Doctor of Education, Miami University, 2023, Educational Leadership

This qualitative study, limited to only three female participants and bounded by proximity, sought to provide a better understanding of how the social class background of teachers may impact pedagogy. Utilizing Crenshaw's intersectionality of identity lens and Bourdieu's Cultural Reproduction Theory, this research focused on a social constructivist interpretive framework to explore through the use of three in depth semistructured interviews how the class background of teachers may impact pedagogy. Data gathered from the semi-structured interviews was collected and inductively content analyzed to answer the research question: How does the class background of teachers from the middle class and working-class/poor impact their pedagogy? This problem of practice has relevance because many students of poor/working-class backgrounds continue to achieve at much lower levels than their more upper-class peers. Research in academia exists regarding social class as an economic construct and social class as culture; however, there remains a general lack of research involving teachers in K-12 schools exploring pedagogical beliefs and practices related to social class. Several pertinent ideas were revealed through semi-structured interviews with teacher participants. Teachers do have emergent notions of class beyond socioeconomic status but lack the knowledge to identify them as so. Judgements of people from lower social class backgrounds is present for all participants. All participants identify their first recognizable class-based experienced to be in an educational setting. Lastly, the selfidentified class background of teacher participants did impact their pedagogical beliefs and practices. Professional development designed to encourage teachers to think reflexively about their class-based assumptions and how they may unknowingly reinforce a negative view of the poor/working class that transmits the hidden curriculum of schools could have the power to effe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joel Malin (Committee Co-Chair); Lucian Szlizewski (Committee Co-Chair); Sherrill Sellers (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Arts and Sciences: Germanic Languages and Literature

This dissertation examines the role of language stereotypes in German milieu-based market research. By juxtaposing market researchers' statements about the linguistic behavior of speakers in different milieus with my own empirical sociolinguistic analysis of pragmatic markers in the materials produced from market research, I demonstrate how, despite the theoretical promise of milieu-based research as a new avenue for sociolinguistics, extant descriptions of milieu-based speech behavior are rooted in stereotype rather than sociolinguistic reality. Following the introduction, in which I will outline my research approach and the thought processes that led to this study, the subsequent second chapter introduces the concept of milieu into the sociolinguistic discourse. Milieu, contrary to the traditional concept of social class, accounts for the complexity and intersectionality of variable social behavior such as language practices. As such, milieu research is practice-oriented, allowing for the analysis of complex linguistic behavior while averting one-dimensional social classifications. Nonetheless, milieu-based research has not yet gained traction in sociolinguistics, where class-based research has fallen out of favor. I argue for a return to considering socioeconomic and sociocultural demographic categories in sociolinguistics through the lens of milieu. The third chapter introduces the milieu-based case study material derived out of market research, namely, the material of the Sinus Institute, which is the source of 16 interviews from members of 7 German milieus which I will analyze. After introducing the relevant milieus, I will show that the milieu variable can produce powerful insights into language use. At the same time, however, I will demonstrate how the dearth of work on stratification and its influence on language in sociolinguistics allows Sinus to (re-)produce highly problematic stereotypes on language in the different milieus. I (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Tanja Nusser Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Lindsay Preseau Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sandra Hanne Ph.D M.A B.A. (Committee Member); Svea Braeunert Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature

PHD, Kent State University, 2023, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

A narrative inquiry was conducted to explore the stories of students of Color with low-socioeconomic status perceptions of predominantly White institutions through their college experiences. This narrative inquiry explored if those experiences influenced their identity as college students, and if so, in what ways. Transition theory and the reconceptualized model of multiple dimensions of identity were used as theoretical frameworks. Focusing on the institutional factors helped to gain insights regarding campus initiatives and practices that were affirming and non-affirming to students of Color with low-socioeconomic status' identity as college students. In this narrative inquiry study, I collected data through semi-structured interviews with nine students of Color with low socioeconomic status attending predominantly White institutions. Utilizing a narrative inquiry framework, participants shared their college experiences and perceptions of their institutional environment. Data analysis was completed using thematic analysis, a six-phase analysis technique. Seven themes were interpreted to represent the experiences of students of Color at predominantly White institutions and one illustrated how students made meaning of the experiences on their identity as college students: These themes are: (1) PWI Awareness and Fit, (2) Culture Shock, (3) Unique Assets and Strategies with the subtheme of Empowerment in Community, (4) Academic Belonging Dichotomy with subthemes Aid to Academic Belonging and Threats to Academic Belonging, (5) Supporter, Cheerleaders, and Coaches, (6) Surprise, when the unexpected happens, (7) Identity as a College Student Centrality forces.

