School safety is a wicked problem due to shifting needs and available information, the diverse actors affected and involved, fluctuating budgetary demands and ramifications, and relations to broader social and political issues. School safety challenges encompass a range of factors, including threats of violence and fears related to school shootings, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student mental health and well-being, and research and rhetoric on punitive discipline practices and the school-to-prison nexus, especially regarding the use of School Resource Officers (SROs). Following the murder of George Floyd by police in the Summer of 2020 and the subsequent civil unrest, several school districts across the United States began to reconsider the use of police on campuses, with some choosing not to renew contracts with police departments for SROs. In most cases, school district leaders (e.g., governing boards or superintendency) unilaterally made this decision without authentic school community input or participation in inclusive processes and shared decision-making opportunities. Phoenix Union High School District (PXU), a diverse, urban high school-only district that serves 25,000 students, was one of those districts that did not renew its contract with the local police department for SROs. Instead, PXU undertook efforts to reimagine school safety through two parallel participatory processes: School Participatory Budgeting (PB) and a Safety Committee. Drawing from the literature on school safety, participatory governance, and student voice, I explore school safety's historical and current landscape, specifically the use of SROs and punitive discipline measures, alongside methods of participatory governance within K-12 educational institutions and the benefits, challenges, and implications of student voice in shared decision-making processes. I then chronicle the two processes implemented in PXU using the Empowered Deliberative Democracy (EDD) conceptual framework and a case study methodology. I analyze and discuss the tensions and the transformative potential of participatory processes that include student and school community voices in finding solutions to difficult challenges. In conclusion, I summarize the case study and raise recommendations for using participatory processes to address wicked problems in K-12 educational institutions.

The narratives on technological change and the emergence of the "fourth industrial revolution" (4IR) play a significant role in defining what has happened and is happening in the labor market. Those narratives, mainly based in developed countries, have served as a turning point for policy development, especially regarding the design and implementation of educational and labor strategies as policy instruments to cope with the challenges of inequality and its labor-related causes. However, the specificities of past labor and educational policies play a crucial role in understanding the possible effects of large-scale transformations related to technological change. In this research, I develop a theoretical model connecting the experience of the third industrial revolution, the current assumptions for the future of work agenda, the forecast regarding the possible impacts of the fourth industrial revolutions, and the areas for policy intervention. I use the model to craft a case study, where I present evidence regarding the evolution of the Chilean labor market between 1990 and 2020, following the evolution of job polarization, occupational composition, workforce educational attainment, economic complexity, and the technological ecosystem. I compared those elements with the stylized facts and assumptions of the narratives of technological change. I argue that the differences in the process of workforce adaptation (timing and material conditions) can shed light on the assumptions of the “future of work” agendas, especially by tackling how different conditions could reach different results and craft substantively different base scenarios for policy design and implementation of human capital-based interventions as the ones suggested by international organizations and forums. In the concluding chapter, I summarize the findings and comment on how to address the design of just labor transitions.

Throughout history, social movements have been a key tool for socio-political transformation. One way that they achieve this is through their ability to educate significant numbers of people in short periods of time. The study of “social movement learning” helps to explain how and why the exchange of knowledge powers social movements. This research seeks to understand how sex workers engage in social movement learning in the pursuit of labor rights, using a descriptive case study of the North Hollywood Stripper Strike (March 18, 2022-2023). Drawing on interviews with local organizers, this thesis analyzes the Stripper Strike’s union campaign through the lens of knowledge exchange. The resulting seven-part model of social movement learning expands Hall’s (2009) model to include 1) formal learning, 2) nonformal direct learning, 3) nonformal direct education, 4) nonformal indirect learning, 5) nonformal indirect education, 6) informal learning, and 7) informal education as relevant typologies. By creating an amended social movement learning model, this research seeks to facilitate social movement-driven socio-political transformation, specifically within the sex worker’s rights and labor movements.

This Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Project was conducted by a graduate student and teaching resident, alongside five middle school students at a public, Title-I charter school in a Southern California city. Together, the research team navigates the space of “yes and-” by examining what a school is doing well to affirm its students and what remains to be done better. The project’s guiding question is: how is positive change effectively created for marginalized communities at school? In pursuit of an answer, the YPAR group conducted a survey of about 220 middle school students, and interviews with five eighth graders. Data suggests that most students feel safe at school and that their identities are respected, but there is still significant room for growth. Implications suggest that the school should support more inclusion of student voice, intervention and practices that would eliminate the burden marginalized students carry.

ABSTRACT Food insecurity is a global concern and is acute in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa as well as pockets in the global North. In the lush green spaces of “God’s Own Country”, the state of Kerala in India, about 379,000 women are engaged in farming in about 75,800 groups. Spearheaded by Kudumbashree, the State Poverty Eradication Mission (SPEM) the women farmers, along with women who co-own other micro-enterprises, totaling approximately 4.5 million members in all, are part of a quiet revolution. Through a powerful statewide network of tens of thousands of well-trained community-based educators, SPEM facilitates non-formal education in farming, other livelihoods, and gender-based oppression. Boosted by this non-formal education and abundant informal learning, the women group farmers have taken matters into their own hands. Rather than wait for their male family members to rescue them from economic hardship, the women farmers learn to grow nutritious food both for family consumption and for sale. In the process, they are creating pathways for the practice of food justice in their families, villages, and the entire state. The study focuses on two women’s farming groups, one from the highly marginalized Adivasi (ancient inhabitants, or tribal population) and one from the general population. The primary research question is: “How do women in collective/group farming initiatives learn to build capacity for food justice?”. The study found the building of a robust set of capacities such as effective leadership, participatory decision-making, and shared power critical to community development, thereby generating income, financial literacy, and a sense of empowerment. The findings also suggest that the women farmers are making steady gains in the arena of women’s agency and empowerment in harmony with their families, aided by 50,000 community educators who focus on building awareness about gender-based oppression and ways to combat it. This study pertains to two concerns in community development: 1) The role of the “invisible” learning dimension in capacity building and 2) food justice. The study is relevant to communities everywhere, including food-insecure pockets both in the global south and the global north. Keywords: Learning, capacity building, the practice of food justice, women’s empowerment.

The pace of segregation of races continues to increase as the gap between wealthy people, and the rest of the human race, increases. Technological advances in human communication ironically decrease human communication as people choose news and social media sites that feed their ideological frames. Bridging the sociopolitical gap is increasingly difficult. Further, privileged hegemonic forces exert pressure to maintain the status quo at the expense of greater humanity. Despite this grave account, some members of the privileged hegemony have moved away from their previous adherence to it and emerged as activists for marginalized populations.

Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Pedagogy for the Privileged, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Transformative Learning Theory and Critical White Studies, this study asks the question: what factors lead to an ideological shift?

Fifteen participants agreed to an in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interview. There were four main themes that emerged. Most participants experienced significant childhood challenges as well as segregated environments. Additionally, they possessed personality traits of curiosity and critical thinking which left them at odds with their family members; and finally, each experienced exposure to new environments and new people. Most notably, in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity and to remedy the disconnect between the imposed family values and their own internal inclinations, most actively sought out disorienting dilemmas that would facilitate an ideological shift. This journey typically included copious reading, critically analyzing information and, mostly importantly, immersion in new environments.

The goal of this study was to understand which factors precipitate an ideological shift in the hope of using the data to create effective interventions that bridge ideological gaps. It was revealed that some of the initiative for this shift is innate, and therefore unreachable. However, exposure to disorienting dilemmas successfully caused an ideological shift. Critically, this research revealed that it is important to identify those individuals who possess this innate characteristic of curiosity and dissatisfaction with the status quo and create opportunities for them to be exposed to new people, information and environments. This will likely lead to a shift from White hegemonic adherent to an emerging advocate for social justice.