<p> This critical ethnographic study investigated the outlook of the African American community in New Orleans on inherent resources for supporting the youth of the community in achieving successful educational and personal development under the oppressive conditions that they are subjected to in privatized public schools. The objective was to identify what the community envisioned as protective support for youth against typical disciplinary practices in schools that include physical and psychological abuse, suspensions for minor offenses that set youth en route to prison, and State laws have been enacted to support those practices. </p><p> The research was guided by the following questions: What resources are available within the community to support the survival and thriving of African descendant youth who are threatened by State condoned aggression in public schools? What change do parents, students, and members of the community want in public schools? What action do parents, students, and members of the community see as necessary to making that change? </p><p> Data was collected through the ethnography methods of participating in residents' everyday lives by attending meetings and community events related to the school situation; observing social action; taking reflective notes; and video recording one-on-one conversations arranged as follow up to conversational exchanges or overheard commentary. </p><p> The findings of the study consist of three themes consistently identified as elements necessary to a program of support for African descendant youth's psychological balance, motivation, and self-actualization. The three themes of self-knowledge, self-reflection, and self-reliance were consistent articulated in the outlook data of members of the community. Resistance in action centered on building education institutions founded on African centered values and curriculum, taught by African America teachers. African centered values were viewed as a basis for actualizing self-sufficiency and positive personal development for African descendant youth. </p><p> Differences in outlook were found regarding educational institutions best suited to deliver the required support and the corrective value of mainstream politics. Independent African centered schools were seen as necessary to supporting the optimal development of African American youth, and free public education with access by all was seen as needed for educating the masses of African American youth given the financially depressed conditions of African American communities. Participation in mainstream politics as a means of gaining leverage for the community was viewed as highly valuable in some sectors of the community and as less valuable in others.</p>

<p> Rooted in Freirean pedagogy and using the Life Story Interview as a methodological tool, this dissertation research provides insight into the preparation, performance, and resilience of urban high school teachers and explores the viability of the Life Story Approach to reveal an alternative means of researching a teacher's approach to instructional pedagogy. This dissertation examines how a White female teacher's life story has informed her liberatory approach to teaching writing as an act of freedom in her urban high school classroom in Oakland, California. Observations of how the formation of a teacher's identity and instructional approach were influenced by her experiences in the world are explored in her story. This dissertation argues that if liberatory approaches and a critical literacy framework were considered within the context of seminal research on secondary writing instruction, teacher preparation programs and instructional pedagogy in urban classrooms would be compelled to change. These approaches are necessary to raise the critical consciousness of urban educators committed to serving low- income students of color in our nation's public schools and to inform instructional pedagogy and transform urban students' experiences in school and society. Implications for teacher preparation and approaches to curriculum development are considered.</p>

<p> With institutional importance placed on diversity in higher education, considerable research has been conducted regarding the experiences of African Americans at predominantly White institutions. However, the focus has been limited regarding African American administrators in higher education (Jackson, 2004; Allen, 2000; Weems, 2003). The purpose of this study is to understand and further explore how African American Male Student Affairs Administrators (AAMSAAs) perceive their day-to-day experiences and relationships at predominantly White institutions (PWI). Using basic qualitative research methods and an interview protocol developed from the conceptual frameworks of Herzberg (1964), Cose (1993) and Kanter (1977), 22 African American male student affairs administrators were asked to describe their professional experiences at PWIs including their attitudes on professional development, the motivating and de-motivating factors in the work place, conditions for success, and the realities of being underrepresented and often tokenized professionals at PWIs. The words shared by participants attributed to their own experiences and provided insight into this phenomenon. Participants reported overall being satisfied in their career choice despite expressing several challenges in their work environment including professional stereotypes that limited individuality, high performance pressure relative to their White peers, isolation as numerical minorities, and the existence of few African American male role models. Despite these challenges, participants found motivation through student engagement, increasing responsibility or advancement, strength through faith and spirituality, and leveraging the limited opportunities with supervisors and mentors of color. Implications for this research are to help student affairs administrators and other leaders at PWIs better understand the issues that may impede the success of African American male student affairs professionals and help campuses consider methods for recruitment and support of African American males.</p>