Committee: Christa Porter (Committee Chair) Subjects: African Americans; Education; Higher Education; Hispanic Americans

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Political Science

The twenty-first century in Latin America was, and remains, a period of dramatic changes. The economic crises and austerity policies of the 1980s and 1990s were replaced in the early 2000s by a "Pink Tide" of left-wing governments, windfall revenues from commodities exports, and expansions of social programs that reduced poverty and inequality. However, the commodity boom ended, the political right reemerged, and now right-wing populism along with democratic dissatisfaction are increasingly prevalent. In this dissertation, across a series of three papers, I analyze these nuances of contemporary Latin American politics, with a thematic focus on protection. I examine: why governments of different partisan varieties expand or retrench, in contrasting economic environments, social assistance programs that protect against poverty; why the political left's commitment to social assistance precipitated a class-based political backlash that led to the resurgence of the political right; and why individuals experiencing various types of insecurity aim to protect themselves from these threats by supporting attitudes and actors aligned with the authoritarian populist political right. To accomplish this, I utilize a variety of data—at the country and individual levels, as well as varying over time—and empirical approaches, including causal inference strategies. First, I find that the political left, rather than the political right, retrenched social assistance following the end of the commodity boom, due to—I argue—the pressures the left faces from investors to reduce spending during economic downturns, whereas the right is more restricted by domestic opposition to welfare retrenchment. Second, despite these empirical patterns, the left's perceived ideological commitment to redistribution and the lower socioeconomic classes alienated its former, more-privileged constituencies, who supported the political right in greater numbers throughout the 2010s. Third, people experiencing gr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sarah Brooks (Committee Chair); Philipp Rehm (Committee Member); Marcus Kurtz (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Educational Studies

In recent years, higher education researchers and practitioners have increasingly recognized that socioeconomic gaps in degree attainment are of utmost concern. Yet, despite the rise in attention relating to these socioeconomic gaps, the field of higher education continues to face challenges in assessing college access and success for students from less-privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, often relying on narrow socioeconomic metrics such as the Pell grant status, first- generation status, and school lunch status. Additionally, scholars must contend with the challenge of generating more accurate socioeconomic metrics while using data which is already available. In other disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, and public health, numerous studies have examined the use of neighborhood-based variables as proxies for socioeconomic status, demonstrating that they may serve as reliable indicators for individuals' backgrounds. However, in the field of higher education, neighborhood-based variables are rarely utilized, and considerations of place and space are only recently being given their due acknowledgement. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining the use of neighborhood-based socioeconomic variables as predictors of individuals' retention, success, and status changes in higher education. This study draws on theories that seek to explain factors that impact college student retention/attrition for understanding any possible differences between individuals from different type of neighborhoods. Additionally, sociological theories pertaining to segregation and capital accumulation underlie key assumptions of this study. The site for this study included a large, public, four-year state flagship institution, referred to as Midwest University. This study utilizes the incoming Autumn 2012, in-state undergraduate cohort -- a sample of nearly 6,000 individuals -- and a series of analyses -- including binomial regression and survival analyses -- in order to exam (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Anne-Marie Núñez (Committee Chair); Matthew Mayhew (Committee Member); Vincent Roscigno (Committee Member) Subjects: Higher Education

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Socioeconomic segregation in residential neighborhoods is an occurrence that according to the Pew Research Institute, is plaguing 27 of the nation's 30 largest major metropolitan areas. Adjacent neighborhoods which differ radically in socioeconomic status (SES) are at odds with each other; and this is best understood through a set of observable institutional and social disparities. Upon reviewing the origin, context, effects, and previously deployed solutions to these institutional and social disparities, this thesis will propose guidelines for a project that seeks to address all of the most crucial of these issues; a mixed-class co-living housing experiment as an architectural response to the enduring effects of socioeconomically disparate residential conditions. This response involves a unification of a modified community planning strategy as a response to the institutional woes, and a set of architectural design and programming principles that respond to social disparities. The institutional disparities that have allowed residential neighborhoods to be socioeconomically segregated are rooted in racial segregation, as well as income segregation or “concentration of poverty.” Mixed-income housing projects of the past may have been effective at times of achieving its primary goal of deconcentrating poverty but have not proven to be effective in addressing social issues. Instead of deconcentrating poverty with mixed-income housing, the community planning strategy for this thesis seeks to mend socioeconomically differing neighborhoods through “mixed-class” housing; this involves a mixture of residents based on not only income, but also education and occupation. This strategy will allow for a much more diverse mixture of people based on the socioeconomics of a given site, while providing a more opportunistic condition for the involved social disparities to be addressed through architecture, programming, and spatial design. The social disparities that arise from (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Riorden M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MLS, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Liberal Studies Program

