The passing of anti-immigrant legislation in the state of Arizona over the last decade has exacerbated an already oppressive system perpetuated by globalization and its byproducts, neoliberalism and neoconservativism. The social justice activist educators who live and work with the children and families most affected by these laws and policies must learn to navigate these controls if they hope to sustain their work. I have drawn from Freire's work surrounding the theories of praxis and conscientization to explain the motivation of these teachers, and the sociological theory of Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; & Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002), to explain how the group, Arizona Teachers for Justice serves as a space of learning and support for these educators. This dissertation is a multiple case study and has employed semi-structured interviews with four social justice activist educators to understand how social justice activist educators in Arizona cope and sustain their teaching and activism, particularly through their membership in groups such as Arizona Teachers for Justice. The teachers in this study are each at different stages in their careers and each teaches in a different setting and/or grade level. This cross section provides multiple perspectives and varied lenses through which to view the struggles and triumphs of social justice activist educators in the state of Arizona. The teachers in this study share their experiences of being singled out for their activism and explain the ways they cope with such attacks. They explain how they manage to fulfill their dedication to equity by integrating critical materials while adhering to common core standards. They express the anger that keeps them fighting in the streets and the fears that keep them from openly rejecting unjust policies. The findings of this study contribute to the discussion of how to not only prepare social justice activist educators, but ways of supporting and sustaining their very crucial work. Neoliberal and neoconservative attacks on education are pervasive and it is critical that we prepare teachers to face these structural pressures if we hope to ever change the dehumanizing agenda of these global powers.

When my attention was brought to the overwhelming lack of family policy support in the United States, my curiosity led me to look into what other industrialized nations are doing to support growing families and find out what policies and programs have been put in place to better facilitate the work-home balance. I first provide a brief background context of family policy in the United States, leading up to the development and implementation of our nation's parental leave legislation, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). I present the crucial concerns of this provision, as well as the effects that policy has on children's well-being. The second major part of this analysis deals with child care programs and the myriad challenges so many families encounter in this realm. Specifically addressed are the topics of affordability, accessibility and quality of child care found in the U.S. After an in-depth look at U.S. policies, I transition to a comparative analysis of parental leave and child care provision in a range of other nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), specifically Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden and Norway. I carefully chose these countries to offer a broad spectrum of family policies to compare to our own. I then return to a discussion of limitations of U.S. family policy and the values and ideology it represents, as well as the importance of strengthening such policies.

The purpose of this dissertation was to document the teaching practices and underlying intentions of teachers in a Waldorf early childhood program in relationship to integrative movement and its connections to learning for the kindergarten through grade three learner. Current concerns about unhealthy sedentary lifestyles and the decreasing emphasis on physical activity/movement in public schools are growing. This dissertation explores current educational research related to the effects of movement on cognitive processing and the potential effects of movement on learning, particularly in a Waldorf-based early childhood program in which movement is integrated into all aspects of learning (including all academic subjects). This dissertation includes a literature review of current research and theory, and a qualitative micro-ethnographic case study of a Waldorf-based early childhood program that involved teacher observations and interviews. Key findings: the Waldorf-based early childhood program provided practical methods for (1) encouraging various modes of free play intended to enhance a child's physical, social/emotional and academic development, (2) integrating teacher-led movements into the daily curriculum, (3) utilizing movement to aid cognitive processing and prepare students for more sedentary academic work, (4) integrating remedial work into the daily classroom curriculum, and (5) utilizing intentional movement to help a child learn to embody stillness as a means of focusing attention and energy. Movements integrated into the curriculum by the teachers created observable positive effects on the students: eagerness to participate, recall, extending focus and attention, and creating social awareness and cooperation. Conclusions: (1) Waldorf-based education programs may provide practical examples and theoretical perspectives relevant to the creation of an integrated and comprehensive movement-based curriculum for the early childhood learner, and (2) The Waldorf teachers studied provide a counter-position to early childhood teaching practices that utilize movement as a break from sedentary learning. This study revealed the effects of imposing or integrating stillness into a movement-rich curriculum. Future recommendations include more comprehensive research on Waldorf-based educational programs and educational research that reaches beyond movement's potential positive or negative effect on a student's academic progress to study in more depth how and why movement impacts learning for the young child.

