This qualitative study investigated the roles students play in institutional decision-making, and in particular how the students perceive both what their roles should be and what their roles actually are. Five Student Government Association (SGA) presidents, serving sequential one-year terms from 1999 to 2004 at one campus of a multi-campus two-year public college located in a large metropolitan area in the southeast, were interviewed. The qualitative research methodology employed thematic analysis to describe the students' perceptions in the context of both the letter and spirit of policy implementation regarding institutional decision-making. Through analysis of interviews, institutional documents, and documents at the statewide system level, this investigation explored a wide array of variables that affect the roles students play in institutional decision-making. Framed through a critical lens, this study argues that student involvement in institutional decision-making is necessary to engage students as active citizens capable of civil discourse that results in informed action for the benefit of the community in which the citizens are engaged, perpetuating a democratic society. However, this is not what the students perceived from their experiences in institutional decision-making. Based on the data, this study concludes that students play an advisory role at best, but more frequently are co-opted into serving the desired ends of the administration in a hegemonic fashion. This study offers both suggestions for praxis, and raises questions for further research, in an attempt to reconcile the tensions between the corporatization of higher education and the cultivation of democracy.

The growth of the community college has created an access point for many students that traditionally would not pursue higher education. Although community colleges have soared in enrollment in the last forty years, the rate at which students persist and graduate has remained low compared to four-year institutions. Studies on college persistence and academic achievement indicate that there is a consistency of characteristics among community college, low-income, and first-generation students. Behaviors traditionally associated with persistence, such as integration within the institution, are not characteristic nontraditional students because they tend to have closer connections with the environment external to the college campus. Missing from the literature are studies that examine the motivational factors that encourage persistence in spite of the risk factors. The twofold purpose of this study was to examine the effects of nontraditional students’ extrinsic motivation on their intrinsic motivation for attending college and to examine how the effects of environmental and background influences on intrinsic motivation are mediated through extrinsic motivation. Two surveys, The Academic Motivation Scale and the Factors Influencing Pursuit of Higher Education Questionnaire, were administered to 151 students from two community colleges in the Southeast. Through hierarchical regression analysis and path analysis the study examined how nontraditional students’ intrinsic motivation levels for attending college was affected by background influences (locus of control, perception of barriers, and self-efficacy), environmental influences (family and friends support), career goal attainment, and socioeconomic mobility. The results of the study indicated that career goal attainment, locus of control, and support of friends had a positive direct impact on students’ intrinsic motivation levels. The results also revealed that several of the background and environmental influence variables had an indirect effect on intrinsic motivation mediated through the extrinsic motivation variable of career goal attainment. The findings from this study add to the current retention, persistence, and motivation literature.

This dissertation uses historical analysis to understand the political and social conditions that allowed for the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Education when many congressional representatives, state governments, and citizens of the United States were ideologically against federal involvement in education. A cabinet-level Department of Education posed problems for the United States because nowhere in the nation’s Constitution is education mentioned, thus leaving education to be a function of the states according to the 10th Amendment. This dissertation looks at calls for a department of education leading up to and including the one initiated by Jimmy Carter. Conducting a historical analysis of the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Education allows for the analysis not only of educational policies but also of culture and society both outside of and within the political sphere. This study relies on documents from the Carter presidency, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, Congressional records, education polls, and the New York Times and Washington Post, as well as secondary sources related to the various calls for a creation of a cabinet-level Department of Education and policy pieces associated with the creation. The study concludes that while the legislation for the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Education was politically motivated, it would have been difficult to pass if the groundwork for federal involvement in education had not already been put in place through previous congressional legislation and court decisions. By easing public sentiment and creating a need for managerial and administrative reform these prior acts of Congress and the courts paved the way for a cabinet-level Department of Education.

Catholic universities across the United States are perceived as some of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the world. As communities of intellect and faith, they have been successful in educating generations of leaders in both the sacred and secular arenas. In the past forty years, they have also been subject to market forces which have forced a re-examination of their fundamental mission of the singular education of young men. Since the late 1960s these same institutions have admitted women undergraduate and graduate students and have seen an increase in the number of their women professors. Utilizing a qualitative research method, this study seeks to better ascertain the current milieu for women faculty members by examining issues of the experience of women scholars; institutional policies and practices which support of hinder the professional life of women faculty members; the role of scholarship, teaching, and service; the reltionship between women faculty members as a whole; and the articulation of the mission as it relates to diversity. Findings indicate that most university policies continue to favor the advancement of male faculty members; that the founding religious community exerts considerable influence over the programming of the university; that women faculty members engage in service but find their most significant intrinsic reward in the activity of teaching; that while most women faculty members cite the absence of a mentor for their own professional development, they find support in their relationships with other women faculty members on campus; and that women faculty members believe in the importance of the notion of diversity as a favorable attribute they rate particular and sincere outreach efforts as being ineffective.

