This Q methodology study focused on the perspectives of diverse community leaders concerning how their perceptions of leadership behaviors and practices were used to influence K-12 public education. The leaders’ perspectives were identified, described, analyzed, and compared with others who shared similar views through the use of Q methodology. Through purposeful and snowball sampling, a diverse group of community leader participants first responded to an open-ended questionnaire, inviting them to provide the leadership behaviors and practices they use to influence K-12 public education. This process of concourse development resulted in a total of 263 statements. These statements were then systematically reduced to 42 statements to be used in the Q sample, or research instrument. The Q sample represented the broad perspectives of the opinion domain and specifically addressed the content of the research question: How do community leaders perceive that their leadership behaviors and practices are used to influence K-12 public education? In the second stage of this Q methodology study, 45 community leader participants sorted these 42 statements to best reflect how they believed they most influenced public education. Following each sort, participants provided a rationale for their ± 4 statements which were used to further inform the data interpretation. These 45 Q sorts were then correlated to one another, and these intercorrelations were factor analyzed. Four factors were then rotated and extracted for this study. These four factors were analyzed abductively through examining the holistic placement of statements within their respective factor arrays, the descriptive comments provided following the Q sorts, and the demographic characteristics of the participants who comprised each factor. As a result of this analysis, the four factors were named: (a) Voice the Story and the Needs of My Underserved Community, (b) Provide Resources, Advocacy, and Grassroots Mobility, (c) Learn About Educational Issues to Lobby and to Serve, and (d) Build Supportive and Personal Relationships with Key School Stakeholders to Stay Informed.

Transitioning to adulthood is a challenging experience for all young adults, but especially for those who are living with HIV/AIDS and residing in low income, urban areas. Young adults, particularly those who live in low income, urban areas, have the highest rate of new HIV cases among all age groups in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the lived experiences of a purposive sample of young adults living with HIV/AIDS who resided in a selected low income, urban area in order to better understand how ecological and health factors presented opportunities and challenges for resilience and coping. This is an important topic because this age group has the highest rate of new HIV cases. Decreasing HIV health disparities is a top priority of the U.S. Office of AIDS Research, the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, and Healthy People 2020. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted on a purposive sample of 16 young adults 18-29 years of age living with HIV/AIDS from a selected low income, urban area in the southeast region of the United States. Data from the interviews were analyzed for significant statements, meanings, and themes. Major challenges and barriers indicated by the participants included issues related to mental health, stigma and disclosure, relationships, marriage and children, inadequate health/sex education in the schools, lack of HIV/AIDS knowledge in their communities, and medication adherence. Major strengths and supports included internal resilience and positive attitudes, small support networks of family and friends, HIV support groups, and an array of available medical and support services. Participants’ suggestions for improving the lives of young adults living with HIV/AIDS included integrating HIV/AIDS services with other services, enhancing mental health services, particularly at the time of diagnosis, providing assistance when disclosing their HIV status to others, enhancing health/sex education in the schools, increasing community education about HIV/AIDS, using motivational speakers to educate other young adults, creating community resource centers for those living with HIV/AIDS, and conducting more research studies on the topic. This information may be valuable for educational leaders, healthcare leaders, policymakers, and other professionals who design and conduct programs, services and policies to help this group transition to adulthood, care for themselves, and prevent transmission of the virus to others.

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of Black teachers regarding their decision to teach and the satisfaction with their work experiences in predominantly White K-12 schools. A total of 118 teachers who were identified as Black and as employees of a predominantly White school were invited to complete a survey via email. A total of 56 did in fact respond. Of that 56, only 51 respondents provided enough usable data (which is defined as a survey completed in full). The data, which came from a Perceptions Survey, meant to report levels of job satisfaction as it relates to perceptions of work experiences. The primary research question was: What are the perceptions of Black teachers regarding their satisfaction with their work experiences in predominantly White K-12 schools? The subsequent sub-question was: How do those work experiences impact Black teachers’ decision to continue teaching, be promoted from teaching, or recommend a career in teaching to other Black people? The independent or predictor variables were: spirituality, cultural acceptance, interracial relationships, intra-racial relationships, mentoring, and advancement opportunities. The dependent variable was: job satisfaction. A bivariate correlation analysis was used to determine if the predictor variables should be grouped as components using their variance scores. The variance scores did indeed indicate the need to group the predictor variables as components. Those components were named as relationships, oppression, and mindset. The component named oppression had a significant correlation with job satisfaction. Overall the findings indicated that a large percent of Black teachers in predominantly White schools are not satisfied with their job. Further research about the job satisfaction of Black teachers is recommended because of the growing need to recruit and keep Black teachers in our schools.

