2022 Capstones

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Mira Debs
Education Studies Program

​Abstract: ​In this capstone, I explore how American history teachers today are negotiating and theorizing the debate over critical race theory (C.R.T.) in K-12 education. To do so, I provide an analysis drawing from 31 interviews with American history teachers in states (such as Texas, Georgia, and New Hampshire) where C.R.T. is a hot-button issue and place these teachers in conversation with relevant scholarship. In this process, I center interviewees’ unique perspectives as teachers and history experts on a cultural phenomenon which, although it drastically affects them, scholarship has not generally given them the space to theorize on. Prior to interview analysis, I also contextualize this debate as part of a longer history of the culture wars’—the struggle between the right and left to seize control of American values—fury over American history curricula. To do so, I examine the history and theories of the culture wars in broad strokes, then zero in on the history wars specifically. Finally, I carry my historical analysis through to the origins and current manifestations of the C.R.T. debates.  

Adviser: Carla Horwitz

Second Reader: Mira Debs
Education Studies Program

Abstract: This capstone challenges readers to think carefully about the way public schools structure nutrition experiences, and what students are taught through interacting with said experiences. Recognizing that half of the leading causes of preventable illnesses in the country spawn from poor dietary choices, this research seeks to reveal the challenges that prevent schools from addressing these habits during the twelve years most students are compelled to attend. At the heart of this conversation lies a key question: how (the nation) came to assign some of the most essential lessons (healthy eating and healthy movement) to some of the least “valued” people in the school building? Driven by the need to address that paradox, this research discusses key priorities of advocates who have influenced the structure of school meal experiences at critical points, centers research that reveals increasing culinary capacity of food service workers as a vital ingredient long omitted from school lunch recipes, and elevates research that proves this remedy addresses key challenges in the effort to install healthier lunches in schools. 

Adviser: Mira Debs

Second Reader: Janna Wagner
Education Studies Program

Abstract: University students are often a transient, self-segregating population, however their relationships with local community members can, for some students, be a source of profound meaning. This project explores university students’ feelings of connectedness with surrounding communities by using Yale University and New Haven, Connecticut as a case study. Through a survey of 288 Yale undergraduate students and interviews with 4 more, I investigate a number of factors potentially linked to Yale students’ feelings of connectedness with New Haven residents. I conclude that two patterns of behavior – deliberate involvement with city life and approaching local communities through a lens of reciprocity – are both strongly correlated with a student’s sense of connectedness with their neighbors. Ultimately, these findings broaden understandings of how students form relationships with local community members and suggest a framework for how students should respectfully approach their neighbor

Adviser: Carla Horwitz

Second Reader: Richard Lemon
Education Studies Program

Abstract: ​ ​Schools are a social construction. There is so much that we take for granted as inherent to schooling, that in fact originated in a particular social and historical context. The purposes behind the creation of these patterns and practices that have been utilized for decades may or may not align with what we view as the purpose of education today — which itself is not widely agreed upon. My capstone will demonstrate what it can look like to conduct a public questioning of school norms through a creative project. I created an Instagram account that investigates common school practices: standardized testing, tracking, and school uniforms. The posts will make academic information accessible and invite a young-adult audience to begin wondering and uncovering why we do school the way we do. Through engaging with this account, people of all backgrounds will start to see the connection between practice and purpose, understand the reasons behind what schools do, and come to their own conclusions about whether it needs to ​​​​change. 

Adviser: Mira Debs

Second Reader: Jane Karr
Education Studies Program, Department of Political Science

Abstract:  Censorship, or the lack of press freedom, has been prevalent in high school journalism programs even before recent controversial discussions about COVID-19 policy, critical race theory and racial justice movements in schools. Research has established that scholastic journalism is a tool of democratic education, which aims to equip students with knowledge and skills to effectively engage in democratic society. When uncensored and able to cover controversial topics freely, students in high school journalism programs can ask tough questions freely and publish articles with authority on issues that are central to community structure, power, and life. This project explores the extent to which established, award-winning high school journalism programs in the United States can expect censorship, as well as how students and advisors in those programs discuss and cover controversial topics — divisive political and social issues including COVID policy, racism, mental health, and inappropriate faculty conduct. The study accomplishes its goals using textual analysis — of fall 2021 articles in newspapers on the National Scholastic Press Association’s list of top 100 publications all-time — and interviews with 11 high school journalists and their faculty advisors from those award-winning schools. Through this study, I find that the established scholastic journalism programs in my sample had high levels of press freedom and were rarely censored — largely because the programs were student-driven programs where students had access to key sources and power networks, confidence in their journalistic abilities, and conviction in the merits of press freedom. 

