Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“I Use To Pray And Ask God To Give Me Another Chance”: A Phenomenological Analysis Of Black Males’ Journey Attending An Alternative School, Jimmy R. Caldwell Jr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research suggests that there still exists a disproportionate number of Black males who have contact with juvenile justice systems across this nation (Nance, 2016). The disproportionate placement of students of color, specifically, Black American males in alternative schools, serves as the gateway to the school-to-prison-pipeline (Pelzer, 2012). This study examined the lived educational experiences of two Black American juvenile males, who enrolled in an alternative school in the Southeast. This study incorporated phenomenological and narrative methods and provides rich, descriptive analyses of the participants’ experiences while attending an alternative school. Findings from this study revealed instability among the participants’ home …

Discourse At The International School Of Asia In Karuizawa: Language And Practice, Merisa Muharemovic

Capstone Collection

Leadership as a form of practice unbound by social position is not a concept commonly taught to students within formal education institutions. It is even less comonly an object of Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, which is the approach that this capstone paper uses to take a closer look at the discourse of student leadership at a newly founded, private, international boarding high school in Japan: UWC ISAK Japan. By doing so it explores the relationship between the language and practice of leadership – a program which, on paper, seems critically liberating, but upon analysis also reveals important contradictions. Through the …

The Knowledge Economy : Increasing Human Capital On The U.S. I-65 Corridor., Brandon S. Mcreynolds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In economics, the term growth often refers to the increase in economic activity between two points in time. Within the context of the United States of America, the language of growth has permeated beyond just economics and into other societal institutions due to spillover. As a result, growth is not just an economic term but rather a part of the culture of capitalism which impacts every area of society. The dissertation using growth machine theory and the global cities literature examines how in the knowledge economy, cities play a growing role in mediating the supply and demand for …

A Tradesperson’S Transition To Vocational Technical (Vt) Teaching, Susan J. Sylvia

Educational Studies Dissertations

This qualitative study examined survey and interview data collected from tradespeople who transitioned to vocational technical (VT) teaching in regional vocational technical schools in Massachusetts. This study included two research questions that inquired about how tradespeople’s prior experiences, beliefs, and thoughts influenced or inspired them to pursue a transition to vocational technical (VT) teaching and about how their anticipated transitional experiences aligned with their actual transitional experiences. The survey phase included 170 respondents. Survey responses provided an overview of participants, which was integral in identifying four interview participants who were digitally recorded during one-to-one interview sessions. A multiple Case Study …

Student Global Mobility: An Analysis Of International Stem Student Brain Drain, Margaret E. Gesing

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

This study seeks to understand global mobility patterns of international graduate STEM students studying in the United States. Using data from the NSF Graduate Students in Science Survey (GSSS), this study investigates the political, economic, and social factors affecting students' intent to stay or go, identifying differences based on students' country of origin within World Bank defined categories of gross national income (GNI) per capita. Descriptive statistics identified factors affecting students' intent to stay or go. Chi-square analysis, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) identified differences between factors based on students' intent to stay or go, and identified differences based on …

Behavior Modification: Addressing The Challenging Behaviors Within An Early Childhood Program, Marie Gewiss

Graduate Education Student Scholarship

Addressing challenging behaviors in our Early Childhood Programs will always be a topic of concern for the teachers as well as for the students. One solution in avoiding misbehavior is to find the antecedent before the behavior can begin to be a disruption. A discussion of the consequences are also important aspects for children and adults to understand when thinking about how to control an unwanted act of aggression. “Aggressive behavior usually follows an event that the patient perceives as provocative. Types of provocation include perceptions of disrespectful treatment; unfairness/injustice; frustration/interruption; annoying traits, and irritations” (Daffern & Tonkin, 2010, para. …

A Qualitative, Exploratory Case Study Of Self-Reported Influences Affecting The Decision Of Homeless Sexual-Minority Students To Leave Home, Michael P. Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to identify commonalities regarding influences within the decision-making process that attributed to sexual-minority students voluntarily or involuntarily becoming homeless in lieu of remaining in their respective familial home. An exploratory case-study research design was utilized to determine common themes present in the self-described events that led up to the respective decisions of three volunteer participants, who identified themselves as sexual-minority youths at the time of transition, to leave home. Results of this study discerned five commonalities among the participants’ experiences, which influenced their experiencing homelessness. The detection of these commonalities may provide school administrators and other …

