Award Date

5-1-2021

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching and Learning

First Committee Member

Christine Clark

Second Committee Member

Norma Marrun

Third Committee Member

Howard Gordon

Fourth Committee Member

Tiberio Garza

Fifth Committee Member

Federick Ngo

Number of Pages

236

Abstract

As world governments scramble to contain the spread on Covid-19, temporary closure of schools was enforced, and on-site classes were converted to online or virtual versions within short notice. Yet, as dictated by world society, schools must prepare students for standardized tests in order to be acknowledged as legitimate. World rankings impose pressure on school systems to target high standardized test scores in order to gain and maintain economic viability for jurisdictions. This dissertation presents the pressures of high performance in standardized tests amidst a global pandemic as a problem to be researched within a context of sociopolitical and socioeconomic systems that marginalizes those at historically oppressed cultural intersections. The design of this phenomenological multi-site case study within a culturally responsive evaluation framework is aimed at exploring and interpreting voices of educational stakeholders at marginalized cultural intersections to surface underlying issues in education systems with heavy reliance on standardized test scores for accountability. In line with requirements of a phenomenological case study, the selected sites for the study are jurisdictions where I, as the researcher, have shared lived experiences with the research participants, namely Singapore and Southern Nevada. Additionally, the two jurisdictions share the common traits of being culturally diverse and cosmopolitan with high reliance on tourism. Within five chapters, this dissertation provides details of the study’s background, review of the literature, methodology, findings, and discussion of the findings that includes aspects of cultural responsiveness that are present and absent in each jurisdiction.

Keywords

Comparative education; Crisis navigation; Humanizing; Multidimensional cultural context; Neoliberalism; Social justice in education

Disciplines

Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education | Education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Education Policy

File Format

pdf

File Size

1568 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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