Education Commons^™

The Impact Of Documentation Status On The Educational Attainment Experiences Of Undocumented Hispanic/Latino Students, Brittanie Alexandria Roberts

Dissertations and Theses

The issue of undocumented immigration has recently taken center-stage in the media and national politics in the United States. A large population of undocumented youth grows up with legal access to public education through high school, following the Supreme Court decision of Plyler vs. Doe, but faces legal and economic barriers to post-secondary education. Following high school, undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth legal protections end, greatly limiting chances for upward mobility through traditional post-secondary education pipelines. In some cases, knowledge of future barriers to post-secondary education leads to a decline in educational motivation.

The current political atmosphere makes this study a bit …

Adult Returning Students And Proportional Reasoning: Rich Experience And Emerging Mathematical Proficiency, Ann Sitomer

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores adult returning students' mathematical experience and ways of thinking prior to enrolling in a community college arithmetic review course. It further examines one student's experience of the course. The first part of the study documents everyday activities adult students perceive as mathematical using Bishop's pan-cultural mathematical activities (Bishop, 1994), and queries students' prior experience with mathematics in school. The second part examines students' ways of thinking about proportion prior to instruction, using a framework developed from previous research (e.g., Lamon, 1993). The third part of the study examines the interaction between informal ways of thinking about mathematics …

Classroom Engagement As A Proximal Lever For Student Success In Higher Education: What A Self-Determination Framework Within A Multi-Level Developmental System Tells Us, Una Ji Chi

Dissertations and Theses

This study examined the role of course engagement in college student success, especially for students who have multiple life commitments and few social supports. Building on previous measurement work and based in self-determination theory, the study was organized in five steps. Relying on information provided by 860 undergraduates from 12 upper and lower division Psychology classes, the first step was to improve the measurement of course engagement, by mapping the increased complexity found in self-reports of college students (by incorporating items capturing engagement in "out-of-classroom" activities and general orientation, to standard items tapping classroom engaged and disaffected behavior and emotion). …