<p> This qualitative study addressed the problem of students' lack of trust of and interest in U.S. history and focused on students' experiences with official and unofficial versions of history in the middle school social studies classroom. A collective case study of five African American students was conducted in an eighth grade classroom at Carroll Academy, a public, urban charter school in Ohio. Interviews, questionnaires, observations, artifacts, and logs were collected and analyzed with a critical, interpretivist lens. </p><p> The findings included: (a) the students were suspicious of the official historical story in the form of their textbook and teacher; (b) they shared similar rationales for the perceived motivations behind the dishonest accounts in their textbooks, and the rationales changed in similar ways throughout the course of the project; (c) although they had limited experience with unofficial history before the project, they preferred to use unofficial historical sources with the condition that one eventually corroborates accounts with official sources; (d) the experience of studying family histories created race-related instances of contradiction between unofficial and official accounts in the classroom, and (e) students developed productive forms of resistance to the grand narrative in U.S. history by the end of the study. </p><p> The findings of the study offer implications for teachers of social studies. By using family history projects, teachers can engage students while helping them learn critical and historical thinking skills. They can provide a more inclusive social studies curriculum and can better understand their students' backgrounds and historical knowledge.</p>

<p> From 1880-1920 the United States struggled to incorporate former slaves into the citizenship of the nation. Constitutional amendments legislated freedom for African Americans, but custom dictated otherwise. White people equated power and wealth with whiteness. Conversely, blackness suggested poverty and lack of opportunity. Straddling the Color Line is a multi-city examination of influential and prominent African Americans who lived with one foot in each world, black and white, but who in reality belonged to neither. These influential men lived lives that mirrored Victorian white gentlemen. In many cases they enjoyed all the same privileges as their white counterparts. At other times they were forced into uncomfortable alliances with less affluent African Americans who looked to them for support, protection and guidance, but with whom they had no commonalities except perhaps the color of their skin. </p><p> This dissertation argues two main points. One is that members of the black elite had far more social and political power than previously understood. Some members of the black elite did not depend on white patronage or paternalism to achieve success. Some influential white men developed symbiotic relationships across the color line with these elite African American men and they treated each other with mutual affection and respect. </p><p> The second point is that the nadir in race relations occurred at different times in different cities. In the three cities studied, the nadir appeared first in Charleston, then New Orleans and finally in Cleveland. Although there were setbacks in progress toward equality, many blacks initially saw the setbacks as temporary regressions. Most members of the elite were unwilling to concede that racism was endemic before the onset of the Twentieth Century. In Cleveland, the appearance of significant racial oppression was not evident until after the World War I and resulted from the Great Migration. Immigrants from the Deep South migrated to the North seeking opportunity and freedom. They discovered that in recreating the communities of their homeland, they also created conditions that allowed racism to flourish. </p>

<p> Schools suspend 28.3% of African American males in traditional middle schools using a graded curriculum compared to 11% of all students (Krezmien, Leone, &amp; Achilles, 2006; Losen &amp; Skiba, 2010; Planty et al., 2009). African American males are more than two and half times more likely to receive a suspension than the average middle school student (Losen &amp; Skiba, 2010). Researchers have consistently found that the disproportionate suspension statistics for African American males are not solely attributed to socioeconomic or other demographic factors (Skiba et al., 2002; Wallace et al., 2009; American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008). From 1973 to 2006, a timeframe marked by increased focus on zero tolerance and high-stakes testing, African American suspension rates almost tripled (Losen &amp; Skiba, 2010). The perpetuation of the achievement gap, increased dropout rates, and higher prison rates are all distinct characteristics of the increased use of suspensions of African American males (Advancement Project, 2010; Finkel, 2010; Balfanz, Spirikakis, Neild, &amp; Legters, 2003). There is a direct relationship between failing grades and suspensions (Safer, Heaton, &amp; Parker, 1981). Traditional schools using graded curricula are not increasing achievement levels for African American males. Conversely, research suggests alternative grading practices, including non-graded curricula, can increase intrinsic motivation, student engagement, positive student attitudes, academic achievement, and positive behavior (Butler &amp; Nisan, 1986; Kohn, 1994; Linnenbrink &amp; Pintrich, 2003; Cotton, 2000). The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study is to investigate the extent of disproportionality and elevated rate of suspensions among African American males in middle schools with an alternative, non-graded curriculum. The study attempts to establish what, if any, statistically significant difference exists between the independent variable, type of school curriculum assessment, and the dependent variables, suspension proportion and suspension rate. The population of the study consists of middle school African American males in alternative schools using a non-graded curriculum from two different regions of America. The results are meaningful because the data suggests that there is no difference in the proportion of African American males suspended in the alternative setting versus the traditional setting. The results of the study are also encouraging because the data suggests there is a difference in the percentage of African American males suspended in the alternative setting versus the traditional setting. It is the researcher&rsquo;s belief that high-stakes testing and utilization of graded curricula attribute to the elevated rate of suspensions among African American males. However, there is a need of further research to clarify the contributing factors to the disproportionality of suspensions.</p>

