Dr. Romina Quezada Morales
Describe your dissertation in a few sentences:
My dissertation is titled Indigenous Participation in Global Education and the Indigenous Navigator in Bolivia. It examined an international partnership called the Indigenous Navigator to find out whether this partnership’s model allowed Indigenous peoples to participate in the making and implementation of their education, nationally and internationally. In particular, I examined the power dynamics of a project administered by the Indigenous Navigator partnership in the east of Bolivia, where the Monkox Nation sought to use their Bésiro language as a language of instruction and in everyday life. I included insights from another project to revitalize Quechua carried out in Bolivia’s Andean region to compare results.
What was the greatest challenge during your studies? How did you overcome it?
The greatest challenge during my studies was carrying out field work online. There was only one thing I could do to overcome it–talk to people to see what could be done. I asked all those who knew someone working in or on Bolivia, inside Columbia University and beyond. After a few months, I eventually found my way. Luckily for me, the interviewees were very hard-working, open-minded individuals who did not hesitate to contribute to my research. I remained focused and things went well.
What advice would you pass along to incoming or current doctoral students?
Expand. Do not hesitate to attend events, hang out with your peers, go out of your concentration’s comfort zone to learn from other programs, and walk around the beautiful building. Let yourself feel inspired!
Dr. Daniel Shephard
Describe your dissertation in a few sentences:
My dissertation explores how different models of refugee school inclusion influence the social and academic trajectories of pre-adolescent students from both refugee- and host-communities in Jordan. Using a longitudinal mixed-methods approach, including social network analysis, I show how school structure affects relational integration, how students influence each others' attitudes towards diversity, and how students' sense of school belonging varies across the three models of inclusion over time.
What was the greatest challenge during your studies? How did you overcome it?
The greatest challenge was navigating the ethics, logistics, and finances involved in conducting research in Jordan with children in public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. I overcame the challenge by persistence (a year of organizing and gaining permissions) and adapting my research design to accommodate reduced funding due to COVID-19.
What advice would you pass along to incoming or current doctoral students?
Be open to adapting your research to changes in context but be true to your path in the midst of obstacles and changing fads. Spend time early on planning how you will ensure your research involves and gives back to your participants.
Dr. Kairat Kurakbayev
My study is entitled “International-Standard Schools as a School Reform Modality: A Study of Policy Transfer from Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools to Regular Public Schools in Kazakhstan”. The study applies the notion of international standards as broadly defined international best practices and global education policies (e.g., competency-based education, outcomes-based education, and English as a medium of instruction) that national governments endeavor to adopt in their public school systems.
It is an exploratory case study that focuses on the design of a scale-up reform wherein national actors involved international education providers in order to adapt and disseminate curricular innovations from the autonomous system of Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) to the system of regular public schools in Kazakhstan. The study explores how and why the selection, local adaptation and scale-up of international standards occurred in Kazakhstan’s public school system.
What was the greatest challenge during your studies? How did you overcome it?The greatest challenge during my doctoral journey was juggling multiple responsibilities as a student, a partner, and a (novice) parent. The pandemic made the situation worse. But since I enjoyed my study, I managed to focus on my fieldwork and the writing process. The unstinting support of TC faculty was a crucial factor in completing my doctoral journey.
The best advice I can give is to develop your professional network inside and outside your department. There are so many excellent professors and wonderful peers at TC that can prompt you to look at educational issues from different perspectives. Making friends with different people with various research interests and professional backgrounds has been a valuable part of my TC Education.
Describe your dissertation in a few sentences:
In this dissertation, I investigate what drives young people to lead in the climate movement, examining what elevates youth concern about climate change, the role of family, friends, and schools in shaping youth climate activism, and how youth activists construct their climate action networks. Through two qualitative and one quantitative analysis, this research contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding youth participation in political action on climate change. The findings emphasize the need to address structural inequalities and promote youth agency in climate education and activism, highlighting the challenges of intergenerational organizing.
What was the greatest challenge during your studies? How did you overcome it?
The PhD event horizon is pretty far out from where you begin. So, it’s critical to keep your focus and maintain your pace. Although it’s cliché, the work of completing your PhD is a marathon and not a sprint. Staying on task and persevering was hard and sometimes I wavered. I overcame this challenge by sticking to a schedule and breaking up work into smaller pieces. When I finished small pieces, I’d reward myself - maybe a dessert, a few moments with a book, or playing with my cats.
What advice would you pass along to incoming or current doctoral students?
Get a cat! But in all seriousness, find parts of your life that are not part of your graduate studies and hold on to them. It’s important to seek balance while trying to traverse the PhD journey. Also, once you finish course work, it’s easy to lose contact with your cohort as you are in the field collecting data. Try to maintain those connections because the writing part of the dissertation is much better working together! As they say - misery loves company.
Congratulations to all the newly minted ICE PhDs and we look forward to seeing where your journey post graduation takes you!