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Full-Text Articles in Education

Defining Defiance: African-American Middle School Students’ Perspective On The Impact Of Teachers’ Disciplinary Referrals, Patricia Ray Jul 2015

Defining Defiance: African-American Middle School Students’ Perspective On The Impact Of Teachers’ Disciplinary Referrals, Patricia Ray

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to understand how African-American males enrolled in middle school in Los Angeles County experienced and understood the application of the California educational code regarding discipline. Disproportionate numbers of African-American students are being suspended and expelled from public schools. This overreliance on exclusionary punishment has led to the School-to-Prison Pipeline, and the statistics related to suspension rates from school mirror that of the criminal justice system. This study captures the voices of students who are consistently referred to the office by classroom teachers in order to understand how they perceive and articulate their experiences with …


Masculinities, Gendered Expression, And The Social, Emotional, And Academic Well-Being Of High School Boys, Cynthia Bazinet Apr 2015

Masculinities, Gendered Expression, And The Social, Emotional, And Academic Well-Being Of High School Boys, Cynthia Bazinet

Educational Studies Dissertations

There has been longstanding concern over the seemingly intractable problem of boys’ academic achievement. Despite extensive research, there is little consensus among researchers and educators regarding best practices and approaches in mitigating and remediating the problem. This mixed-methods study sought to illuminate the issue further by focusing on the meaningful lived experiences of six young men aged 18 to 24 who attended and graduated from a central Massachusetts public high school. The study asked participants to reflect through prompted writing upon the stresses and pressures as well as the factors and conditions that affected their abilities to manage their performativities …


Boys, Writing, And The Literacy Gender Gap: What We Know, What We Think We Know, Nancy Disenhaus Jan 2015

Boys, Writing, And The Literacy Gender Gap: What We Know, What We Think We Know, Nancy Disenhaus

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The existence of a persistent gender gap in literacy achievement, and particularly in writing, is not in dispute: boys trail girls in every assessment at state, national, and international levels. Yet although this basic fact is not in dispute, nearly everything else concerning the gender gap in literacy achievement--its causes, consequences, and potential solutions--remains hotly contested, particularly in the public and professional discourse. Scholarly research offers insights that frequently challenge the prevailing public discourse, but this research has been conducted primarily in the U.K., Australia, and Canada, leaving the experiences of U.S. students largely unexplored. Herein lies the problem: an …


Instructional Approaches That Increase Reading Achievement For Boys, Grades 3-6, Tiffany M. Rudek Jan 2015

Instructional Approaches That Increase Reading Achievement For Boys, Grades 3-6, Tiffany M. Rudek

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

An achievement gap persists in many educational settings with females outperforming males in reading. In a Southern California school district, reading scores for boys average 10 percentile points below those of girls. A qualitative case study was conducted to explore which instructional approaches can help close this gender gap. The conceptual framework for this study was based on engagement theory, which proposes that students who are engaged in learning tasks achieve at higher levels. The guiding question asked how reading achievement for boys in Grades 3-6 could be improved in the district under study. Semistructured individual interviews were conducted with …