<p> The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model has demonstrated the influencing factors for various business technology uses within the organizational system. However, in the context of African American small businesses (AASB), there was very little evidence of research to determine factors affecting the intention to use social media based on the UTAUT model. This quantitative study investigated factors that were expected to influence the intention of AASB owners to use social media based on modified constructs of the UTAUT model. The modified constructs represented several independent variables, namely performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), and facilitating conditions (FC) as moderated by age, gender, and experience in using social media tools. A random sampling method was used for the study. African American small business owners (<i>n</i> = 152) between the ages of 21 and 64 years participated in the study. Results showed that PE, SI, and FC were positively related to the AABB owners' intention to use and use of social media, while age, gender, and experience showed no evidence of any significant interactions. This study shed new lights on research of acceptance and use of social media by AASB owners. As a result, it is expected that knowledge gained will encourage increased use of social media tools by AASB, not only for social value but also as a vital socioeconomic option for a competitive advantage.</p>

<p> The aims of this microhistory are to provide a narrative concerning the possession of Southern masculinities and to untangle the hegemonic, convergent, and divergent forms of these identities that played out on the plantation stages. As this essay will show, the plantation stages were the sites where Southern men engaged in their most heated and personal conflicts over what was theirs and why. This thesis brings gendered selves to the forefront of conflict: the Southern men at the top of the plantation system fought to maintain their power through continuous assertions and redefinitions of their hegemonic masculinities. Thus, any man, regardless of his class or his race, could rise to the top of this symbolic status quo&mdash;for even just an instant. What ensued was an increasingly unstable hierarchy imposed by the planter standing on top, the black slave chained to the bottom, and other white men fighting or subtly negotiating their way up. Though challenged daily by enslaved black men and women, as well as the white men in their employ, the success of planters' masculinities in possessing what opposed them kept their ideal alive.</p>

<p> The purpose of the study was to determine the impact that community-based group mentoring had on improving academic efficacy and personal efficacy of 31 African American male participants. The study measured the influence of the group-mentoring program, which was arranged around an attribution-retraining curriculum. Participants attended a summer academy where they were exposed to a series of attribution retraining seminars allowing them to engage in activities making connections to attribution retraining concepts. The study aimed to determine if the participant's perceptions about their intelligence would be positively influenced by the attribution-retraining curriculum administered over a course of the 2-week summer academy. Survey responses from a pretest and posttest as related to motivational dimensions of attribution were analyzed. The quantitative results revealed a marginally significant change noted by <i>t</i>(29) = 1.82, <i>p</i> = 0.080, (.05 = statistically significant) for the two-tailed t-test reflecting that the participants' perceptions changed slightly regarding their ability to grow their intelligence. A correlational exploration was also conducted, which revealed that the group mentoring seminars influenced the participants' motivation to make better choices and to feel better about their ability to control their academic and personal destiny. Implications of the study include establishing attribution-retraining curriculum as part of group mentoring models in nonprofit organizations. Also, using attribution-retraining curricula with African American males as a motivational concept for academic and personal success was determined a worthwhile endeavor to mitigate the challenges African American male adolescents face including broken family structure, poverty, poor academic performance, high dropout rates, and behavioral challenges. </p>

<p> Preschool expulsions have gained new attention in the early child care field. The disproportionate rate of Blacks boys that are expelled or "pushed out" from their child care settings suggests particular concern for exploration. Behavioral problems in early childhood have negative outcomes later in life (Keane &amp; Calkins, 2004); therefore, it is imperative that educational systems create equitable, non-disciplinary practices, which do not marginalize or shame Black boys. This study captured the experiences of five parents of Black boys that were expelled or pushed out of multiple child care settings, as well as the temporary and lasting effects of the expulsions or "push-outs" on the entire family. One center director of a state-funded preschool and one head teacher of a private center also participated. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews, focus groups, and on-line temperament profiles. Grounded theory was used to code the data in terms of the study's conceptual framework, including relationships between parent, child and teacher/provider, Critical Race Theory (CRT), neurobiological considerations, gaps in teacher/provider preparation, and the high-stakes accountability movement. The social construction of Black boys and learning in early child care settings was also explored. Expulsions or push-outs had several negative impacts for parents, the boys of this study and their families. However, through these hardships, parents learned strong advocacy skills and showed resiliency. Implications for providers and policy are discussed.</p>