This study was designed to explore the influences, experiences, and disparate life choices of eight African American males from the Jacksonville's Pre-trial Detention Center and the U.S. Navy. The focus of this project was on the choices made by the participants and possible reasons for those choices. Specifically, the research question for this study is "How do some African American males from Jacksonville's Pre-trial Detention Center and the Navy describe their life experiences and the influences of these experiences on their choices?'' The framework for this project was a cross-case and cross-site study. The sites were the Jacksonville Pre-trial Detention Center and the Navy. There were four participants from the Jacksonville Pre-trial Detention Center and four from the Navy. The research yielded some interesting results. All of the participants took full responsibility for their choices. At no time did any of these young men blame anyone but themselves for the bad decisions they made. Additionally, they did not verbalize that the race and gender of their teachers were factors in their educational experience. Finally, there was no specific point at which the participants had a choice that resulted in their diverging from productive citizenship. What emerged from the research were factors, which in their aggregate, resulted in the decisions of the participants. The factors were parental control and resiliency. The participants from the Pre-trial Detention Center lacked many resiliency factors, which those from the Navy enjoyed. Whereas the home life of the participants from the Navy had the element of parental control, the home life of those from the Pre-trial Detention Center did not.

This research determined the preferred project delivery method utilized by campus planners when building student housing on a university campus. Four key performance indicators were also evaluated to determine if they influenced the campus planner to select a particular project delivery method. The four key performance indicators were: owner input, cost, safety, and on-time completion. Campus planners identified though the Society for Campus and University Planners (SCUP), were invited to participate in this survey research method. Five research questions were explored in this study. They were: 1. What is the preferred project delivery method (PDM) when building a residence hall on a college campus? 2. Do key performance indicators influence a campus planner’s choice of preferred project delivery method? 3. Does the preferred project delivery method differ by the number of beds? 4. Does the preferred project delivery method differ geographically? 5. Does the preferred project delivery method differ between public and private institutions? Based on the survey findings, analyzed using SPSS, sufficient information was garnered from the data to allow responses to the five research questions. In sum, there was a significant preference on the part of campus planners for the construction management at risk project delivery method when building student housing. This finding was consistent across regions and between public and private institutions. The design-bid-build project delivery method was the preferred approach when building student housing of less than 200 beds. Key performance indicators were shown to have little influence on the decision regarding which project delivery method to choose.

The purpose of this study was to identify and understand how African American alumni of urban high schools perceived that they could best contribute to their former schools. Despite numerous improvement efforts for several decades, the academic performance of urban high school students has failed to keep pace with that of their suburban counterparts. This research was framed around the premise that the rich legacies and diverse cultural experiences of African American alumni of urban high schools could mitigate the outside factors that negatively impact student performance at urban schools. These funds of knowledge, as Moll and Amanti (2005) described the cultural and cognitive resources that are derived from the lived experiences of marginalized people, are unique to African American alumni of urban high schools. The 45 participants of this study were African American alumni of two prominent urban high schools, Jean Ribault High School and William Raines High School, located in Jacksonville, Florida. Using Q methodology, participants sorted 38 statements reflecting how they perceived that African American alumni could best contribute to their former schools. The researcher then employed statistical software to correlate the 45 Q sorts, factor analyzed those correlations, and extracted five collectively held factors. However, since the fifth factor was bipolar, the researcher interpreted the five-factor solution as having six perspectives, one for each of the first four factors and two opposite perspectives for factor five. The six perspectives were named College Preparation, Relationship Building, Spirituality, Self-efficacy, Visibility (students), and Visibility (parents). Through the lens of social capital, these resulting perspectives were then systematically interpreted to provide a rich description of how African American alumni of urban high schools perceived that they could best contribute to their former schools.