The following essay will investigate the United States educational system and how it has been used to increase social stratification and limit the mobility of social class. This essay will define social stratification and give examples of how it limits social mobility based on various determinants such as race, class, and socioeconomic status. Understanding the use of education and the role it plays in moving social class, we learn how education has now been commoditized and its use for social stratification has been exploited. The essay will contend that the proliferation of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were created to assist students of color in their educational opportunities and ability to move social strata. In doing so, predominantly white institutions began to focus their attention on underrepresented populations and their ability to compete in the educational marketplace, as well as HBCUs' ability to move social class by instituting summer transition programs assisted with the federal government implementation of TRiO to assist universities in their efforts. With this focus, this essay will discuss the impact of college transition programs and their impact on retention and graduation rates for underrepresented student populations and how they are influencing the ability to move social class and the overall achievement gap that still exists in today's society.

Committee: Richard Serpe Dr. (Advisor); Amoaba Gooden Dr. (Other) Subjects: Community College Education; Community Colleges; Economics; Education; Higher Education; Sociology

PHD, Kent State University, 2016, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

Social class stratification in higher education has increased; however, socioeconomic status (SES) continues to receive less targeted focus by higher education policy and practice than do race, ethnicity, and gender. Despite the challenges, low SES students are attending college but are not having equivalent experiences or outcomes to their higher SES peers. The rise in the numbers of low SES students on campuses has caused increased attention from federal lawmakers and higher education professionals, alike. New policies and practices are being proposed in order to better support this growing student group. One promising pedagogical practice for low SES college students is service-learning. This critical constructivist study draws upon Bourdieu to analyze the academic and social experiences of low SES students attending a selective, private university and enrolled in service-learning classes in which the population being served was also of low SES. This study had three main findings. First, low SES students practice passing behaviors to cover their low SES. Second, participating in service-learning can reinforce the practice of passing or chameleon behaviors. Third, this may contribute to questioning instructor authority, both of which can negatively impact social and academic experiences, thus inhibiting the acquisition of social and cultural capital. I advance recommendations for how campuses can create environments that embrace socioeconomic diversity and work toward creating opportunities for low SES students to develop the social and cultural capital they seek via private higher education.

Committee: Susan Iverson (Committee Chair); Martha Merrill (Committee Member); Walter Gershon (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Sociology; Higher Education; Higher Education Administration

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies

Institutions of higher education are increasingly utilizing international education programs (Institute of International Education, 2014), also known as “study abroad” in the USA, especially as a mechanism for increasing students' cross-cultural awareness (e.g., Marx & Moss, 2011; Salisbury, 2011). The literature on and implementation of such programs does not fully consider two critical issues: the socio-emotional impact of study abroad on participants (i.e., the culture shock they experience), and the relation of cultural identities, such as race, gender, and class, to students' experiences while abroad. To address this issue, I investigated the ways in which students' experiences of culture shock were connected to their identity related to race, gender, and class. I used a concurrent mixed methods research design that entailed collecting and analyzing three sets of data: arts-based (self-portraits and students' reflections on their portraits), qualitative (observations, interviews, and students' reflections), and quantitative (Revised Cultural Distance Index, a self-rating for culture shock, and demographic information). I collected the data from a sample of students (n =14) who participated in the Ecuador: Immersed in Culture and Education program, which was a short-term program where students taught in indigenous primary schools in Ecuador after a semester-long course. I found that students experienced a range of amounts of culture shock, that it manifested differently for students across race, gender, and class, and that students enacted varying strategies to cope with their culture shock (and the culture shock of others) while on the trip. Whereas students of color were cognizant of how they portrayed themselves and their culture shock to others from the beginning, white students became more conscious of their self-images after being in Ecuador due in part to feeling like a minority for the first time. For white students from affluent backgrounds, their cul (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Holly Johnson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Vicki Daiello Ph.D. (Committee Member); Vicki Plano Clark Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2014, Leadership and Change