Stereotype Threat And Effects Of Students' Perception Of Their Math Teacher's Fairness On Their Math Self-Efficacy, Alexis Jocelyn Devigal

Dissertations and Theses

Gender inequalities perpetuated by educational and occupational segregation may be exacerbated in part by socialization processes that occur in the years leading up to when high school students typically begin considering postsecondary options. Students’ feelings of self-efficacy in certain subjects can be an important factor that informs their decisions to pursue coursework and programs. This study used stereotype theory to understand how students' perceptions of their 9th grade math teacher's fairness affected their 11th grade math efficacy and how this relationship was moderated by the gender of the student and their math teacher. Using the High School Longitudinal Study of …

The Role Of Resistance And Social Capital In Facilitating Latino/A College Success, Patricia Sánchez-Connally

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between race and educational achievement among inner city, low income, first generation, and high achieving Latino/a students. Research on students of color has focused on cultural deficit models, which portray students as culturally deprived and proposes cultural assimilation as the solution (Nieto 2010; Delpit 2006; Solórzano & Yosso 2002). As a way to contest these models, I describe the role of Academic Support & College Readiness Program (ASP) as a place where community cultural wealth (Yosso 2005) is being created and transferred. Community cultural wealth is an alternative concept that uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) …

Getting It Right: African American Male College/University Presidents And Their Early Cultivation Of Self-Efficacy, James Randall

Doctoral Dissertations

GETTING IT RIGHT: AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS AND THEIR EARLY CULTIVATION OF SELF-EFFICACY MAY 2017 JAMES ANTHONY RANDALL, B.A., MOREHOUSE COLLEGE M.S.W., UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, COLLEGE OF SOCIAL POLICY AND PRACTICE Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by Joseph B. Berger Education remains the single most important means by which individuals in the United States can empower themselves economically, socially, and personally. In spite of this, a significant percentage of young African American males do not even appear to be competing or reaching for the educational opportunities before them as they rank the poorest amongst their peers in a …

Potential Of One-To-One Technology Uses And Pedagogical Practices: Student Agency And Participation In An Economically Disadvantaged Eighth Grade, Maria Dulce Silva Andrade Johnson

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

The accelerated growth of 1:1 educational computing initiatives has challenged digital equity with a three-tiered, socioeconomic digital divide: (a) access, (b) higher order uses, and (c) user empowerment and personalization. As the access gap has been closing, the exponential increase of 1:1 devices threatens to widen the second and third digital divides. Using critical theory, specifically, critical theory of technology and critical pedagogy, and a qualitative case study design, this research explored the experiences of a middle school categorized under California criteria as “socioeconomically disadvantaged.” This study contributes to critical theory on technology within an educational setting, as well as …

Culture And Class In Marginalized Minority Educational Attainment, Alan R. Takeall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using a national sample of Black and Latino high school students, I ask: What is the relative impact of demographic factors, aspirations, adherence to an ideology of achievement, and sociocultural capital on future educational attainment? Additionally, how do poor students compare to their non-poor counterparts on these measures? Employing the Educational Longitudinal Study (2002 & 2012) and multivariate statistical techniques, this dissertation examines the role of cultural and other factors on the educational attainment of Black and Latino students and then explores the role of poverty on those outcomes.

In recent years educational reform efforts have placed considerable emphasis on …

The Undergraduate In The “New Urban University”: Recognizing The Role Of Agency And Its Correlates In The Student’S Academic Life Story, Karen Galea

Dissertations

According to the U.S. Department of Education (2016), only 36% of first time college students enrolled at broad-access institutions graduate within six years, compared to 60% at all universities. The vital role of academic agency is universally accepted; however, debate remains over a shared definition. The purpose of this study is to determine which combination of non-academic attributes generate, grow, and support academic agency for undergraduate students at a broad-access, minority-serving “New Urban University.” Three questions are examined:

1. Which attributes define academic agency, and how do they relate to conceptually similar variables?
2. Assuming academic agency exists along a continuum over …

The Heart Of Experience: The Education Of A Practitioner's Journey, Tai Mesches

Capstone Collection

This Capstone, The Heart of Experience: The Education of a Practitioner’s Journey, is an illustrative reflection of myself experiencing my learning cycle, taking the reader through my own journey of growth as an experiential education practitioner. To engage the reader, I first shine light on the context of what role experience played in my life as a form of education, specifically reflecting on my time living abroad in China and my cross-cultural work with Chinese youth in Manhattan, New York, emphasizing basketball’s involvement as a tool for engagement. I describe how such experiences helped me return to school. To portray …

