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Seeking Equilibrium: A Multi-Layered Case Study of Special Education Policy During the Covid-19 Pandemic
No full textThesis advisor: Susan BruceThe emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to unprecedented shifts in American education. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, children across the United States were primarily educated in brick-and-mortar school buildings, with only .6% of the over 50 million students in the country attending fully virtual schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). By March 2020, K-12 school buildings across all 50 states began to close their doors, eventually pivoting from traditional, in-person learning to some form of distance education. While all students were affected by school building closures, of particular concern was the experience of students with disabilities, whose right to a free, appropriate, public education in the least restrictive environment is governed by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004). Using a multi-layered case study design, this dissertation examined how one state, district, and school implemented special education policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. This dissertation drew on multiple data sources, including state and district policy documents, interviews with leaders and teachers, and school committee meeting transcripts. Using policy as discourse (Bacchi, 2000) and sensemaking theory (Coburn, 2004; Spillane et al., 2002) as theoretical frames, I make three key arguments. First, I argue that legal and regulatory, structural, and local forces acted on the special education policy context during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, I argue that these forces were mediated by three factors: congruence with existing policy messages, perceived legitimacy of new directives, and the coherence of policy enactment. These arguments build toward my third, overarching argument—that educators and caregivers in City district made sense of special education policy during the COVID-19 pandemic by engaging in a process of equilibration. This dissertation concludes with the implications for research, policy, and practice related to future times of educational emergency.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Embodied Campus Geographies: Rehabilitating “Safe Space” as a Threshold Condition for Transformative Higher Education with Subaltern Students
No full textThesis advisor: Christopher HigginsThe heightened use of “safe space” in educational settings has been the subject of polarizing contemporary controversy and protested by conservative and progressive camps alike, raising concerns about whether “safe space” remains an educationally viable concept. In response to claims that safety is conflated with “coddling” students, censoring unpopular speech, or reinforcing privilege, this dissertation argues that safe spaces signify enduring pursuits of diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education that are too important to be abandoned. Instead, this interdisciplinary, mixed methods project considers how safe spaces can be rehabilitated to best serve subaltern undergraduate students. Informed by the experiences of six of my former students, I investigate how predominantly White institutions (PWI), like Boston College, can be rehabilitated as places where risky, transformative education is possible. By integrating situated educational philosophy and participatory design research (PDR) that features artistic and embodied methods of relationality (self-portraits, walks, and interactive workshops), I offer a spatial turn in the safe space debates that reveals the ideologically laden ‘normative geography’ of university campuses. Attuning to safe space controversies as spatial struggles uncovers who and what is positioned as “in place” or “out of place” on campus, as well as subaltern students’ transgressive acts of place-making—the quotidian tactics of making a hostile place more habitable for themselves. My dissertation therefore culminates by proposing a risky model of higher education, inspired by Judith Butler’s proposal of ethical formation, that insists on a collective responsibility for inclusive campus place-making. In this iterative framework, safety serves not as a barrier to risk, but as a crucial, co-constructed threshold condition that makes educative risk-taking possible for all students.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Multimodal Quantum Sensing with Solid-State Spins in Diamond:
No full textThesis advisor: Brian B. ZhouThis thesis presents work in the context of multimodal magnetometry for two-dimensional (2d) materials. Research on van der Waals materials has been rapidly emerging and several imaging techniques have been developed in the past decades. Among the modern techniques, solid-state spins feature outstanding sensitivity and nano-scale spatial resolution. Yet their full capacity in sensing still has room for improvement, as the quantum nature of their properties haven't been fully utilized. My research involves developing state-of-the-art sensing techniques to add new `function modules' to the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, with the goal of uncovering dynamical magnetic and electrical phenomena of 2d materials. In the first chapter I will briefly discuss the basic opto-spin properties of the NV center. One shall see why NV is preferred as a quantum sensing probe: the opto-spin property comes handy as one simply counts photons to manipulate and read out quantum states, and the stability and long quantum coherence time makes NV adaptive with various environments and engineering. In the second chapter I will discuss the experimental setup with the focus on the home-built confocal microscope, which equips our sensing technique with the pump-probe scanning ability of sub-um 2d resolution. In the third chapter I will discuss the developments of the sensing protocols, including the ac susceptometry and the opto-magnetization mapping, based on the lock-in method using the quantum dynamical decoupling sequences. In the fourth chapter I will describe the ac susceptibility measurements on thin CrBr3 flakes. The magnetization behaviors under kHz to MHz excitations reveal the domain morphology and domain wall mobility, providing insights to the exchange interaction of the chromium trihalides in the 2d limit. In the fifth chapter I will describe the pump-probe measurements on few-layer CrCl3 flakes. The mapping result demonstrates a photo-generated enhancement of the in-plane magnetization. Along with the time-resolved photoluminescence measurement, the results are indicative of a defect-assisted Auger recombination process of excitons. To conclude, the multimodal sensing techniques with NV developed in this thesis allow for more versatile experiments with sensitivity for low-dimensional systems. The developments bring up new perspectives on fundamental physics in atomically thin materials, providing new ideas for future technological applications such as spintronics and quantum memory.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Physics