Adviser:

Second Reader: Richard Lemons
Education Studies Program

Abstract:  Many individuals dedicate their careers to the cause of serving students and improving their educational experiences, however only a few decide that the best way they can accomplish that goal is through starting their own enterprise and creating a new school. This paper seeks out an explanation of the internal and external motivations that compel school founders’ entrepreneurial vision and belief in their ability to effect change. School founders assume the roles of educators and executives, and thus the subpopulation of them that are graduates of Yale College provide a unique lens onto how their motivations are inflected by the ambitions and self-concepts they develop within an elite institution with a particular point of view on developing leadership. I interviewed nine Yale College alumni who have started their own school to extract common threads in their rationales to pursue a new institution over an existing one, their visions of what they set out to achieve in their schools and beyond, the ways in which their undergraduate years were formative to their thinking and career. This project synthesizes the founders’ narratives with the aim of negotiating school founders’ place as a kind of social entrepreneur and eliciting their broader theory of the potential for social transformation held within education and individuals. 

Adviser: Mira Debs

Second Reader: Erik Harms
Department of Anthropology

Abstract:  The story of foreign language learning in Vietnam is one involving the competing influences of colonial and imperial powers from China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. For the common people, living in the wake of this economic, social, and political struggle requires a clear assessment of the motivation behind learning a second language in conjunction with policies that reflect domestic and foreign conditions. This is especially prevalent for the period between the reunification of Vietnam (1970’s) where English was discarded and the implementation of Đổi Mới (1980’s) and then successfully reintroduced. While scholars have long examined the history of English language learning in Vietnam, the debates use a top-down approach with overarching generalizations that fail to consider deviations using individual perspectives. Since few have investigated a fuller picture of foreign language education from an individual perspective, this capstone project focuses on approximately half a dozen narrations spotlighting the various cultural and social shifts of foreign languages. The interviews reveal the adaptability of the people, changing cultural context, and pressure of globalization and international integration for a country still trying to rationalize its national identity. 

Adviser: Carla Horwitz

Second Reader: Maria (Lizzy) Berrios
National Association for Family Child Care

Abstract:  Shared reading is a vital foundation of caregiver-child bonding and early literacy. Previous research has been conducted on the importance of adult emotional intelligence, reflective practice, and shared reading techniques that yield positive outcomes. However, there is little to no current research on the unique development of emotional intelligence through the process of caregiving. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a potential relationship between shared reading practices and caregiver emotional intelligence growth. Using sample populations from a daycare center in a mid-size New England city, qualitative data was collected from caregivers of young children on their self-reported experiences with shared reading. Findings revealed extensive use of emotional intelligence and moderate engagement in self-reflection amongst caregivers during shared reading. Limitations and recommendations for future research and programmatic interventions based on these findings are proposed.  

Adviser: Carla Horwitz

Second Reader: Fred Volkmar
Yale Child Study Center

Abstract:  Early intervention is crucial for improved outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Clear disparities exist, however, within rates and patterns of diagnosis such that underserved communities do not receive the same support as those with better access to healthcare. These disparities fall significantly along racial and socioeconomic lines, and diagnostic disparities lead directly into disparate treatment and outcomes for individuals with ASD. This project investigates the role of healthcare providers, schools, early childhood educators, and families in the identification and diagnosis of ASD. This research includes conversations with pediatricians, psychiatrists, early childhood educators, and experts in the field of autism in order to gather background information and determine potential directions of research, explored through a review of the literature. Effective strategies for partnerships will be explored and described, along with typical challenges to meaningful collaboration. Generally, the purpose of this capstone is to identify ways to create productive partnerships and systems to reduce disparities in early ASD diagnoses. 

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Mira Debs
Education Studies Program

Abstract:  Too much of US history education follows a triumphalist, patriotic narrative. In order to achieve a more complex and truer version of American history, US history teachers should continue to embrace the teaching of difficult histories. However, many teachers identify emotional challenges that come with teaching such histories. In this capstone, I will carry out a synthetic literature revie2w in the fields of intellectual and moral child development as well as affect and pedagogy studies to argue that K12 students are ready to learn (developmentally appropriate) difficult history and examine what researchers have already found about navigating the fraught emotions and surprising affective responses that can come up when teaching difficult history. My goal is to pull out these dense, theoretical narratives into a clear, concise guide that can consolidate some best practices in navigating emotions when teaching difficult history and advance the conversation on the intersection of emotions and history education.  

