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In a diverse society, those who decide how government services are delivered may not be similar to the service recipients, and the assumptions underlying their policies may not apply to those recipients. Scholars have identified how various factors relate to these assumptions and affect service delivery. The first purpose of this dissertation is to explore how these factors may combine to produce inequality in the delivery of government services. The second purpose is to explore how participation by service recipients in decision-making processes can interrupt these patterns. This is done using a participatory, student-centered learning program as a case study in which teachers provide educational services to students. The results have implications for research and practice pertaining to inequality in education and delivery of other services.The first essay examines how individual, environmental, and contextual factors may lead to assumptions of service providers that result in inequality. This essay describes how factors identified by institutional theorists, representative bureaucracy scholars, and those who study organizational history can interact over time to explain how assumptions may produce inequality in service delivery. Participation by service recipients from underrepresented groups in decision-making is introduced as an intervention that potentially interrupts patterns that produce inequality.The second essay focuses on the relationship between participation by underrepresented service recipients and achievement of service delivery goals. The Math Coaching Program (MCP), a participatory, student-centered learning program, serves as a case study to explore the relationship between student participation in classroom decision-making and student test scores. Estimates using a cross-classified, multi-level model indicate that the MCP is positively related to black student test scores. The results suggest that researchers and practitioners should further explore programs that elicit participation from underrepresented groups to reduce inequality that arises as the government delivers services.The third essay explores the relationship between organizational culture and the implementation of participatory programs by analyzing the relationship between teachers’ perceived school culture and their ability to implement the MCP. Results from a survey and teachers’ responses to open-ended questions suggest that teachers who reported belonging to schools with more collaborative cultures were better able to implement the MCP. This research indicates that organizational culture may be relevant to policymakers and administrators who wish to implement participatory programs.The fourth essay constructs a systems model, based upon the Bass Diffusion Model (Bass, 1963), that can be used to understand the complexity of MCP implementation. The model is holistic and captures interdependencies among its elements, including feedback dynamics. Moreover, the model provides a space for service providers to test their assumptions regarding the best ways to implement the MCP. |
