reparations is a 2-study multi-methods inquiry aimed at illuminating important nuances for engaging counter hegemonic empirical inquiries for Black, gender expansive and Black LGBTQI+ communities. If Black gender expansive youth are studied, they are often studied within the larger LGBTQI+ umbrella. Unfortunately, this makes them vulnerable to compulsory heterogenderism which often obscures their unique experiences transgressing racialized gender norms and with racialized gender oppression. This study makes methodological considerations called methodological reparations that begin to address the ways empirical research often negates, misunderstands, and obscures students’ identities as singular, stable over time and aligned with their sex assignment. It is important for researchers, data scientists and educators to challenge these hegemonic assumptions to ensure that Black gender expansive communities are visible and to ensure that education policies are data-driven, inclusive and effective. The United States Transgender Survey and the Gay and Lesbian Students Education Network have begun to conduct surveys that begin to address the complexity of gender within LGBTQI+ populations. Their surveys reveal horrific school climates that LGBTQI+ youth of color experience especially Black LGBTQI+ youth. The first study in this dissertation is a mixed methods study that focuses on Black gender expansive students’ experiences. The second study responds to the first study by providing an example of inclusive Black LGBTQI+ curriculum taught through a Black queer pedagogical approach. Since the presence of LGBTQI+ inclusive curriculum in schools has been linked to increased feelings of safety in schools in Black LGBTQI+ student populations, this study showcases James Baldwin’s final novel Just Above My Head, as a piece of blues literature that discusses racialized homophobia in a culturally relevant way. Baldwin’s work can be an important tool for Black LGBTQI+ students who do not have access to Black queer curriculum taught through a Black queer pedagogical approach.

Given the profound influence that schools have on students’ genders and the existing scholarly research in the field of education studies which draws clear implications between practices of schooling and sanctioning and promoting particular gender subjectivities, often in alignment with traditional norms, I conduct a critical ethnography to examine the practices of gender in one eighth grade English language arts (ELA) classroom at an arts-missioned charter school. I do this to explore how ELA instruction at an arts charter school may provide opportunities for students to do gender differently. To guide this dissertation theoretically, I rely on the process philosophy of Erin Manning (2016, 2013, 2007) to examine the processual interactions among of student movement, choreography, materiality, research-creation, language, and art. Thus, methods for this study include field notes, student assignments, interviews and focus groups, student created art, maps, and architectural plans. In the analysis, I attempt to allow the data to live on their own, and I hope to give them voice to speak to the reader in a way that they spoke to me. Some of them speak through ethnodrama; some of them speak through autoethnography, visual art and cartography, and yet others through various transcriptions. Through these modes of analysis, I am thinking-doing-writing. The analysis also includes my thinking with fields – the fields of gender studies, qualitative inquiry, educational research, English education, and critical theory. In an attempt to take to the fields, I weave all of these through each other, through Manning and other theorists and through my ongoing perceptions of event-happenings and what it means to do qualitative research in education. Accordingly, this dissertation engages with the various fields to reconsider how school practices might conceive the ways in which they produce gender, and how students perceive gender within the school space. In this way, the dissertation provides ways of thinking that may unearth what was previously cast aside or uncover possibilities for what was previously unthought.