Adviser: Mira Debs

Second Reader: Fred Volkmar
Yale Child Study Center

Abstract:  Students with disabilities attain a 4-year college degree at only 12.5% of the national average (“Fast Facts: Students with Disabilities,” 2021). By studying the intersection of inclusion, higher education, and disability studies, my capstone explores a subset of this dilemma to focus on students in wheelchairs’ decision-making process about where to attend college and their subsequent time at college.  

My research makes space for the complexity of students in wheelchairs’ lived experiences across the United States (U.S.) to enlighten stakeholders about the current landscape and opportunities to better support these students. For this study, I explored: what are the recent experiences of U.S. undergraduates in wheelchairs who attended residential universities versus those who lived at home during college? How can we use these experiences to deliver more responsive support these students? Commuting and residential students have inherently different experiences in college, which might include investment in college, social life, time spent at an institution, and extracurricular involvement. When combined with the unique considerations of students in wheelchairs—i.e. care, accessibility, transportation—that may implicate a residential experience, focusing on the residential distinction is important in illuminating how wheelchair users understand their choices and experiences in college.  

Interviewing nine students who used wheelchairs–living with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), Muscular Dystrophy (MD), and Cerebral Palsy (CP)–and graduated from an American college or university in the last ten years revealed wheelchair users’ tremendously complicated decision-making and experiences in college along with aspirations they shared with other college student. Confounded often with a heightened need for students in wheelchairs to attend college to gain a sense of independence they may especially lack due to disability-related dependence, this capstone is critical in making a supportive residential college experience possible (Landre, 2019). This research will hopefully inform policy recommendations related to care, accessibility, and inclusion that supports students in wheelchairs by minimizing disability-related burdens.  

Adviser: Carla Horwitz

Second Reader: Ana Ramos Zayas
Ethnicity, Race and Migration Program

Abstract:  This creative capstone reexamines the ways in which we study Queer Latinx people and argues in favor of self-narrations and oral histories. Part one is a literature review critiquing damage-based literature on Queer Latinx people that denies them their voice. Part two rectifies the failures of existing scholarship by presenting a series of oral histories written in a creative nonfiction style. 

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Daniel HoSang
American Studies Program

Abstract:  This paper explores the possibilities of danza folklórica as a pedagogical tool of self-empowerment for youth intimately experiencing the embodied effects of hegemonic educational systems. Embodied methodologies are practiced to gesture towards the creation of a new pedagogy that is uniquely informed by the histories/realities of power discontents between Black and Indigenous communities and the empires and its complicit subjects responsible for the sustenance of the nationalized, appropriative dance of Ballet Folklórico de Mexico. By unveiling the invisibilized, yet ever-present, ghosts of this colonized dance practice, practitioners of folklórico pedagogies are able to generate a transgenerational consciousness that critically transform how oppression can be addressed and challenged in the body and its worldly relations. These pedagogical interventions were directly inspired by the knowledges crafted within the summer program, Camp Folklórico, sponsored by Junta for Progressive Action during the summer of 2021. Due to the geopolitical and sociocultural context of where these learnings had arisen, a critical, historical analysis of the neighborhood of Fair Haven and its contested communities are reviewed and supplemented with an analysis of embodied and educational conditions currently endured by youth that anchored the curricular programming.   

Adviser:

Second Reader: Talya Zemach-Bersin
Education Studies Program

Abstract:  During the 2020-2021 school year, the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of Yale students who did not re-enroll increased by a factor of 16. This capstone project explores the backgrounds and experiences of students who took time off from Yale during the 2020-2021 school year. First, I explore how students’ demographics and background data are correlated with their enrollment status during the 2020-2021 school year. Most notably, I found a positive correlation between a student’s predicted family income and their likelihood of having taken a gap year. The second part of my project consists of interviews with eight Yale undergraduate students who took a leave of absence during the 2020-2021 school year. Almost all interviewees spoke enthusiastically about their decision to take a leave of absence, although students’ experiences varied by socioeconomic status.

