Despite the technical competence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) graduates of the Department of Computer Science (DCS) at the University of Guyana, stakeholders’ perception generally holds that they lack affective and behavioural (soft) skills. These soft skills are expected of them to lead and champion technological change in Guyana. This dissertation addresses the question of what is understood about, and how meaning and sense are made of, the concept of ‘ICT graduate employability’, in the context of the local public sector, by the key stakeholders: employers (government), and alumni (graduates) and lecturers (educators) of the DCS. On account of the cyclic, incremental, reflective nature of Action Research (AR) and its tenet of integrating theory with practice, an AR project was undertaken to develop a deep local understanding about ICT graduate employability. This understanding has implications for how ICT graduates are prepared as a function of their programme of study in the DCS and how their performance and careers are managed in the public sector. The research comprised one reconnaissance study (Cycle 0), an intervention-based study (Cycle 1), and a qualitative study (Cycle 2). The focus and direction of Cycle 2 were refined by insights garnered from Cycles 0 and 1. Cycle 2 employed surveys, interviews, and focus groups to elicit the perceptions, views, opinions, experiences, values, and framing ideas and beliefs of a sample of forty participants. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns and develop themes in the process of analysing and interpreting the data. The findings unearthed a local definition of ICT graduate employability; revealed implications of environmental factors in the public sector for the psychological safety and resilience of ICT graduates; and informed recommendations for a locally relevant ICT graduate education ecosystem.

This research utilised the action research design to explore the use of Moodle by lecturers and students in three cycles. The qualitative and mixed methods methodologies used in cycles 0 and 1 respectively, revealed that students’ use was influenced by how lecturers used the platform. Cycle 2, therefore, explored how lecturers delivered courses through Moodle and how students perceived interaction with the instructor, content, and peers and the extent to which these influenced student satisfaction. The research questions examined how lecturers used Moodle to foster interaction between learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner; students’ perceptions regarding interaction between learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner; the relationship between learner-interface interaction and a) learner-content, b) learner-instructor, c) learner-learner interaction and d) student satisfaction; whether perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, computer self-efficacy, sex, age, faculty, and ethnicity predicted a) learner-content, b) learner-instructor, and c) learner-learner interaction; and the extent to which learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner interaction via Moodle influenced student satisfaction. The concurrent mixed method action research design was utilised with qualitative data collected from nine lecturers via interviews and quantitative data collected from 86 students via surveys. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data while Pearson correlations and multiple regressions were used to analyse the quantitative data. The findings indicated that perceived usefulness and learner-instructor interaction were positive significant predictors of student satisfaction. The study also revealed that lecturers found Moodle useful for interaction but were challenged to effectively foster engagement with students, content, and their peers, at all times. Lecturers experienced several challenges including engaging students via discussion forums, providing timely feedback on assessment, workload, and complaints from students among others. Lecturers had several recommendations for how the virtual environment could be improved inclusive of the addition of instructional designers to the cadre of support staff and the need for a blended learning policy. These findings suggest that lecturers and students recognised the value Moodle provided for teaching and learning and may be used as a guide for strengthening the use of the resource towards improving the quality of interaction and the degree of student satisfaction at the institution.

In this three-article dissertation, I explore three aspects of the Next Education Workforce initiative (NEW), an education reform effort hailing from Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Through the initiative, NEW seeks to change schools and schooling, breaking down the physical and metaphorical walls of the predominant one-teacher, one-classroom staffing model. Instead, NEW argues that schools should employ team-based staffing models, where teams of educators with unique and distributed expertise can deepen and personalize learning for all students. At the time of the defense of this dissertation, 485 educators in 122 teams from 45 schools in 10 school systems work in NEW’s team-based staffing models. Almost 10,000 students are taught in NEW’s team-based staffing models. Each article in this dissertation was written to be published separately and can be read independently. However, these articles act as a foundational trilogy of evidence for NEW when read together. The first article explores the genealogical origins of NEW. Team-based staffing models’ roots can be traced back to the 1950s. This article asks, “Where did team-based staffing models come from?” Additionally, given the one-teacher, one-classroom staffing model is the predominant model of schooling today, it also asks, “Why did team-based staffing models not stick the first time?” The answers to these two genealogical questions set up the second article well. After an exploration of the reasons why team-based staffing models declined, this article asks, “What evidence from education research and research from other fields has been generated that supports the transition to team-based based staffing models?” This conceptual article summarizes the evidence for the identified team-level elements of NEW models. Finally, given the genealogical and conceptual evidence, this third article explores what educators experience when they work in team-based staffing models. Using an already existing dataset, the third article explores the experiences of teachers of color in NEW models. In particular, this article explores their satisfaction, self-efficacy, collaboration, teacher-student interactions, and commitment to the profession. It also compares their experiences to the experiences of teachers of color in one-teacher, one-classroom models and White teachers in NEW and one-teacher, one-classroom models.

For immigrant youth, the development of national identity has been linked to a broad range of positive long-term outcomes, not only for these youth themselves but also for their children and grandchildren. However, the social ecosystems in which these young people live can positively or negatively impact the development of national identity—and, therefore, affect their integration into the settlement nation. Both national policy contexts and the daily interactions of students in their schools have been found to play a role in immigrants’ beliefs about and attachment to their settlement nations. In this dissertation, I explore the relationship between immigrant students’ sense of national identity, school climate, and the national policy contexts in which those schools are located, seeking to understand the degree to which school climate factors may counteract the influence of national policy contexts. Using hierarchical linear regression, I combine data on 13 European nations from the 2016 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study and from the European Union’s Migrant Integration Policy Index, analyzing the relative predictive strength and significance of a range of factors, including indices of national immigration policy, student demographics, and school factors, such as student-teacher relationships, peer relationships, and participatory engagement in the democratic processes of the school. While I find significant and positive relationships between national policy indices and immigrant students’ national identity, I find that school climate has a larger predictive strength for immigrants’ national identity than national policy contexts, pointing to the role that schools can play as countercultural sites of national incorporation in which immigrant children develop strong and positive identification with their settlement nations.