Date of Graduation

Summer 2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Transformative Education and Social Change

Committee Chairperson

John Elmore, PhD

Committee Member

Jason Wozniak, PhD

Committee Member

Dana Morrison, PhD

Abstract

Capitalism is not solely an economic system but is a particular form of life. Its pervasive effects have defined what it means to be human, live, and exist within the capitalist reality we inhabit. Education has been carefully curated with its formative potential in mind to form subjects who embody and act upon capitalist ontological assumptions. By doing so, education has been employed to constrain individuals to this reality with no possibility of any alternative way to be and become. This thesis argues that for education to be humanizing and liberating, there must be a critical examination of how capitalist forms of life and subjectivities are constituted through education, with a particular focus on ways to interrupt this process. This is explored through an analysis of historical and current trends in education and alternative educational and pedagogical methods. By doing so, alternative ways to be, live, and exist are granted the possibility of emergence. After presenting an argument for why education should be viewed from an ontological lens, a higher education course designed for future educators is proposed as a potential intervention directed toward bringing discussions of ontology into the field of education.

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