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Melissa Scheve
Education Studies Program

Abstract:  This capstone project explores how students who were high achieving in K-12 no-excuses charter schools understand the long-term relationship between mental health and punitive discipline used at no-excuses charter schools, based on their own experiences. To answer this question, this paper engages in a detailed review of existing literature on mental health, punitive discipline, and any relationship between the two as well as an analysis of interviews conducted with former high achieving students of no-excuses charter schools. The aim of this study is to discover whether or not, or in what ways, students perceive a relationship between their mental health and punitive discipline policies used in schools, specifically from a long-term perspective, and to serve as an initial review of information on the topic to encourage more in-depth research to be done in this area. 

Adviser: Mira Debs

Second Reader: Jason Strong

Abstract:  In July 2021, Congress passed legislation that enabled college athletes to be compensated for their athletic abilities. This landmark legislation opened the door to tremendous financial opportunities for student athletes with potential challenges in terms of spending this windfall wisely. As such, this capstone explores how universities can best support the financial knowledge of their student athletes, finding that racial minorities and young people exhibit relatively weak financial literacy, while professional athletes exhibit high levels of bankruptcy because of their “short-lived income spikes” and social pressures with newfound wealth. Thus far, the NCAA has been unsuccessful in developing financial literacy programming, and as such, federal legislators have begun to intervene within the college athletic landscape. Based on these findings, this paper recommends that universities implement financial literacy assessments, teach financial self-control strategies, and provide relationship management counseling to improve financial literacy infrastructure. Additionally, this paper recommends enhancing the dialogue between student athletes and federal legislators. 

Adviser: Mira Debs

Second Reader: Richard Lemons

Abstract:  School district central offices wield enormous power over a superintendent’s reform agenda. The bureaucrats in these offices are simultaneously responsible for the execution of a superintendent’s district-wide vision and exercise a wide degree of autonomy. Yet, in spite of their tremendous influence over the outcome of important school reform efforts, central offices remain an understudied part of the literature on superintendent leadership or bureaucracy. This paper attempts to build understanding of the dynamic between new, reform-minded superintendents and their central offices through a case study that uniquely centers the voices of school district bureaucrats. The case study illuminates three critically important lessons about central offices. First, the organization of a central office is meaningful. Structure guides how the bureaucrats in central offices think about their work and, therefore, changes to organizational structure can themselves carry meaning. Second, strong-armed reform tactics do not, at least in the short term, appear effective at building internal buy-in. Third reforms can be understood very differently by new superintendents and the staff that have spent their careers in these complex bureaucracies. Describing school district central offices as they currently exist, as this capstone sets out to do, is the first step in understanding these complicated and critically important institutions of American public education. 

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Paige Kenausis

Abstract:  This capstone investigates the potential pedagogical forms that trauma-informed education for mainstreamed d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/DHH) students can take, and answers this question through two parts: a comprehensive literature review, and a creative project. The literature review investigates trauma experiences within the d/Deaf community; the general face of trauma-informed education in the United States; the impact of mainstream education on d/DHH students; trauma-informed special education; and culturally-competent models of pedagogy, care, and trauma-informed education. The creative project draws on the findings of the literature review to propose a professional development plan for mainstream teachers of the d/Deaf and hard of hearing students with trauma experiences. These plans outline the appropriate goals, objectives, and instructional strategies necessary for hearing teachers to accomplish and meet in order to best support their d/Deaf and hard of hearing students who have experienced trauma. 

Adviser: Carla Horwitz

Second Reader: Melissa Scheve

Abstract:  As educators, researchers, and policymakers around the world are increasingly depending on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curricula to address the gaps in students’ social and emotional development which the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated, this capstone project urges them to take a culturally-sustaining approach so that they can more effectively teach students of different backgrounds.  

Existing SEL approaches and literature largely come from studies conducted in and/or centered around the United States, which has a uniquely decentralized and individualistic approach to SEL. Part I of this capstone project uses China as a case study to investigate how the development of SEL in a centralized and collectivist manner differs from the decentralized and individualistic US approach. By making this comparison, this part shows alternative ways in which SEL curriculum could be created on a national scale for countries distinct from the United States (i.e. those that are centralized and/or collectivistic).  

Part II of this capstone project is a journalistic piece that documents the history and ideal future direction of SEL in narrative prose that any teacher, principal, administrator, parent, counselor, or community member can understand without having extensive prior knowledge of SEL. This piece tracks key events that have happened across different SEL-related organizations and institutions and unravel some of the more commonly seen misleading summaries of findings from popular SEL research studies.