Co-teaching is one of the most popular models for supporting students with disabilities in general education classrooms. In spite of this, there is a paucity of research on student perceptions of co-teaching. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate student perceptions of co-teaching in a high school biology classroom. Over nine weeks, data was collected from students in a co-taught and traditional classroom through observations and focus groups. Qualitative content analysis identified three themes and eight categories which highlight student perceptions of co-teaching. Themes and categories that emerged were: 1) Environment which included the categories of availability of help, students feeling supported and normalcy of the classroom, 2) Instruction which included student engagement, lesson activity and teacher(s) role(s) and, 3) Relationships which included relationships between teacher(s) and student(s) and parity between teachers. Information from the study deepens researchers' and practitioners' understanding of how students perceive co-teaching and provide new avenues for future research and best practices.

This dissertation is guided by the following questions: How do People of Color define and experience White people as "authentic" allies? What does a White ally look like to People of Color? How do White allies view themselves as "authentic" White allies? What experiences lead White people to anti-racism and anti-racist praxis? How do White people translate what they know about racism into an active and courageous anti-racist praxis in their own lives? What kinds of educational experiences in the social work classroom might foster or hinder students from learning how to translate anti-racist knowledge into anti-racist praxis? Using narrative methods, I explore some of the answers to these questions. Findings from this study offer ways to design deeper and more meaningful social work/social justice pedagogy that will better prepare social workers to be active, anti-racist practitioners and allies in all aspects of their work.

This dissertation examines Japanese preschool teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development. The study is an interview-based, ethnographic study, which is based on the video-cued mutivocal ethnographic method. This study focuses on the emic terms that Japanese preschool teachers use to explain their practices, such as amae (dependency), omoiyari (empathy), sabishii (loneliness), mimamoru (watching and waiting) and garari (peripheral participation). My analysis suggests that sabishii, amae, and omoiyari form a triad of emotional exchange that has a particular cultural patterning and salience in Japan and in the Japanese approach to the socialization of emotions in early childhood. Japanese teachers think about the development of the class as a community, which is different from individual-centric Western pedagogical perspective that gives more attention to each child's development. Mimamoru is a pedagogical philosophy and practice in Japanese early childhood education. A key component of Japanese teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development is that the process requires the development not only of children as individuals, but also of children in a preschool class as a community. In addition, the study suggests that at a deeper level these emic concepts reflect more general Japanese cultural notions of time, space, sight, and body. This dissertation concludes with the argument that teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs is "A cultural art of teaching." Teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs are harmonized in the teachers' mind and body, making connections between them, and used depending on the nuances of a situation, as informed by teachers' conscious and unconscious thoughts. The study has also shown evidence of similar practices and logic vertically distributed within Japanese early childhood education, from the way teachers act with children, to the way directors act with teachers, to the way government ministries act with directors, to the way deaf and hearing educators act with their deaf and hearing students. Because these practices are forms of bodily habitus and implicit Japanese culture, it makes sense that they are found across fields of action.

Autism has a unique history. The definition has broadened and changed over time, from an emotional disturbance with psychogenic origins to a neurodevelopmental disability with suspected environmental and genetic origins. Diagnosis occurs later than children born with obvious disabilities such as cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, but earlier than milder, high-incidence disabilities such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder. Historically, parents have advocated for changes in the way children with autism receive services and how federal funding and educational services are provided. There is often tension between these parents and the medical establishment. There can also be tension between the community of parents and the community of adults who have high functioning autism and Asperger syndrome. Studies have examined individual aspects of autism, from the diagnosis, caring for a child with autism, educational interventions, and genetics to characteristics of the internet community of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This study includes interviews with mothers whose children were diagnosed with autism between 1974 and 2004, observations of appointments with developmental pediatricians at which diagnoses were given in 2010, and an analysis of media representations of autism over the same time period. These different data were analyzed together to create a new understanding about the history and present state of autism diagnosis.