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Capital Improvements to Principal Leadership: Culturally Responsive District Strategies to Retain School Principals
Get PDFThesis advisor: Vincent ChoThe purpose of this study was to explore the strategies districts use to retain principals in their complex roles through the framework of culturally responsive district leadership. This qualitative case study explored how district leaders in one Massachusetts school district focused on principal retention and whether their actions influenced a principal's decision to remain in their role. The study took place during a global health pandemic placing principals at the center of navigating this crisis. This study is part of a larger study that investigated how principals benefit from and shape professional capital to improve schools. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with district level leaders and principals. Findings demonstrated that there are things districts can do that positively influence principal retention, although these practices are not necessarily culturally responsive. Data supported the literature that professional development and mentoring, improved working conditions, and autonomy all positively influence principal retention. In addition, this study concluded that focusing on positive relationships and “growing your own” leadership are also key strategies to promote principal retention. Inorder to enact culturally responsive retention, recommendations include exploring whiteness in leadership and the influence of race on principal retention. Additionally. further investigation needs to be done examining the influence of higher accountability for student outcomes on principal retention.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Capital Improvements on Principal Leadership: The Principal's Influence on the Retention of Educators of Color
Get PDFThesis advisor: Vincent ChoThis individual case study is part of a larger group study examining how principals benefit from and shape professional capital to improve schools. A pressing demand on principals is not only hiring more educators of color, but also ensuring they are retaining them. Previous research tends to focus on the strategies and tools that will lead educators of color to enter the profession; however, educators of color are leaving at higher rates than their White counterparts. Using data comprised of interviews of seven educators of color and eight principals from a large, urban school district in Massachusetts, this qualitative case study explores the leadership strategies, if any, principals use to promote the retention of their educators of color in the Elody School District and why these educators of color remain in the district. My analyses, framed through a critical race theory lens, focus on the shared experiences of these educators who come from different buildings within their district. My findings are split into sections, in accordance with my research questions. First, the principals interviewed believed they employed specific strategies to retain their educators of color. These strategies included acknowledging race, breaking down racist structures that prevent their educators of color from advancing, and amplifying the voices of their educators of color ensuring, regardless of their role, they have a voice, are heard, and are supported within their staffs that consist of a majority White educators. Second, these educators of color stayed because they believed it was important their students saw educators who looked like them. They also stayed because they believed their principals valued their knowledge and experience. Centering voices that are generally understudied, this inquiry adds to the growing body of knowledge that leads to retaining educators of color.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Professional Learning and Instructional Leadership During COVID-19: Communities of Practice: Teacher Learning and Principal Support of Teacher Learning
Get PDFThesis advisor: Martin M. ScanlanProblem and Purpose: Professional learning has the potential for significant impact within the realm of teaching and learning. District and school-based leaders spend valuable time mapping professional development calendars and planning learning opportunities for staff. In addition to the time spent, professional learning has a significant impact on the budget. Planning and implementing professional learning is a timely and expensive endeavor. However, professional learning often falls short in delivery. Impacts are limited and sometimes even negative when staff have a bad experience. During a time of crisis, professional learning is paramount as all stakeholders respond and adjust. Time is of the essence during a crisis. As a result, effective delivery of professional learning is critical for managing and maintaining the instructional core. The purpose of this study is to further explore and understand what influences teacher professional learning and instructional practices. Additionally, this study will seek to identify the ways in which principals create the conditions to support teachers’ professional learning. Understanding teacher learning and leadership support for learning will help practitioners to design for learning that has an impact.
Methods: To answer these questions, a qualitative case-study of one medium sized urban district in Massachusetts was studied. The district reflects a diverse student body that includes English Language Learners, students with disabilities, and students identified as high needs. Interviews, observations, and document review were utilized for data collection. Analysis of the data was informed by Communities of Practice.
