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This dissertation aims to illuminate divergent ideologies of literacy and personhood in the United States and England, utilizing literary and non-literary texts from the nineteenth century to shed light on the historical constraints and conventions shaping our current moment. My version of the nineteenth century is a long one, since I look at nineteenth-century rewrites of the eighteenth-century novel "Robinson Crusoe," and I reference a few works of contemporary historical fiction set in the nineteenth century. My analysis centers on trajectories of negative personhood--in particular prisoners, slaves, and vagrant laborers--in accordance with the idea that a nation is defined by how it treats its most oppressed citizens. By comparing a range of transatlantic literary responses to canonical texts, such as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Bleak House," I demonstrate that American literature develops an increasingly exclusive model of literacy, whereas British literature advances towards a vision of universal literacy. Texts where African Americans do acquire literacy, such as "The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict," I argue, still perpetuate exclusion and perceived failure to achieve moral growth. I integrate these insights on transatlantic contexts surrounding literacy with contemporary continuities, particularly in prison education and the school-to-prison pipeline. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.) [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The purpose of this study is to propose a means of reconciling the competing ideas of library and information science's identity, thereby strengthening professional autonomy. I make the case that developing a system of virtue ethics for librarianship would be an effective way to promote that reconciliation. The first step in developing virtue ethics is uncovering librarianship's function. Standard approaches to virtue ethics rely on classical Greek ideas about the nature of being to determine function. Since classical ideas of being may no longer be persuasive, I introduce another approach to uncover librarianship's function that still meets all of the criteria needed to establish a foundation for a system of virtue ethics. This approach is hermeneutical phenomenology, the philosophical discipline of interpreting the meaning given to historical events. Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic circle technique and Paul Ricoeur's theory of narrative intelligence are used to engage in a dialogue with three crises in the history of American librarianship. These pivotal events are the fiction question, librarian nationalism during World War I, and the dispute between supporters of the "Library Bill of Rights" and social responsibility. From these crises, three recurring themes become apparent: the tendency to reconcile idealism and pragmatism, the intent to do good for individuals and society, and the role of professional insecurity in precipitating the conflicts. Through emplotment of these themes, an identity narrative for librarianship emerges. My finding is that librarianship's function is the promotion of stability-happiness. This is the dual-process of supporting dominant socio-cultural institutions as a means of protecting librarianship's ability to offer the knowledge, cultural records, and avenues for information literacy that can improve lives and facilitate individuals' pursuit of happiness. In the conclusion, the ethical implications of having stability-happiness as the profession's function are considered. It includes a discussion of how librarianship's narrative identity could be applied to develop an ethical character for the profession and how such a character, combined with knowledge of function, might address persistent problems of race and gender disparity in library and information science. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

"Understanding the individual and collective psychology of the people of Puerto Rico requires an understanding of both the history of its colonialism and the U.S. laws that have helped shaped the social world of the Puerto Rican people, in the United States and in the colony itself" (Rivera Ramos, 2001, p. 4). This research presents theoretical and empirical support for the notion that colonialism is an important current issue, and so are its broad psychosocial effects. It sustains the concept that colonialism is a relevant and unresolved subject matter for Puerto Ricans and an important issue to be revised and debated by social work professionals and scholars. An initial review of the research literature made it evident that there is an absence of any kind of instrument to measure Puerto Ricans' internalized colonialism or colonial mentality. The Colonialism Scale for Puerto Ricans (CSPR) is the instrument developed by this investigator on her attempt to measure the concept of Puerto Rican's internalized colonialism. This scale rests on the premise that attitudes are made up of cognitive, affective and behavioral rudiments. The scale was designed following a Likert's summated rating method (Aiken, 1996; Likert, 1932). A total of 249 subjects were used to test the CSPR. The majority were females, with an age distribution ranging from 18 to 80 years of age, and a fairly high level of education. The original set of items was submitted to Exploratory Factor Analysis test with Principal Axis Factoring extraction. A Promax rotation suggested three factors; factor 1 consisting of eleven out of the fifteen items, and factor 2 and 3 consisting of two items each. After theoretical evaluation of the factors they were labeled as follows: Factor 1 = "Colonial Discourse," Factor 2 = "Idea of Colonial Resistance" and Factor 3 = "Language Identity." The factors' loading ranged from 0.555 to 0.901 with a cumulative percent of variance of 64.63%, and a residual of 12%. Cronbach's alpha for the CSPR = 89.8. The CSPR is now the instrument available to quantitatively measure the degree of internalized colonialism among Puerto Rican adults. Implications for further research and social work education and practice are discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The Federal education policy No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has initiated high-stakes testing among U.S. public schools. The premise of the NCLB initiative is that all students reach proficiency in reading and math by 2014. Under NCLB, individual state education departments were required to implement annual assessments in grades two through eight within the math and English disciplines. These annual tests are considered high-stakes testing because low test scores within certain sub-groups, result in possible sanctions for school districts, such as reduced federal funds. Growing evidence, however, shows NCLB has not met its objective to improve academic achievement, especially among low wealth school districts. President Obama has shifted the focus of NCLB away from sanction and penalties on failing school district scores to rewarding and promoting high achieving school districts. Also, teacher quality has been brought to the forefront. The purpose of this study was to determine whether high-stakes testing has an impact on improving academic achievement on the following national exams: Advanced Placement, Advanced Placement U.S. History, and SAT reading/verbal and math. The study measured all Advanced Placement tests, the Advanced Placement U.S. History exam, and standardize reading/verbal and math exams in 42 states. By comparing states with high-stakes to non-stakes exams, the study examines whether national high-stakes exams are improving student achievement compared to states that have not enacted high-stakes graduating testing requirements. Furthermore this study examined the impact of teacher waivers to student performance on national exams. The No Child Left Behind Act required states to staff all core academic classes with "highly qualified" teachers. This study examined how states complied with the teacher requirement, and whether teacher waiver impacts student scores on national exams. This study also examined high school graduation rates, and the relationship between graduation rates and teacher waivers. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Academic standards for history in all states require students to learn about deeply troubling events, such as war, genocide, and slavery. Drawing on research and theories related to trauma studies and history education, this ethnographic study aims to better understand what happens when teachers and students examine the pain and suffering of others in the shared social place of an urban U.S. history classroom. In order to clarify how such troubling events are co-constructed and experienced in the classroom, I first outline a framework for conceptualizing difficult histories as histories where three interrelated components are present: (a) content centered on traumatic events; (b) a sense of identification between those studying the history and those represented in history; and (c) a moral response to these events. Analysis revealed that only two of the histories addressed over the course of one semester were co-constructed by the teacher and her students as difficult histories: slavery and Westward Expansion. Yet, even though slavery and Westward Expansion shared the defining characteristics of difficult histories, there were significant differences in how difficulty was constructed in the classroom. Analysis also revealed that the diverse group of students in this study used their understandings of these difficult histories to engage in similar activities, such as finding evidence of how they belong in America, making sense of America, and morally responding to past and present events. In both slavery and Westward Expansion, students relied heavily on their own personal experiences and beliefs to make sense of these histories. Throughout this research, the power of personal beliefs and experiences, especially those related to issues of race and ethnicity, remained crucial to students' historical understanding. They were central to students' participation in co-constructing slavery and Westward Expansion as difficult histories in the classroom and in their own applications of historical knowledge. At times these personal beliefs were vehicles to better understand distant others and at other times, they were barriers. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]