Term of Award

Fall 2025

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

College of Education

Committee Chair

John Weaver

Committee Member 1

Ming Fang He

Committee Member 2

Daniel Chapman

Committee Member 3

William Ayers

Abstract

This dissertation reimagines public education through an existential lens, advocating for a humanitarian approach that resists the prevailing dominance of standardized, data-driven systems. Drawing primarily from the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1936, 1940, 1943, 1947, 1965, 1992), it contends that education should honor freedom, nurture authenticity, embrace encounters with others, and cultivate imagination as essential to human development. Influenced by the works of William Ayers (1998, 2004, 2008, 2016, 2024), Maxine Greene (1967, 1973, 1978, 1988, 2000, 2001), Paulo Freire (1970, 2001, 2004), Christopher Emdin (2010, 2016, 2021), and Byung-Chul Han (2018, 2024), speculative essays—each focused on an existential theme—are utilized to explore the transformative possibilities of education when grounded in the experiences, imagination, and actions of students and educators. Individuals are positioned as subjects—who are always in the process of becoming through choice, responsibility and engagement—instead of objects to be measured and controlled. By centering existential freedom as the thread tying together each essay, this dissertation disrupts entrenched power systems and seeks to contribute to conversations about what education for humanity means in an unjust world.

OCLC Number

1550697030

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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