Implications: In order for professional learning opportunities to be meaningful and to have an impact, district and school based leaders should remain mindful that learning is a social endeavor. Balancing vertical and horizontal power with creating space for partnership will contribute to professional learning plans that are productive for teachers and that engage principals in creating the conditions to support teacher learning.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Anti-Racist Educational Leadership in Times of Crisis: Anti-Racism in Predominantly White Schools
Get PDFThesis advisor: Andrew MillerDespite reform, de facto segregation is still prominent in cities and towns across the country, and schools are no exception. White students are likely to attend schools that are 70% White, Black and Latinx students are likely to attend schools that are at least 50% Black or Latinx. Research has shown that predominantly White schools (>70% White) tend to perpetuate structural racism through tracking, inequitable grading practices, and parents’ opportunity hoarding. Furthermore, students of color in predominantly White schools often experience deficit thinking, racial spotlighting, microaggressions, and isolation. Since true integration of America’s public schools is not likely, it is important to determine how, if at all, school leaders perceive the emergence of anti-racism in predominantly White schools, especially given the disproportionate racial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and raised consciousness around structural racism. It is also important to identify the conditions that support or constrain anti-racist initiatives in these mostly White spaces. Using qualitative methods, this case study of a predominantly White school district finds that anti-racism in predominantly White schools can be enacted, most notably in the areas of grading practices, leveling, curriculum, and student support programs. However, the findings also demonstrate that resistance from White teachers and parents, combined with a fear of burning teachers out, did not allow for accountability for anti-racist practices, which ultimately slowed the pace of systemic anti-racist change.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Anti-Racist Educational Leadership in Times of Crisis: Latinx Educational Leaders: Culturally Responsive Leadership
Get PDFThesis advisor: Andrew F. MillerThis qualitative case study of a single district explored how Latinx educational leaders made sense of their practice during the COVID-19 pandemic and our nation’s recent racial reckoning. The district in this study claimed a commitment to anti-racist practice through their mission, vision, and public commitment. To respond to the research question, a culturally responsive leadership conceptual framework from Khalifa et al. (2016) and Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth theory adapted from critical race theory was used. Who is in front of students matters—their identification with teachers and school leaders can have a significant impact on their outcomes (Ladson Billings, 2021; Tatum, 2017). In Massachusetts, Latinx students make up over 21% of the population, yet only 3% of educators identify as Latinx (NCES, 2018). To respond to the research question, qualitative methodology was used to collect data through six semi-structured interviews of educational leaders who identified as Latinx. The participants in the study held a variety of impactful yet non-traditional leadership roles within their schools and district. Findings revealed two important distinctions in the analysis of the data: (a) the challenges Latinx leaders face in their practice compares to national trends; and (b) participants were leading from classrooms and across the organization beyond traditional leadership roles. Furthermore, all participants had a clear understanding of the equity-centered initiatives and efforts put forth by the district to promote the district’s anti-racist commitment. This provided commonality in language across all six interview participants when making sense of their practice within the context of their work in the district. Nonetheless, incongruencies persist in how these educators perceived the impact of their leadership practice—specifically during the last two years—which exposes a disconnect between the district’s stated commitment to equity and the participants’ understanding of their practice. Additionally, a critical finding suggested that each interview participant identified strongly with their diverse cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds as assets to supporting students. Understanding the experiences of these Latinx educational leaders—namely their challenges, biases, and microaggressions—can help develop culturally responsive schools and districts and build educators’ skill sets around supporting Latinx students.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
The Purification of the Memory According to St. John of the Cross
Get PDFThesis advisor: André BrouilletteThesis advisor: Steven PayneThesis (STL) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry.Discipline: Sacred Theology
Essays in Applied Microeconomic Theory:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Uzi SegalThis collection of papers examines applications of microeconomic theory to practical problems. More specifically, I identify frictions between theoretical results and agent behavior. I seek to resolve these tensions by either proposing mechanisms to more closely capture the theoretical environment of interest or extending the model to more closely approximate the world as individuals perceive it. In the first chapter, "Compensation without Distortion,'' I propose a new mechanism for compensating subjects in preference elicitation experiments. The motivation for this tool is the theoretical problem of incentive compatibility in decision experiments. A hallmark of experimental economics is the connection between a subject's payment with their actions or decisions, however previous literature has highlighted shortcomings in this link between compensation and methods currently used to elicit