Essays in Macroeconomics:
No full textThesis advisor: Fabio SchiantarelliThis dissertation comprises three self-contained essays that investigate how micro-level frictions affect firms’ operational decisions and investors’ behavior, evaluating their respective costs or benefits for the overall economy. In the first chapter, “Customer Capital and The Aggregate Effect of Short-Termism", joint work with M. Errico and A. Lavia, we study the impact of short-termism on firms’ pricing decisions and quantify the potential costs for consumers in term of welfare. Managers face continuous pressure to meet short-term forecasts and targets, which can impact their investment in customer capital and pricing decisions. Using data on U.S. public companies together with IBES analysts’ forecasts, we find that firms that just meet analysts’ profit forecasts have average markup growth of 0.8% higher than firms that just miss targets, suggesting opportunistic markup manipulation. To assess the aggregate economic implications of short-termism, we develop and estimate a quantitative heterogeneous firm model that incorporates short-term frictions and endogenous markups resulting from customer accumulation. In the model, short-termism solves an agency conflict between manager and shareholders, resulting in higher markups and lower customer capital stock. We find that, on average, firms increase markups by 8% due to short-termism, generating 3.1 trillion on average. In the second chapter, “Strategic Investors and Exchange Rate Dynamics", joint work with M. Errico, we study how the exchange rate dynamics are influenced by the presence of heterogeneous investors with varying degrees of price impact. Leveraging data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on investors’ currency positions, we show that foreign exchange rate markets display a significant level of concentration,and investors’ price impact is stronger in more concentrated markets. We develop a monetary model of exchange rate determination that incorporates heterogeneous investors with different degrees of price impact. We show that the presence of price impact amplifies the exchange rate’s response to non-fundamental shocks while dampening its response to fundamental shocks. As a result, investors’ price impact contributes to the disconnect of exchange rates from fundamentals and the excess volatility of exchange rates. We provide empirical evidence in line with our theoretical predictions, using data on trading volume concentration from the US CFTC foreign exchange rate market for 10 currencies spanning from 2006 to 2016. Additionally, we extend our framework to account for information heterogeneity among investors, which presents a competing dimension of heterogeneity with qualitatively similar implications for exchange rate dynamics. Both dimensions of heterogeneity are quantitatively relevant, with the heterogeneity in price impact accounting for 62% of the additional volatility and 35% of the additional disconnect attributed to investors’ heterogeneity. In the third chapter, “Firms’ Investment and Central Bank Communication: The Role of Financial Heterogeneity", I study how financial frictions impact the transmission of monetary policy to investment. Monetary policy affects firms’ capital investment through two distinct channels: the pure monetary channel, which operates through changes in interest rates, and the information channel, which operates through changes in investors’ beliefs about the economic outlook and future policy rates. I show that the role of financial frictions for monetary policy transmission hinges crucially on specific channel. Using Compustat data, I find that firms with high leverage are more sensitive to pure monetary shocks but are less sensitive to Fed information shocks. Finally, I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with firm idiosyncratic productivity, real and financial frictions to rationalize the empirical findings and study aggregate implications.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Essays in Industrial Organization and Behavioral Economics:
No full textThesis advisor: Michael GrubbThesis advisor: Lucas CoffmanWhat You Don’t Know Can’t Pass Through: Consumer Beliefs and Pass-through Rates I model consumer search with imperfect information about firms’ costs and test predictions about consumer beliefs and pass-through in the US residential mortgage market. In the model, when consumers are unaware of an increase in costs, a high price would be surprising and may induce additional search. In equilibrium, sellers do not pass though the entire change in costs, and average pass-though is decreasing in consumer uncertainty about costs. The model provides a unified explanation for a number of patterns in pass-through rates including incomplete pass-through (passthrough rates less than one), pass-through over-shifting (pass-through rates greater than one), and asymmetric pass-through (greater pass-through rates for cost increases than decreases). I test a novel prediction of this model using confidential Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. I find that different components of the marginal cost of mortgage lending have different average pass-through rates. Widely known costs are passed through nearly completely while more obscure costs have much lower pass-through rates. This pattern is not explained by existing models of pass-through, as the standard determinants of pass-through are identical across all cost components of the same mortgage.