This qualitative study utilized elite, semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample of the first women who became Special Agents and supervisors in the highly gendered Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The historical context for their experiences is significant in light of social and legal mandates for equal opportunity and the increased interest in gender-specific research that took place during the 1970s. Literature relating to feminist perspectives, the integration of women into nontraditional occupations, and the gendered nature of bureaucracy supported the conceptual framework. Guided by educational criticism, four strategies were used recursively: typological analysis was used to define categories of data; interpretive analysis was used to identify patterns and connections in the data; evaluation was used to attach value to the data beyond the participants, and thematics were used to analyze pervasive messages within the data as a whole. Typologies included the choice of nontraditional careers, decision-making, efficacy as leaders, and efforts to negotiate the FBI’s bureaucracy. Three metaphors were used to interpret connections and patterns according to feminist standpoint theory, career self-efficacy theory, and various organizational principles. A Supergirl metaphor highlighted women’s unique knowledge and complex roles; a Target metaphor highlighted complex patterns for high achievement and response to obstacles, and a Clubhouse metaphor highlighted masculine culture, the role of rules, and changes to an organization’s equilibrium. Evaluation analysis addressed the moral obligation for women in leadership and the need for organizational diversity. Themes in the data included occupational pride, the challenge to manage multiple roles, an absence of relationship support, and inconsistency in feminist views.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether a set of teacher demographic, knowledge, and instructional variables is related to preschool children’s literacy development. Specifically, the study investigated how these teacher variables impact children’s language development scores on the four subscales of the Preschool Language Assessment Instrument, Second Edition (PLAI2) and the four subscales of the Test of Language Development – Primary, Fourth Edition (TOLD-P:4). There were two major research questions in the study: (a) Will the predictor set of CLASS emotional support, CLASS classroom organization, CLASS instructional support, level of education, years teaching pre-kindergarten, and answers on a teacher knowledge questionnaire (TKQ) correlate with the TOLD-P:4 language assessment subscales of relational vocabulary, syntactic understanding, sentence imitation, and morphological completion? (b) Will the predictor set of CLASS emotional support, CLASS classroom organization, CLASS instructional support, level of education, years teaching pre-kindergarten, and answers on a TKQ correlate with the PLAI2 language assessment subscales of matching, selective analysis, reordering, and reasoning? Results indicated no noteworthy correlations between the predictor variable set and the subtests of the TOLD-P:4; hence, the variable relationships posited in research question 1 were not supported by the data. Results for research question 2 indicated support for the variable relationships posited. Specifically, canonical correlation yielded two roots of noteworthy size (Rc 2 values = .19 and .09 for roots 1 and 2, respectively). Canonical structure coefficients indicated positive correlation between the teacher predictor variables of education, experience, knowledge, and the CLASS domain of emotional support with students’ scores on the PLAI2. At the same time, the amount of teaching experience that teachers had in the childcare industry was found to be negatively correlated to PLAI2 subscale scores. Findings are discussed relative to the literature on professional development.

The purpose of this study was to determine and examine the impact of student support services (SSS) on academic success at a historically black college. The study was grounded in the theoretical framework of Astin’s Input-Environment-Outcome Model (IEO), Scholssberg’s theory of marginality, holistic theory , facilitation theory, and the theory of sensory simulation (Dunn, 2002; Anderson et. al., 2011; Dennick, 2014 and Pritchard, 2013) A mixed method approach was used to quantify and explicate triangulated data, which included the N-LSSI survey, archival data, and focus group interviews. The N-LSSI survey used a 7-point Likert Scale, and students from The College completed the instrument. The longitudinal nature of the study meant that the assumption of independent observations required by ANOVA was violated. Therefore, I used MANOVA to analyze SSS and Non-SSS student academic achievement data (i.e., GPA, Accuplacer test scores). This analysis also determined whether significant differences existed between the SSS and Non-SSS student participant groups based on means of the predictors. Qualitative data were organized, evaluated, and interpreted using open, axial and selective coding with MAXQDA, a qualitative data analysis software program. The results of the analyses showed there were no significant differences between the two student groups relative to GPAs. In contrast, Accuplacer math scores, reading scores, and writing scores were significantly different. The retention differences between SSS and Non-SSS students were significant in 2011 and 2012, while graduation data revealed significant differences in 2012. Results from the N-LSSI survey produced no significant difference between SSS and Non-SSS satisfaction with The College, while focus group interviews revealed student satisfaction levels were virtually the same.

This study examined exceptional student educators’ (ESE) personal practical theories (PPTs) and how they impact complex decision-making when it comes to students with disabilities and their families. A case study methodology was selected to explore how four ESE teachers and leaders developed their PPTs as well as how they planned, interacted, and reflected upon decisions made during one workweek. The guiding questions of this study were: what are the PPTs of ESE leaders and teachers, what factors influence the development of PPTs, and how do PPTs impact special educators’ work with students with disabilities? To address these questions, four participants were selected based on their role within the district, their experiences working with students with disabilities, and their reputation for being high quality educators. Data were collected using a PPT workbook as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The results of this study included five PPTs for each participant and eight common themes. These themes included: care for students and families, safety of students, administration and teacher professional development, ensuring high expectations for students, personal and professional advocacy, mentoring and collaboration, reflection and problem solving, and problems with inclusion. These results are presented in this dissertation in support of an argument for the need for increased pre-service and in-service for ESE educators, increased professional development for administrators, and increased training for inclusion teachers working with students with disabilities. Engaging in a practice of exploring and refining teacher and leader beliefs and assumptions using the PPT process may increase the reflective practice of teachers and perhaps result in a more appropriate form of evaluation for educators.