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to explore how youth consumption of rap music informed their ideas of gender, race, sexuality, and education at a local community center in Atlanta, Georgia. The participants in the study were comprised of three male and six female Black students from working class families, ranging in age from 13–17 years old. The data collection process included 60 formal interviews, 55 informal interviews, 27 focus group interviews, 103 participant observations, and document analyses of media materials. Atlas.ti: The Knowledge Workbench (2003) assisted with the organizing, coding, categorizing, and interpreting of the vast amount of data. Findings from the study revealed four major themes: (a) youth’s engagement with rap music fostered essentialized notions of Blackness, (b) teens believed that Blacks were intellectually inferior, (c) youth perceived their classroom teachers as racist and (d) youth responded to their teacher’s perceived racism by disassociating themselves from youth they believed to be academically inferior. The findings of this study addressed the need for candid dialogues about race in the classroom and educational policy that incorporates critical media literacy.

This study investigates principals’ perceptions about the importance and degree of building relationships with Hispanic/Latino families in highly diverse schools in an Atlanta area school district. Over the past ten years, the school district’s Hispanic/Latino student population increased by more than 12,000 students. The school district’s current Hispanic/Latino enrollment is almost 15,000 students, which is 14.4% of the total student body. Six principals from different elementary and middle schools with growing Hispanic/Latino student populations participated in this qualitative study involving in-depth, one-on-one interviews, informal observations, and artifact collection. The data analysis process involved transcribing the interview tapes verbatim, analyzing the narratives for theme categories, and identifying the common theme patterns. Critical theorists Giroux, Apple, and Freire provided the framework to examine the principals’ responses and experiences. Hegemony, patriarchy, and reciprocity are critical theory concepts used to criticize and critique the data to glean meaning and understanding of the principals’ perceptions about relationship building with Hispanic/Latino parents and families. There is a disequilibrium between what the principals say is occurring at their schools and the hidden and taken-for-granted structures that exist at their schools. Based on their actions, it seems principals perceive that in order to build relationships with Hispanic/Latino families, the school leaders need to take on a patriarchal role and explain the necessary knowledge, skills, and practices to the parents. This hegemonic behavior perpetuates the dominant group’s power and control over the non-dominant, oppressed groups. In addition, there was no indication that the principals gain an understanding of the Hispanic/Latino culture and language before attempting to help the families with parenting and schooling. The findings suggest that the principals are operating on the assumption that they know what is best for the Hispanic/Latino population without prior inquiry. There is little evidence that the principals believe they have something to learn from the Hispanic/Latino parents and families, thus, a reciprocal learning relationship is non-existent. These underlying beliefs and assumptions will hinder the principals from building a true relationship with the students, parents, and families who they serve in the school community.

The social and political role of Black college presidents in the 1930s and 1940s via annual radio addresses is a relevant example of how the medium of the day was used as an apparatus for individual and institutional agency. The nationalist agenda of the United States federal government indirectly led to the opportunity for Black college leadership to address the rhetoric of democracy, patriotism, and unified citizenship. The research focuses on the social positioning of the radio addresses as well as their role in the advancement of Black Americans. The primary question that informs the research is whether the 1930s and 1940s was a period of rising consciousness for Black America. The aim of this study is to examine the significance of radio during the pre- to post-war era, its parallel use by the United States federal government and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and the interrelationship between education, politics, and society. The use of social history allows historical evidence to be viewed from the lens of identifying social trends. The social trends of the period examined include the analysis of economics, politics, and education. An additional benefit of using social history is the way in which it examines the masses and how they help shape history in conjunction with the leaders of a given period of examination. The research method also entails an in-depth analysis of 14 annual radio addresses delivered by three Black college presidents in the South during the 1930s and 1940s: Mordecai W. Johnson, James E. Shepard, and Benjamin E. Mays. Common themes found among radio addresses include morality and ethical behavior; economic, political, and social equality; access and inclusion in a democratic society; and a collective commitment to a just society. Black education as a form of racial uplift unveiled the meaning of access and the collective advancement of the race. Agreeing to deliver the radio addresses as a part of government-sponsored programming resulted in an inter-racial alliance between Black college leadership and the federal government. To this end, Black college leadership operationalized their access and education to benefit the needs of their race.

