Digital Commons Network^™

"Accountable To No One": Confronting Police Power In Black Milwaukee, William I. Tchakirides

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uncovers the roots of discriminatory police power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and traces Black-led efforts to make the city’s police bureaucracy more accountable to all citizens. It analyzes the politics of police reform in the century spanning the passage of two state laws that reconfigured Milwaukee’s law enforcement arrangements. The first (1885) removed City Hall’s managerial control over the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). Corporate elites and social reformers fearful of rising working-class power and moral degeneration in the immigrant-industrial city lobbied for the statute’s enactment. The second (1984) reversed course, re-empowering non-police officials after decades of Black-led campaigns for …

African American Teachers’ Perspectives On Principals’ Leadership Styles And The Influence On Teacher Morale, Ernestine Young

Theses and Dissertations

Morale is a concept that denotes how workers feel about their work and the environment in which they work (Robbins, 2003). Low teacher morale is not a new problem; however, with increasing frequency of low morale, teachers are affected all over the nation because of the financial and academic toll it has on education. Low morale typically impedes the achievement of the organization’s desired outcome and corresponds with unresolved grievances, attrition, and high absenteeism. Low morale is associated with billions of dollars spent per year. Low morale is due to effects such as stress, teacher burnout, absenteeism, attrition, and small …

Exploring The Impact Of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy On African American Students’ Attitudes Toward Reading In A Pre-Kindergarten Classroom: An Action Research Study, Janet Brantley

Theses and Dissertations

In U.S. schools, the academic needs of many African American students are not being adequately met. This alarming trend has prompted many educators to recognize the need to make changes in their knowledge base and instructional practices in order to better serve African American students. Culturally relevant pedagogy--a multifaceted approach to teaching that utilizes students’ cultural experiences to facilitate cultural competence, social justice, and student learning-has been identified as a method that may create more positive learning outcomes among African American students and diverse learners.

This study investigated the impact of culturally relevant pedagogy on African American students’ attitudes towards …

African American Teachers’ Perspectives On Principals’ Leadership Styles And The Influence On Teacher Morale, Ernestine Young

Theses and Dissertations

Morale is a concept that denotes how workers feel about their work and the environment in which they work (Robbins, 2003). Low teacher morale is not a new problem; however, with increasing frequency of low morale, teachers are affected all over the nation because of the financial and academic toll it has on education. Low morale typically impedes the achievement of the organization’s desired outcome and corresponds with unresolved grievances, attrition, and high absenteeism. Low morale is associated with billions of dollars spent per year. Low morale is due to effects such as stress, teacher burnout, absenteeism, attrition, and small …

Brew City Black Ball: Milwaukee As Microcosm Of The Early-Twentieth Century Black Baseball Experience, Ken Jon-Edward Bartelt

Theses and Dissertations

While historians have learned a great deal about the Black professional baseball played during organized baseball’s Jim Crow era, there are many teams whose stories are yet to be told. Two of these teams, the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, played their home games in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the 1920s. By exploring the untold histories of the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, much can be learned about overarching themes in early-twentieth century Black professional baseball. By analyzing newspaper coverage of the McCoy-Nolan Giants, an independent barnstorming team without Negro League affiliation, important truths about the experience of Black baseball on …

Lifting The Veil: A Critical Post-Intentional Phenomenological Action Research Study Of How African American Students Experience Science, Gina Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Research asserts the assimilationist nature of traditional science classroom practices undermines African American students’ intersectional race and science identity. Driven by a problem of practice embedded in the racialized system of science education, this study integrated action research with an innovative critical paradigm to explore how phenomenological data can transform practice. This post-intentional approach relies on experiential, phenomenological data of how African American students experience science to provide a critical analysis of instruction that leads to a change in science pedagogy. Qualitative interviews documented African American students’ experiences with science and an observation journal documented the resulting intervention. A post-reflexive …

Black Male College Students' Perspectives On The Contribution Of Black Student Organizations To Their Development Of Soft Skills, Shanice Angela Glover

Theses and Dissertations

The following study is an exploration of the views Black male college students have of the soft skills they have developed through participation in a predominately Black student organization. I used a focus group moderator guide with questions, adapted from Stansberry and Burnett (2014) and modified from Evans (2016) and Saraceno (2019) to serve as the instrument for this qualitative study. I gathered data from a focus groups consisting of Black male college students who are enrolled at Rowan University and participate in Black student organizations on campus. The focus group discussion pertained to the participants' experiences with predominantly Black …

Contribution Of Individual, Community, And Health System Factors To Health Outcomes In Inner-City African Americans With Type 2 Diabetes, Jennifer Annette Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

Diabetes is a complex disease that represents a major public health challenge due to its high prevalence, its association with increased morbidity, and early mortality. Inner-city African Americans with diabetes suffer a disproportionate burden of disease due to both economic and social disadvantage that reaches across individual, community, and health system levels of influence. Central to the principles of Public Health is the “pursuit of health equity for the elimination of health disparities, specifically in accordance to the empowerment of disenfranchised community members, aiming to ensure that the basic resources and conditions necessary for health are accessible to all”. To …

The Underrepresentation Of African American Doctoral Students In College Of Education Disciplines At Hispanic Serving Institutions And Emerging Hispanic Serving Institutions In The Southwest United States (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada And Colorado), Matthew Lloyd Atterberry