Bridges Out Of Poverty As An Anti-Poverty Strategy In Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Katlyn M. Uhler

Capstone Collection

This paper explores the initial results of the Bridges Out of Poverty (“Bridges”) community framework as implemented by the organization Kennett Area Community Service in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The aim of this research is to provide perspective on Bridges Out of Poverty’s contribution to the understanding of poverty in the United States and its potential as an antipoverty intervention. It does so first through an exploration of the historical and current discussion on poverty and anti-poverty interventions in the United States, followed by research on the Bridges model itself and its implementation in Kennett Square. This latter research includes content …

Assessing The Influence Of Career-Linked Experiential Opportunities On The F-1 Undergraduate Student Enrollment Decision-Making Process, Harrison Fuerst

Capstone Collection

International mobility efforts in the United States have garnered increased attention and funding in recent years, with such government-led initiatives as Generation Study Abroad and 100,000 Strong driving up inbound and outbound student numbers. Recent inbound mobility reports from the Institute of International Education show double-digit percentage increases in international student enrollment. Other countries also experiencing an influx of international students continue to research these trends to shape their own education strategies. Research conducted by the International Education Association of Australia points specifically to hands-on professional experience and enhanced employability as key factors important to Australia’s international student population. As …

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …

How Scholarship Programs Facilitate First-Generation College Students’ Involvement, Maria C. Restrepo Chavez

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

As a first-generation college student, I am interested in the on-campus involvement and experiences of other first-generation college students. First-generation college students are those whose parents did not receive a university degree and tend to come from low-income families. This project explores programs designed to support and enrich the experiences of such students. The Centennial Scholars Program at James Madison University and the Presidential Scholarship Initiative at Virginia Tech aim to increase the socio-economic diversity on each campus. These programs provide students with full funding for four years, mentorship, professional development and social benefits, among others. In turn, students become …

Factors In Public School Settings That Result In Teacher Agency, Jessica Hadid

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

A quality system for educating a nation’s youth depends upon a teaching force that continually learns, and applies its learning outcomes to active problem solving and development. Many current school and district models minimize teacher ability to engage in meaningful change, ultimately undermining the teachers’ sense of personal and professional agency. Literature suggests that internal forms of motivation are likely to result in the development of agency via self-determination of actions and behaviors. This mixed methods study examined five public schools in a small K-12 district through the lens of self-determination theory. An initial set of quantitative data were collected …

Do You See What I See? Perception And Social Construction Of Academic Success Between Student-Athletes And Support Services, Lauren Kirby

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current study explores how academic success is defined and socially constructed between athletic academic support professionals and at-risk student-athletes. There continues to be an increase in academic support services provided to student-athletes, including learning specialists, academic advisors, and academic buildings (Wolverton, 2008). Although a significant relationship between support services and academic output of student-athletes has been found (Hollis, 2002; Ridpath, 2010), the relational and communicative dynamics of these groups have not been fully explored.

Using qualitative methods, one-on-one interviews were conducted with participants, and grounded theory and thematic analysis were employed to identify overarching themes for the research questions. …

Risks, Protections, And Weight Status Among Springdale High School Students, Leanna Christine Gavin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the role of sociodemographic characteristics and various Social factors in determining BMI among adolescent high school students. In a sample of 1,493 students at a public high school in Springdale, Arkansas, disparities in body mass index across race/ethnicity, gender, and Social class were assessed. This project also examined risk and protective factors in the individual, peer, and family domains as they contributed to weight status outcomes and disparities. Using a quantitative approach, BMI outcomes were examined in a four-step multiple regression model, considering both main effects and interactions of race/ethnicity, class, and gender, as well as risk …

Creating A Multiracial Lesson Plan, Clayton Davis

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The purpose of this project is to teach students about multiracial identity issues. Multiracial populations in the U.S. continue to grow and it’s important for educators to address the needs of these students. A 5-E multiracial literature lesson plan was created for second grade that incorporates KWL and Text-to-World teaching strategies. A second grade class were read two children’s picture books, each featuring a biracial protagonist, and were asked to discuss and evaluate the content and commonalities of these stories. Students recorded what they learned in this lesson in their KWL’s. The results reveal that some students understood the problems …

This Is A Black-White Conversation : Navigating Race, Class, And Gender At An Urban School., Jelisa S. Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research examines how racial ideologies operate and shape experiences in an urban school. Using ethnographic methods, consisting of observations, formal and informal interviews, document analysis, I pose the following questions: (1) To what extent is OS premised on the Black male crisis discourse; (2) How do the students, faculty, and staff navigate the boundaries of race, class, and gender; and (3) How do racial ideologies (i.e., colorblind racism and Black male crisis discourse) influence the experiences of faculty and students? Findings suggest that colorblind ideology operates on various facets and on multiple levels in the school. By focusing on …

The Best And The Brightest?: Race, Class, And Merit In America's Elite Colleges, Walter Chacon

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

History Of Sioux Lookout Black Hawks Hockey Team, 1949-1951, Fatima Ba'abbad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Existing literature on residential schools in Canada indicates that sports played an important role within that system and were a positive experience for Aboriginal students. However, these sporting experiences have not been analyzed from the students’ perspectives. This thesis aims to enrich our understanding of the role of sports within residential schools; the meanings former students attached to their experiences, and what sports mean to reconciliation initiatives using 1) narrative analysis of media representations of the Black Hawks team from Pelican Lake Indian Residential School during their 1951 hockey tour to Ottawa and Toronto, 2) a two-part interview process (photo …

Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past forty-years, neoliberal education reform policies in the U.S. have spurred significant resistance, often galvanized by claims that such policies undermine public education as a vital institution of U.S. democracy. Within this narrative, many activists call to “save our schools” and return them to a time when public schools served the common good. With these narratives in mind, I explore the foundational and persistent power structures that characterize the U.S. as a means to reveal the fundamental purpose of its public education system. The questions that guide my research include: (1) With an understanding that capitalism, white supremacy, …

Dominance & Survivance: Urban Latino Communities And Education In Racial Neoliberal Urbanism, Edwin Mayorga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

U.S. Latino youth are as undereducated and underprepared today as they were in the 1960s, leading some to declare that there is a national “Latino education crisis” that is affecting the lives of millions. While this problem is national in scope there are multiple narratives that underpin this story. Of particular interest in this study is the intersection of urban Latino core communities and public schools. This dissertation is based on the Education in our Barrios Project, #BarrioEdProj, which is a digital, critical participatory action research study of urbanism and urban education in the Latino core community of East Harlem …

The Value Of Value-Added: Science, Technology, And Policy In Educational Evaluation, Daniel Douglas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first decade of the 21^st century, researchers and policymakers in K-12 education began to focus on evaluating teacher and school performance based on students’ standardized test scores. One evaluative technique, value-added assessment (VAA), has been given particular attention. This research presents a comprehensive study of the theoretical, technical, historical and political dimensions VAA. Theoretically, the assumptions that underlie value-added diverge significantly from the observed operations of the schools and classrooms these models are supposed to evaluate. Technically, even if the theoretical assumptions are accepted, teachers’ actual value-added rankings are shown to be unstable across time periods and …

Language Use In English Medium Of Instruction (Emi) Classrooms In An Indonesian Bilingual School, Joy Dupree

Graduate Education Student Scholarship

This study seeks to examine and document the language use of both teachers and students in English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) classrooms in an Indonesian bilingual elementary school. Qualitative date were collected from sixteen classrooms in the form of an observation tool, video recording, and informal interviews. Research focused on the quantity and nature of each of the two languages used, including why and when codeswitching occurred. Data were analyzed and charted, providing a picture of the realities of EMI instruction in Indonesia, and the challenges faced. The findings revealed that, despite being EMI classrooms, a high percentage …

Digital Literacies And “Glee”: The Role Of Fan Fiction Virtual Writing And Social Commentary In Response To Bullying Themes With Adolescent Writers, Mandy Rita Stewart

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

DIGITAL LITERACIES AND “GLEE”: THE ROLE OF FAN FICTION VIRTUAL WRITING AND SOCIAL COMMENTARY IN RESPONSE TO BULLYING THEMES WITH ADOLESCENT WRITERS

by

MANDY STEWART

May 2017

Advisor: Dr. Gina DeBlase

Major: Curriculum and Instruction

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

As the education system turns its attention to climate, bullying, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) issues in the classroom, there is a focus on developing our student population abilities to be more accepting and tolerant of diversity. This study explored how ten students, aged 16-17, interacted with virtual literacy events on www.fanfiction.net, and how that contributed to their refinements …