People Don’t Demand Commitment Devices That Might Not Work Demand for costly commitment devices is rare. A possible explanation is that individuals are unaware of their present bias and their need for commitment. I run an experiment that successfully corrects subjects’ beliefs about their present bias and find that this increased awareness does not increase demand for commitment. These results, interpreted through the lens of a theoretical model of commitment demand, imply that low demand for commitment is not driven by a perceived lack of present bias, but rather subjects’ accurate belief that they may fail to follow through, even with the offered level of commitment.
The Illusion of Competition with Michael Grubb Most existing models of price competition in the presence of search costs ignore the possibility that multiple products in a market are sold by the same firm. We develop a theoretical model of equilibrium price dispersion under costly consumer search over prices in the presence of jointly owned “brands.” We establish conditions on consumers’ search technology that determine consumer welfare implications and suggest antitrust remedies (e.g. post-merger consolidation of brands).Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Who Will Fight for What They Believe is Bad?: An Analysis of Pro-Slavery & Pro-Abortion Argumentation
Get PDFThesis advisor: Ken I. KerschThe aim of this project is to understand how and why social movement actors shift their framing of issues when they come under attack on moral grounds for the practice or right they seek to protect. Specifically, I wanted to understand how actors justify a practice when it is accused by a mobilized countermovement of violating the perceived fundamental right of another party, and why their argumentation may change over time. I specifically investigated the cases of the pro-slavery movement in the 19th century and the pro-abortion movement in the 20th and 21st centuries because in each of these cases, the actors shifted their framing of the practice in question from one of a “necessary evil” to a “positive good.” Through an in-depth analysis of numerous primary sources from various actors within the pro-slavery and pro-abortion movements, I discovered that within social movements, even actors trying to maintain the status quo (rather than establish a new right or practice) are heavily influenced by countermovement dynamics and can find their strategies confined and dictated by the terms of the debate established by the opposition. In both cases in question, the actors were pushed to justify their “right” within the realm of morality, and this pushed them to intentionally shift from an apologetic to unapologetic framing of the issue to both mobilize greater support and try to gain leverage over the opposition. Additionally, the political and cultural climates can significantly impact issue framing and the choices available to movement actors who need to adjust their rhetoric in response to their political needs and goals and the mores of society. Finally, in order to discredit the rights-holding status of the other party involved (the slave or the fetus), movement actors used both dehumanizing language to describe them and endeavored to situate the practice they were trying to protect within the context of a broader sociopolitical battle for a particular vision for society and law, thereby shifting the discussion of morality entirely away from the nature of the slave or fetus. These findings are significant for the study of social movements and rights discourse within political science as they raise questions for further study on the relationship between law and morality, the role of rhetoric in politics, and the nature of competing rights claims. Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Political Science
" No tiene la comunidad que yo amo”: A Community-Engaged Study on the 'More-Than-Material' Impact of Gentrification on Long-Time Residents of East Boston
Get PDFThesis advisor: Samantha TeixeiraResidents and activists in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification have been raising alarm bells about its impact for decades. The promises that state and private funders and developers make about the benefits of neighborhood redevelopment are often overemphasized and/or unmet according to many in the communities who have experienced this change. The literature on the effects of capital reinvestment and urban renewal programs has shown mixed results, suggesting that poverty and crime rates tend to decrease as higher-income and educated residents move into these neighborhoods. However, evidence suggests that this may be the result of displacement of original residents and an influx of middle- and higher-income residents. Much of the existing research into the effects of gentrification follows from a political economy perspective, which often leaves out the personal and communal effect on residents’ psychological well-being. Though some recent work incorporates resident perspectives of the gentrification process, the field of social work has only recently begun engaging in understanding the impacts of gentrification This dissertation aims to address this key gap in the literature by exploring gentrification and associated neighborhood processes in partnership with residents from a Boston community undergoing gentrification. This dissertation is a predominantly qualitative study with an embedded quantitative analysis using ethnographic methods to understand how residents of the East Boston neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts perceive their neighborhood. Specifically, the dissertation explored 1) the perception of individual and individual impacts of gentrification-related impact amongst long-time residents, 2) how residents make meaning of social control in the neighborhood as it relates to gentrification, and 3) the neighborhood-level spatial indicators of gentrification that contextualized residents’ perceptions. This overarching approach relied on community-level input and participation through four methods: 1) an ethnography, 2) walking interviews, 3) photovoice, and 4) geospatial analysis of gentrification-related indicators using administrative data in order to use a rich array of data to better understand how community members communicate their experiences in their neighborhood as it gentrifies.