This dissertation examines Tift College, formerly in Forsyth, Georgia, and the problems Tift faced as Georgia Baptist's women's college. Many of these difficulties were a result of the beliefs of Georgia Baptists on educating women and the fact that Georgia Baptists placed a greater value on education for males. This work also examines the role of feminism in a southern women's college. To complete this task, the dissertation examines the beliefs and attitudes of Georgia Baptists about education in general, and educating women in specific and how funding played a part in their education. The dissertation addresses Tift's struggle to remain a separate school for women and examines ideas of womanhood at Tift as determined by the curriculum imposed on the women, as well as documenting what Tift students felt about womanhood based on their statements in class papers, journal and newspaper articles, and various other archival sources. These data show how attitudes and beliefs changed over the years, and while a strong feminist spirit may not have been achieved, the changes that were evident affected the purposes of the college. As the student body became more diversified, students were no longer content to become genteel, southern ladies or "polished cornerstones." Going against traditional roles, many students argued for a curriculum that would allow them to compete with men in the job market.

Two needs of Georgia State University Professional Development School Partnerships are to show increases in both student academic achievement and teacher efficacy. The Teacher-Intern-Professor (TIP) Model was designed to address these needs. The TIP model focuses on using the university and school partnership to support Georgia State University student intern preparedness and student academic achievement for those participating in the program. TIP Model outcomes were analyzed using a quasi-experimental design for achievement data and a Bayesian approach to mix methods for efficacy data. Quantitative data, in the form of test scores, were analyzed to compare mean student academic achievement at the classroom level. Mean differences between treatment and comparison groups were not significant for the TIP treatment factor (F(1, 60) = .248, p =.620) as measured by a benchmark test. Results favored the treatment group over control group for the TIP treatment factor (F(1, 56) = 17.967, p < .001) on a geometry test. A methodological contribution is the exploration and development of an approach to mix methods using Bayesian statistics to combine quantitative and qualitative data. Bayesian statistics allows for incorporation of the researcher’s prior belief into the data analysis. Narrative Inquiry was the qualitative framework employed to gain understanding of the participants’ qualitative data, thus providing a particular way of prior belief elicitation. More specifically, a content analysis of the qualitative data, which included interviews, observations, and artifacts, was used in conjunction with quantitative historical data to elicit prior beliefs. The Bayesian approach to mix methods combined prior beliefs from the teacher efficacy qualitative data with the quantitative data from Gibson’s and Dembo’s Teacher Efficacy Scale to obtain posterior distributions, which summarized beliefs for the themes of teacher efficacy and personal efficacy.

In educational research, students often exist in a multilevel social setting that can be identified by students within classrooms, classrooms nested in schools, schools nested in school districts, school districts nested in school counties, and school counties nested in states. These are considered hierarchical, nested, or multilevel because students are within the same community and share similar experiences which have the potential to influence an outcome. Because students within the same classrooms have similar characteristics, conclusions made on these students cannot be independent. To adapt to the hierarchical, multilevel, or nested data structure, multilevel analysis techniques such as hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) can be used to analyze the data. One purpose of HLM is to specify a model that includes appropriate random effects (Guo, 2005). One method which should be considered for inclusion or exclusion of random effects and to evaluate the goodness of fit of the final model to the data is the comparison of models with different specifications of random effects based on Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) , or Deviance Information Criterion (DIC) which corrects for bias induced by sample size and number of random effects. AIC, BIC, and DIC are information criteria that measure the statistical fit of a model. There has not been any research conducted in the multilevel literature about the impact of sample size and information criteria. This Monte Carlo Monte Carlo simulation compared the influence of sample size on the ability to select the best model in two-level hierarchical models using the information criteria Akaike Information Criterion, Bayesian Information Criterion, and Deviance Information Criterion. Results of this investigation showed that all three information criteria had very low or nonexistent success in choosing the best hierarchical linear model.