Theses and Dissertations

African Americans are underrepresented in higher education, especially in the graduate and doctoral level. Furthermore, research has identified numerous factors influencing African Americans to pursue doctoral studies in College of Education disciplines at postsecondary institutions of higher learning. However, there is a gap in the literature pertaining to factors influencing African Americans to pursue graduate and/or doctoral studies in College of Education disciplines at Hispanic Serving Institutions and Emerging Hispanic Institutions of higher learning in the Southwest United States. The purpose of this study is to bridge the gap pertaining to demographic factors in relationship to motivation and self-efficacy (Confidence) …

The Moderating Effects Of Parenting Factors And Perceived Stress On African American Adolescent Weight Related Outcomes, Colby Kipp

Theses and Dissertations

African American adolescents experience a higher prevalence of obesity than nonminorities with approximately 40% being overweight or obese. Chronic stress, both among parents and adolescents, may be important to consider when assessing the factors that influence adolescent weight status. Baseline data were collected from one hundred forty eight African American adolescents (M_age = 12.93, SD = 1.75; M_BMI% = 96.7, SD = 3.90) and their caregivers (M_age = 44.5, SD = 8.6; M_BMI = 37.63, SD = 8.21) enrolled in the Families Improving Together (FIT) for Weight Loss trial. Adolescents self-reported their perceptions of …

The Cultural Relevance Of Music Education As It Relates To African American Students In South Carolina, Felicia Denise Denise Myers Bulgozdy

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, Critical Race Theory is used to examine the current curriculum that preservice music teachers are taught, and are consequently teaching K-12 students, in an effort to illustrate the need for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Documents such as the S.C. All-State Choral rubric, as well as a list of required courses for future music educators at a local university, are studied to show the overwhelming European influence on the curriculum that is being taught in music classes daily across the state, and demonstrate the lack of cultural relevance to the African American students in those classes. Culturally Relevant Pedagogy …

Dating Violence Victimization And Posttraumatic Stress Outcomes Among Urban Adolescents: The Moderating And Mediating Role Of Positive Outlook, Carine Leslie

Theses and Dissertations

Adolescent dating violence occurs far too frequently in early adolescence and is related to adverse mental health outcomes, including posttraumatic stress symptoms. One focus within this literature has been to determine and better understand how protective processes may function in influencing relations between risk factors and dating violence victimization. A protective factor that has not been explored in the dating literature is positive outlook. The current short-term longitudinal study investigated whether dating violence victimization at Time 1 predicted posttraumatic stress symptoms at Time 2 among African American middle school students and examine whether positive outlook moderated or mediated this relation. …

Homicidal Loss And Disenfranchised Grief, Mothers Of Murdered Descendants: An Exploratory Qualitative Study, Michael Wayne Eagle

Theses and Dissertations

Violent acts of homicide committed against youth or children can lead to prolonged, devastating, and painful effects on their surviving mothers. Sudden unexpected deaths of descendants can lead to anger, guilt, sorrow, and isolation affecting survivors both emotionally and physically. Descendants’ deaths before the mothers’ deaths are unnatural and can lead to a decline in a survivor’s social actions, a rise in hospitalization rates, higher cases of mortality, complicated grief, and symptoms of PTSD. Cases of disenfranchised grief can surface after a survivor’s loss is ignored or no longer culturally allowed. Instances of empathic failure can result when empathy from …

An Integrated Exploration Of The Contextual, Relational, And Individual Factors That Impact High School Completion Among African Americans, Lesley B. Winchester

Theses and Dissertations

African American students are consistently reported as having among the lowest high school graduation rates when compared to other races (U.S. Department of Education, 2018). While many studies have sought to explore the potential risks of high school dropout, the intention of this study is to examine the factors that support the exemplary resilience of those students who do complete high school. The present study adopts the framework of García Coll et al.’s, (1996) integrative model of developmental competencies in minority children, as it seeks to identity whether and how contextual (spiritual, educational, cultural); relational (caregiver psychological and physical …

Credit The Parents? The Impact Of Racial Socialization On African American Students’ Stress-Related Coping And College Adjustment, Briana Bouldin

Theses and Dissertations

Many new stressors emerge in college and have a significant impact on college adjustment. However, little is known about common stressors, their causes, and impact on college adjustment for students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This project investigated the extent to which different college stressors impact sleep-related college adjustment, and whether racial socialization and emotion regulation strategies serve as coping strategies that moderate this relationship for HBCU students. The theoretical framework for the study was an adapted version of the Integrative Conceptual Model of Adaptive Socialization (ICMAS; Dunbar et al., 2017). Data were collected via an online survey …

Comorbidity In Context: Identifying Patterns Of Depressive And Anxiety Symptoms In African American Early Adolescents, Kathryn Behrhorst

Theses and Dissertations

Depression and anxiety during adolescence includes symptoms of irritability, sleeplessness, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, worry, avoidance, and/or restlessness. Anxiety and depressive symptoms are often comorbid and are associated with impairments across academic, social, and emotional areas of functioning. No studies to date have examined patterns of depressive and anxiety symptoms together for African American adolescents using person-centered analyses. The current study examined patterns of symptoms and domains of anxiety and depression during early adolescence using latent profile analyses (LPA). A sample of 196 African American early adolescents in grades six through eight (M_age = 12.6; 50% female) were …