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work.Discipline: Social Work
Motions of the Soul: A Poetics of Religious Desire in Early Modern Metrical Psalms
Get PDFThesis advisor: Mary Crane“Motions of the Soul” explores and analyzes moments in the development of what I call an early modern poetics of religious desire, i.e. desire that has God as its referent. This poetics of religious desire builds upon but also departs from and transforms early modern Petrarchan and Ovidian poetics of secular erotic desire. I examine the poetics of religious desire in sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century metrical psalms, which are verse paraphrases of the lyric prayers that constitute the biblical book of Psalms. While much critical attention has been paid to seventeenth-century religious lyric poetry and its engagement with and response to contemporary secular love lyric traditions, much less attention has been paid to literary metrical psalms, which were the predominant form of religious poetry in the sixteenth century and, some have argued, the parent to the religious lyric poetry that flowered in the seventeenth century. This dissertation analyzes metrical psalms by Sir Thomas Wyatt, Anne Locke, Sir Philip Sidney, and George Herbert, exploring and demonstrating how these poets bring together the poetics of secular love poetry with the biblical poetics of the Psalms and contemporary theological and philosophical discourses on desire in order to develop a poetics of religious desire that illustrates and addresses early modern English culture’s interests and concerns in relation to desiring God.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: English
Sociological Factors Determining Students' Undergraduate Majors
Get PDFThesis advisor: Latrica BestThis research project examines the sociological factors that contribute to how Boston College undergraduate students choose their majors. Based on previous research, parental influence has typically been a major factor when students choose their majors. Using rational choice theory, I expand on previous research by examining how parental influence and other sociological factors, such as perceptions of the job market and high school education socialization, impact the selection of college majors. In order to conduct this study, I interviewed twenty three Boston College undergraduate students (freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors). All participants were from four Boston College undergraduate schools: Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences, Carroll School of Management, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, and Connell School of Nursing. Results show that parental influence is the primary factor in the selection of majors by students. However, within parental influence, the influence that parents have is not so much about whether students are enjoying their subject and finding passion, but the influence of the job market has been still a huge factor in the way students feel about their education. As we live in a more volatile economy and live in a competitive world where individuals strive to be the best, this study provides important insight into how college students choose their majors and how external factors outside of the college environment affect students’ decisions regarding careers.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Sociology
Winners and Losers: Examining School Enrollment Rates in Post-Civil War Liberia
Get PDFThesis advisor: Paul CichelloLiberia had two devastating civil wars 1989-2003. I am examining who benefitted from the large amounts of international aid and development programs that poured into the country during the post-war rebuilding period, in terms of school enrollment rates. With USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys and Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s Georeferenced Event Dataset, I use probit and linear probability models to examine the determinants of being enrolled in school in 2007 and 2019. I find that females and kids living in rural areas had disproportionate recovery in the post-war period controlling for other explanatory variables. Household wealth was an important factor in determining enrollment. I also examine the concept of bounce-back, or rapid recovery in post-conflict contexts. I find that on a national level, there was significant recovery in enrollment rates, with about 51% of kids being enrolled in school in 2007 and about 81% being enrolled in 2019. I was unable to determine definitively whether or not this recovery was proportional to the amount of loss experienced due to the wars due to large standard deviations.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Economics