Education Commons^™

Successful African American Community College Student Athletes’ Perceptions Of Factors Of Academic Success, Tanika Lee Byrd

Doctoral Dissertations

California community colleges are facing serious obstacles in relation to students of color achieving academic success. African American men see the community college as a pathway toward economic and social mobility; however, collectively they have disparate outcomes in every conceivable marker of success; persistence, achievement, transfer, completion. The live experiences of academically successful community college student athletes may hold key factors that can assist all African American males in their journey toward academic success. Even though research is limited, it is suggested that student athletes at the community college achieve their academic goals at higher rates than their nonathlete peers. …

Testimonios Of Latino/A Students In Hispanic Serving Institutions: Lessons For Community Colleges, Luz Briceno Moreno

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study was conducted at a Northern California community college with eight Latino/a student’s and the utilization of their testimonios to bring awareness to their academic experiences, successes and needs as first-generation college students. A large majority of Latino/a students who do enroll in college begin at community colleges, this stands to be the first point of entry into higher education for current and future Latino/a student’s (Santiago & Stettner, 2013). Community colleges graduating mostly vocationally trained Latino/a student’s continue to feed into a history of limited educational and societal mobility, which is vastly different from the white students …

Resilience And Resistance: How First Generation College Students Leverage Community Cultural Wealth And Social Capital To Successfully Transfer From A Community College To A Selective Four-Year Institution, Christina Teller

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how first generation college students leverage both traditional forms of social capital and community cultural wealth in the process of transferring from a California community college to a selective four-year institution, using a Critical Race Theory (CRT) paradigm, and a framework including Stanton-Salazar’s (1997) network analytic theory and Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth. The current study adds to the literature by critically analyzing the post-secondary education experiences of first generation community college transfer students, focusing on the students’ strengths and gaining a better understanding of what institutional and …

"My Gut Has To Feel It": A Participatory Action Research Study Of Community College Educators Navigating The Emotional Terrain Of Human Rights Education, Lindsay Padilla

Doctoral Dissertations

Informed by feminist theories of emotion and the concept of critical emotional praxis, this PAR study highlights the emotional terrain of four Northern California community college teachers who teach human rights. The following meta-question guided this research: "Given the role of emotions in challenging injustice, as well as in engaging in personal and societal change, what role do emotions play when teaching in a community college?" Data sources included journals, monthly meetings, final reflection narratives, and exit interviews, which were culled for emergent themes. The findings indicate that the co-researchers in this study experienced emotional ambivalence (the simultaneous experience of …

Investigation Of The Misconceptions Related To The Concepts Of Equivalence And Literal Symbols Held By Underprepared Community College Students, Terrence Joseph Maguire

Doctoral Dissertations

Many students struggle to learn mathematics in K-8 grades. Research has shown that lower grade students often misconceive equivalence as an operation rather than a relation, and that students also form various misconceptions of literal symbols. Many students arrive at college seriously underprepared in mathematics, but there is scant research on the difficulties and misconceptions of these college students. The purpose of this research was to learn if underprepared community college students harbor misconceptions of equivalence and of literal symbols similar to K-8 students.

For this study, 191 underprepared college students were surveyed for misconceptions by a questionnaire of 43 …