beliefs. Specifically, compensating individuals based on choices they make increases reliability, however these payments can themselves distort subjects' preferences, limiting the resulting data's usefulness. I reexamine the source of the underlying theoretical tension, and propose using a stochastic termination mechanism called the "random stopping procedure'' (RSP). I show that the RSP is theoretically able to structurally avoid preference distortions induced by the current state of the art protocols. Changing the underlying context subjects answer questions—by resolving payoff uncertainty immediately after every decision is made—the assumed impossibility of asking multiple questions without creating preference distortions is theoretically resolved. To test this prediction, I conduct an experiment explicitly designed to test the accuracy of data gathered by the RSP against the current best practice for measuring subject preferences. Results show that RSP-elicited preferences more closely match a control group's responses than the alternative. In the second chapter, "School Choice and Class Size Externalities,'' I revisit the many-to-one matching problem of school choice. I focus on the importance of problem definition, and argue that the "standard'' school choice model is insufficiently sensitive to relevant characteristics of student preferences. Motivated by the observation that students care about both the school they attend, and how over- or under-crowded the school is, I extend the problem definition to allow students to report preferences over both schools and cohort sizes. (Cohort size is intended as a generalization of school crowding, relative resources, or other similar school characteristics.) I show that, if students do have preferences over schools and cohort sizes, current mechanisms lose many of their advantageous properties, and are no longer stable, fair, nor non-wasteful. Moreover, I show that current mechanisms no longer necessarily incentivize students to truthfully report their preferences over school orderings. Motivated by the observation that students care about both the school they attend, and how over- or under-crowded the school is, in "School Choice and Class Size Externalities'' I extend the standard school choice problem to incorporate both of these elements. I show that, if students do have preferences over schools and cohort sizes, current mechanisms are no longer stable, fair, nor non-wasteful. In response, I construct an alternative matching mechanism, called the deferred acceptance with voluntary withdrawals (DAwVW) mechanism, which improves on the underlying (unobserved) manipulability of "standard" mechanisms. The DAwVW mechanism is deterministic and terminates, more closely satisfies core desirable matching properties, and can yield substantial efficiency gains compared to mechanisms that do not consider class size. In the third chapter, I provide an overview of the history of decision experiments in economics, describe several of the underlying tensions that motivate my other projects, and identify alternative potential solutions that have been proposed by others to these problems. In this project, I add context to the larger field of experimental economics in which my research is situated. In addition to the mechanisms discussed by prior literature reviews, I incorporate and discuss recently developed payment and elicitation methods, and identify these new approaches' advantages and drawbacks.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Disorder and Distortion: A Theological Approach to Addiction
Get PDFThesis advisor: Stephen J. PopeThis dissertation attends to the crisis of addiction in the United States. The increasing number in annual overdoses and the inadequacy of national responses to curtail these preventable deaths demands an immediate moral response. In the last year, deaths caused by overdose increased by nearly 29 percent, and 20.8 million people in the United States are currently living with substance use disorders. The number of families affected by addiction presents a striking testimony to the scope of the problem. Nevertheless, there is still enormous disagreement over the nature of addiction and therefore how to best treat it. This dissertation will therefore offer a theological approach to addiction in order to advocate for a social response to this crisis.This dissertation proceeds in five chapters. In the first chapter, I evaluate the medical and moral models of addiction. This first chapter engages research in neurobiology and psychology and argues that these models are premised upon a false dichotomy between determinism and freedom of the will. The second chapter explores disagreements in bioethics over the meanings of health, disease, and illness. These different definitions contribute to the chasm between the medical and moral models of addiction. This chapter proposes a holistic account of health for understanding addiction and healing. The third chapter grounds this holistic account of health in Karl Rahner’s transcendental anthropology in order to uphold the fundamental relationality of human persons and to move past the false dichotomy presented in chapter one between determinism and freedom of the will. This chapter then offers a theological examination of sin as a power or force that preconditions freedom. It concludes by proposing a theological and relational account of autonomy. The fourth chapter engages philosophy of the mind in order to argue for a nonreductive approach to mentality that appreciates the ways in which human persons are co-constituted by bottom up and top down causality. A nonreductive approach to mentality offers a way to understand addiction as an interacting set of processes and patterns. This fourth chapter concludes by considering the possibility for responsibility by examining narrativity, vulnerability, and imagination. It argues that there is a moral responsibility to imagine a better world for people living with addictions, and to bring that world about. Finally, the fifth chapter draws upon the theological virtue of solidarity and the principle of the preferential option for the poor in order to articulate a preferential option for people living with addictions. I argue here that Church institutions can stand in solidarity with people who suffer from addiction by acting as providers, educators, and lobbyers.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Theology
Essays in International Economics:
Get PDFThesis advisor: James E. AndersonThis dissertation consists of two essays in international economics with a focus on the effects of exchange rate fluctuations on an economy through their impact on international capital flows and international trade. The first chapter examines the effect of exchange rate risk in foreign investors' payoff on the informativeness of security prices and home bias in portfolio holdings. I present a model with dispersed private information where foreign investors' payoff differs from domestic investors' payoff because of exchange rate changes. The equilibrium asset price aggregates private information and acts as a public signal about future payoffs. I show that higher private information acquired by foreign investors about their exchange rate adjusted payoff has two opposing effects on the information obtained by domestic investors from the equilibrium price. First, foreign investors' private information increases information about asset payoff in domestic currency, which increases information about domestic investors' payoff in the price. On the other hand, foreign investors' private information increases information about exchange rate changes, which lowers the relative information about domestic investors' payoff in the price. This second effect is higher if exchange rate volatility is high. I find support for the model's implication by using firm-level data (2000-2016) and showing that foreign institutional ownership\footnote{the fraction of common stocks outstanding that is foreign-owned} of firms from higher exchange rate volatility countries is associated with lower price informativeness. The second chapter improves on current treatment of exchange rate variation in quantitative trade models. Exchange rate changes with heterogeneous passthrough to buyers are embedded in the structural gravity model. Quantification on two digit annual bilateral trade data reveals real effects of exchange rate changes on producers that are substantial for some country-sector-time period observations. Real national income effects are small but not always negligible. Effective exchange Rates with Gravitas (ERGs) are introduced as theory-consistent indexes to guide potential policy remedies.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Neighboring the Invisible: Liberation Theologies, the Exodus Narrative, and the Specter of Canaan
Get PDFThesis advisor: Roberto S. GoizuetaClassical formulations of liberation theology appropriated the biblical narrative of the exodus as a paradigmatic image of a God who sides with the oppressed and acts in history to transform situations of injustice. Recognition of this foundational narrative as a preeminent expression of God’s partial love for the victims of history prompted liberation theologians to begin analyzing the contemporary significance of the exodus theme in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paradigmatic reception of the exodus in black and Latin American liberation theologies exhibits the pivotal role of the narrative in the emergence of theological reflection guided by the preferential option for the poor. In the late 1980s, however, theologians who were revisiting the exodus narrative in light of the complex realities of settler-colonial power, the mechanics of erasure, and experiences of social invisibilization began to reevaluate the meaning of the exodus in connection with its troubling underside—namely, the envisioned invasion, dispossession, and destruction of the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan. Consequently, the paradigmatic conception of the exodus was critiqued and the enduring value of the exodus as a liberative resource was called into question, especially in relation to contexts and histories of suffering which can be identified in certain ways with biblical representations of the Canaanites. Catalyzed by Osage, Palestinian, and womanist theologians, this important shift in the conversation on the relationship between the exodus tradition and God’s relation to the oppressed brought into sharp focus the harmful dimensions of a biblical narrative which had come to signify the effective justice of God amid dehumanizing conditions. In addition, this renewed attention to the exodus demonstrated how its entanglement with the theme of conquest intersects with challenges of complicity in structural violence and exclusionary legacies in the United States as well as in the larger context of global geopolitics. This dissertation advances the conversation on the theological appropriation of the exodus in several ways. The project first examines the liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutiérrez and James Cone as exemplary of the paradigmatic model. The discussion of critical departures from the exodus paradigm addresses the contributions of Naim Stifan Ateek, Delores S. Williams, and Robert Allen Warrior. Finally, a constructive response to the question of the role of the exodus in theological reflection grounded in the option for the poor is put forth. This response first introduces key insights from scholars in the field of settler colonial studies as a framework for placing Ateek and Warrior in dialogue with each other as indigenous interpreters of the biblical narrative. The results of this dialogue are then developed in relation to important theological perspectives discussed earlier in the project in order to reimagine the contemporary significance of the exodus in a manner that renders audible the cries of the Canaanites. To neighbor what has been relegated to absence, to disrupt the forgetfulness of what lies buried in both text and world, to sit with broken narratives and encounter God in their disregarded victims—this is central to the challenges facing readers who turn to the exodus in the spirit of liberation today.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Theology