Everyday Citizenship for Young Children at a Faith-Based School: An Ethnographic Study
Open Access
- Author:
- Olgun Baytas, Muge
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 17, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Stephanie Schroeder, Major Field Member
Kimberly Powell, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
David Gamson, Outside Unit & Field Member
Allison Henward, Major Field Member
Gail Boldt, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kimberly Anne Powell, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Ethnographic research
Faith-based school
Early childhood education
Citizenship education
Values education - Abstract:
- This dissertation research draws data from an ethnographic study that examined how faith-based schools promote citizenship and provide an environment through school values which are formally and informally represented in teacher talk and curriculum as well as in the school program. I conduct my research in two Kindergarten/1st grade multiage classrooms at the Quaker school in the Northeastern United States to understand how the school’s values, which are formally and informally represented in teachers’ talks and curricula, are embodied, enacted, supported, and contradicted in the relationships between teachers and students. In addition, I work to understand how the teacher’s approach to the curriculum may produce different and inequitable outcomes related to the children’s senses of intellectual, capacity, and emotional well-being as well as children’s understanding of being a citizen. Therefore, my dissertation research attempts to show how an early childhood educational ethnography theorized through a poststructural analytic perspective can produce new approaches to pedagogical practices pertaining to the field of citizenship education. By post-structural analysis, I mean how the shared sets of ideas about citizenship education through the politics of knowledge come to dominate our understandings and actions and mask the invisible power in the school environment and contribute to inequities in it.