Date of Award
Fall 2002
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Augenstein, John J.
Second Advisor
Pink, William T.
Third Advisor
Halula, Kim K.
Abstract
The call for community is heard everywhere today - in national politics, in the academic disciplines, in education, and even in business. In every aspect of education, language has shifted from a focus on the individual to a focus on community. For instance, in pedagogy the focus is on cooperative learning; in teacher education, professional communities; in administration, community of leaders; and in moral education, a renewed emphasis on character education and community has begun to displace the Kohlbergian focus on moral reasoning and principles of universal justice (Noddings, 1996). In all these movements and discussions, it is assumed that community is an important social good, perhaps, the very foundation of moral life. In the last two decades, there has been extensive research on identifying the factors that comprise the quality of a school (Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer & Weisenbaker, 1979; Fashola & Slavin, 1998; Hoy, Tarter & Kottkamp, 1991; Lightfoot, 1983; Rogers & Freiberg, 1994; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, Ouston and Smith, 1979; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993;). The research has been guided by many different voices. Such voices range from thinking about schools as if they were akin to factories (identifying the characteristics of inputs necessary to obtain the desired outputs), to speaking about schools as if they were akin to families, stressing the dynamics of caring which ground the kind of positive familial relationships which lead to healthy growth. Over the years, ideas of what counts for the character and quality of teaching/learning varied substantially (Cohen & Ball, 1990; Cohen & Spillane, 1991). Various strands of these research studies and the reforms they have promoted have focused on numerous aspects of teachers' and students' workplace context in efforts to identify factors that shape teachers' practice and, by extension, student outcomes (McLaughlin, 1993)...