In 2010, an estimated population of the 311,212,863 Americans generated approximately 1,014,688,290 physician office encounters (Moore, 2010). The frequency and number of professional interactions between caregivers and patients/family members in medical office settings equated to a staggering 1,931 visits per minute. Based on the massive volume of interactions that occurred between patients of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic standings that generated an average household income of $49,445 in 2010 (United States Census Bureau, 2010a) with a physician workforce that the Association of American Medical Colleges (2010) captured as being 75% White that earned (primary care specialties) in excess of $190,000 per year in personal income (Hyden, 2011), a paradigm for potential discrimination is created through heterogeneous customers seeking health care services from a mostly affluent homogeneous workforce. What are the experiences of the underinsured in attempting to obtain routine and emergent medical care in the United States? Based on the identified void in the current body of scholarship that leaves silent the voices of millions of underserved and socioeconomically disadvantaged patients, this dissertation will extend the muted voices and, thus, create a platform to learn through the patients' personal contexts and unique health stories. The electronic version of this Dissertation is at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd.

Committee: Carolyn Kenny PhD (Committee Chair); Alan Guskin PhD (Committee Member); Laura Morgan Roberts PhD (Committee Member); Christine Phillips M.B.B.S. (Other) Subjects: Health Care; Health Care Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, English

In the nineteenth century, alternative communities composed of men and women outside of the traditional biological family began to form not only in the many utopian projects inspired by the transcendentalist movement, but also in factories, settlement houses, and on the road. These alternative communities, which I define as social constructions apart from the middle class home, were often composed of individuals from different socioeconomic class positions and disrupted traditional ideas about gender and labor. Ultimately, they proved the difficulty of defining socioeconomic class in American culture. In this dissertation, I argue that the literature written about these alternative communities shows them to be liminal spaces of attempted social mobility where socioeconomic class and gender roles are constantly redefined in a way that challenge social norms. I specifically analyze literature emerging from the Fruitlands utopian community, the Lowell factory system, the Hull-House settlement house, and female hobo communities. Communities outside middle class culture are especially important to analyze because of the ways they illuminate tensions in defining social positions in American society. While I am concerned with the representation of the role of women in these alternative communities, my dissertation primarily seeks to trouble the elision of socioeconomic class studies in nineteenth-century literary criticism. In this work, I use conversations about gender to provide insight into issues of labor and tensions in defining socioeconomic class in accounts of these alternative communities. The literature emerging from these communities, including journal entries, short stories, newspaper articles, folk tales, and novels, provides insight into the constant struggle to find an empowering identity for workers, and women workers in particular. As unrest over socioeconomic disparity continues to be a driving force in American culture, it is more important than ever to (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Susan Williams PhD (Committee Chair); Jared Gardner PhD (Committee Member); Andreá Williams PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2006, Leadership Studies

The primary purpose of this quantitative study was to predict incoming teacher education students' technology competency by examining factors that contribute to their background technology experience. Factors included socioeconomic status of the school district from where they graduated, district demographics related to teachers' average number of years teaching, teachers' average number of hours of professional development with technology, and student background experiences with technology based on uses at school and home. Preservice teachers enter colleges of education from various educational background experiences and possess broad levels of technology competency. Research findings indicate there is a positive relationship between district affluence and technology integration (Riel & Schwarz, 2002). In addition, there is evidence that suggests socioeconomic background contributes to students' ability to use technology (Riel & Schwarz). As colleges of education move forward with integrating technology into teacher preparation programs, a need exists to recognize the characteristics of the students' backgrounds that contribute to their ability to perform basic technology competencies. Identifying characteristics of student experience with technology that predict technology competency will assist colleges of education with further understanding the level of technology integration and K-12 district status of implementing data-management systems for instructional decision-making. Pearson correlation and an exploratory multiple regression were used to examine preservice teachers' profiles based on information obtained from multiple secondary data sources. The secondary sources utilized were the Bowling Green State University (BGSU) Assessment of Technology Competency (ATC), the ATC Retake Survey instrument that was administered to preservice teachers during the academic year 2004-2005, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) Similar District computation report from fis (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rachel Vannatta (Advisor) Subjects: