No / United Kingdom equalities legislation places general and specific legal duties upon higher education institutions to promote equality and diversity positively. This includes an increased emphasis on training and development, especially in the context of promoting and raising awareness of equality and diversity within an organizational setting. The authors evaluate the impact and effectiveness of drama as a means of delivering equality and diversity training. The legal, business, and moral case for diversity is explored, highlighting and investigating the important role of effective equality and diversity training. Drama‐based diversity training is considered within the context of a local university initiative aimed primarily at middle management. Within this initiative, professional actors explored the effects of discrimination in the workplace. The authors frame their findings in the evaluation model proposed by Kirkpatrick (1998). The authors argue that drama‐based training is an effective tool for delivering equality and diversity training and present evidence for such training as having a positive impact. In particular, drama‐based training increases the confidence and capacity of university middle managers to challenge inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

This dissertation studies legal and institutional policies that help to reduce the barriers to educational attainment and employment. The first chapter examines the effect of availability of juvenile record laws on education attainment and employment using state statue revisions after the passage of the federal Second Chance Act. The second chapter examines enrollment patterns of students who drop out from community colleges and identify four typologies of college dropouts and important factors that contribute to college success. The third chapter estimates the impact of federal Pell Grant eligibility on financial aid packages, labor supply while in schools, and academic outcomes for community college students. The three chapters together shed light on how federal, state, and institutional policies can help reduce the academic and employment barriers for the marginalized population in the United States.

Higher education in the United States has experienced a revolution over the past half-century, with more students of color and low-income students attending college than ever before. This compositional change has emerged in parallel with an exponential expansion of the higher education sector, both in its size and variety. As a result, racially-diverse and less-resourced students attending public and for-profit commuter colleges, rather than white, high-resource students attending private residential colleges, comprise today’s “new majority” of college enrollees. Yet despite new majority students' increase in college attendance, many such students arrive at college underprepared to succeed and the colleges they attend are ill-prepared to receive them. This dissertation investigates the tensions produced by the expansion and diversification of the higher education sector in the United States, analyzing how organizational characteristics and practices, shaped by institutional and cultural arrangements (e.g. normative accountability and race- or class-based discrimination), impact inequality in individual outcomes by race and socioeconomic status. The empirical context for this work is a large, urban, public university system that I refer to as, “Metropolitan University,” which includes 11 baccalaureate-granting colleges that share many structural and compositional similarities with the colleges attended by the majority of enrollees in the United States. Using a combination of longitudinal administrative records, longitudinal interview data, and information from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), together with core insights from the literatures in stratification, organizations, and the sociology of culture, this dissertation shows that higher education organizations independently play an appreciable role in producing inequality in students' bachelor's degree (BA) completion outcomes. I arrive at this core finding through three papers that draw on distinct data sources, analytical strategies, and theoretical lenses to evaluate BA completion outcomes in the Metropolitan University context. In the first paper, I argue that the rise of accountability standards in higher education unintentionally has obscured the role of colleges and universities in producing unequal student outcomes. Using longitudinal administrative data and fixed-effects estimation strategies, I show that statistical measures that isolate the independent effects of colleges on student outcomes often yield very different understandings of effectiveness than measures required by federal agencies or produced by the popular press. Once I employ more appropriate statistical strategies, I find unexpected variation in college effects across the university system as well as heterogeneous effects given students’ racial background, family income, and transfer-in status. In the second paper, I show that academic factors such as students' success in passing initial “gateway” coursework and the field of study trajectories colleges shape correlate strongly with college effectiveness and provide an initial explanation of differences in college performance. Yet longitudinal interview data collected at three colleges within the system during one academic year, allow me to identify other explanatory mechanisms. Specifically, in the third paper, I examine interactions between students’ belief systems concerning the meaning and value of higher education, the symbolic boundaries they create to separate themselves from dropouts, and their socio-academic experiences during the first year of college. Belief-boundary interactions contribute to students’ discrepant outcomes, though not as powerfully as students' field of study pathways and the support they receive from college advisors. Together, these three papers work to connect micro-, meso-, and macro- levels of analysis, illustrating the extent of individual and group-based inequality in higher education while also acknowledging and interrogating the organizational and institutional structures that produce it.

While it is well established that White students have positive experiences in taking diversity courses, little is known about the experiences of first-generation college students of color in these courses. This study addressed this gap by examining the learning experiences of 10 first-generation college students of color in two diversity courses in a 4-year public university. The study aim was to explore whether and how these first-generation college students of color drew from their prior knowledge and experiences to engage with the courses’ subject matter, and whether and how they used the knowledge gained in these courses in their lives beyond school. This study was informed by a three-part conceptual framework emphasizing faculty teaching practices, sociocultural features of students’ lives shaping their classroom learning, and transfer of knowledge from one learning site to another. I interviewed 10 first-generation college students of color, enrolled in one of two diversity courses and observed their learning. I learned that participants drew from their classmates’ prior knowledge and experiences to engage with and get a foothold on the diversity course content since often classmates’ lives offered examples for new ways of thinking about diversity issues and concepts. Moreover, participants drew from their own prior knowledge and experiences to offer counterarguments challenging classmates’ inaccurate views of class topics, thus relying on their lives as valuable resources for framing such arguments. Additionally, participants thought about how the knowledge they gained from the courses related to their lives beyond school; they did this by sharing knowledge with family members and friends as a way to expand their thinking of their world. They also used the knowledge gained from the courses to think about the circumstances of their neighborhoods, how to help their neighbors, and how to better support those they want to help in their future careers. Recommendations were made for (a) new research on the experiences of first-generation college students of color in diversity courses, (b) changes in institutional policy toward supporting these students’ learning in college classrooms, and (c) development of classroom (instructional) and institutional practices for supporting these students’ learning.

Between 2000 and 2010, the Asian population within the U.S. increased more than four times faster than the total U.S. population. Accordingly, school-aged immigrant children from Asia constitute a sizeable portion of the U.S.’s student population. The percentage of students enrolled in elementary and secondary public schools who are Asian/Pacific Islander is projected to increase from 2.6 to 3.1 million between 2014 and 2025, and will account for 6 percent of total enrollment by 2025. Asian American youth have shown distinct characteristics among other racial minority groups in the U.S. Compared to their White and Black counterparts, Asian American students perform better in secondary education and have higher college admission test scores. In addition to educational success in secondary education, Asian Americans also tend to enroll in college at higher rates, and are more likely to attend highly selective four-year colleges compared to other racial minority groups. Although the research on Asian American students’ educational success in secondary education and transition to college is well-established, neither their experiences in the early stages of schooling or in higher education have been investigated in depth, which leads to a general misunderstanding of Asian American students and their educational outcomes. For the children of immigrant parents, early childhood is the most important period for adjustment, providing opportunities to prepare socially, psychologically, and intellectually for formal institutional settings. Despite this, researchers have paid relatively little attention to the educational experiences of young Asian American students and their families. Research on Asian American college students is equally important, with some social scientists reporting that the educational success of Asian Americans in secondary education is not necessarily maintained through higher education. Research on these two stages of education will help us better understand the educational attainment of Asian American students in terms of life course perspectives. In order to address the evident gaps in research, I have chosen to investigate the relationship between parents’ race/ethnicity and parental involvement in pre-secondary education, as well as the association between students’ race/ethnicity and educational experiences in post-secondary education, focusing primarily on Asian American students. In the first study, I examine how the race/ethnicity of parents with first grade children contributes to parental involvement within school and outside of school, after controlling for potential confounding factors at both the child and parent level. I further explore whether parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) influences the parental involvement of Asian parents. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (ECLS-K:2011) data, I employ ordinary least squared (OLS) regression to examine the extent to which parent’s race/ethnicity or SES (within-race/ethnicity analysis) predict parental involvement in their children’s educational activities, in school and outside of school. To adjust for weighting and design effects in the data set, I used the specific first grade weights designed for each teacher, parent, or school administrator response in 2010-2011 cohorts, respectively. I found that while Asian parents had significantly lower participation in school-based parental activities compared to White parents, such parents tended to participate more heavily in their children’s educational activities outside of school. Within-race/ethnicity analysis for Asian parents, I found an overall positive effect of SES on parental involvement both in school and outside of school. Interestingly, the determinants of parental involvement changed depending upon the types of parental involvement. In the second study, I analyze the 2016 Student Experience in the Research University (SERU), a multi-institutional data set, to examine the relationship between students’ race/ethnicity and college outcomes, as well as the extent to which students’ college experiences and perceptions mediate this relationship. I found that Asian American college students had a lower college GPA, as well as lower scores in self-assessment of gains in critical thinking and communication skills, compared to their White peers. Students’ academic engagement and perceptions of how well they belonged accounted for the largest share of the relationship between students’ race/ethnicity and college outcomes. I further explore how parental education, as a proxy of parents’ SES, influences the college outcomes of Asian American college students. I found that Asian American students with parents who did not attend any college had higher GPAs than those Asian American students with parents who both earned four-year degrees. However, Asian American students with parents who did not attend any college had lower scores in self-evaluation of gains in critical thinking and communication skills than those with parents who both earned four-year degrees. This dissertation contributes to the existing literature on Asian American studies and higher education by pushing the boundaries of sociological knowledge of the experiences of Asian American students in U.S. schools. Focusing on the influence of race/ethnicity and family background from the early years to the post-secondary level, this research provides a rich and far more comprehensive understanding of immigrant success than is currently available in the literature. Given the statistical evidence of higher educational attainment among Asian American students, many policy makers view Asian American students and their families as members of a model minority; researchers typically describe these individuals as successfully overcoming some racial minority status, and wrongly assume that they do not need to receive specific policy or program support. These perspectives imply that Asian American students are a homogeneous racial group. In response, my dissertation attempts to reveal the disadvantages of those Asian American parents who struggle to involve themselves in their children’s school-based activities, as well as how SES can impact parent involvement among these Asian parents. My dissertation also attempts to highlight the fact that success in secondary education for Asian Americans does not necessarily lead to successful college outcomes. These findings indicate that Asian American students and their families have been misunderstood and misrepresented, particularly with regard to the early stages of schooling, as well as higher education. My dissertation seeks to inform policy for those programs targeting disadvantaged racial minority students. Educational institutions, for instance, could design policy interventions for those racial minority parents with children in pre-secondary education wanting to involve themselves more heavily in their children’s school-based activities. Postsecondary educators might also be able to more effectively foster the academic success of their students (specifically Asian Americans) by increasing their awareness of their students’ particular immigrant and family backgrounds.

This case study examined women’s identity development in the workplace through the application of storytelling as a learning technique. Study participants included twenty-two women graduates and 2nd year students of diverse backgrounds ranging in ages 25 to 71 from a master’s degree applied theatre program in a Northeastern university. This study describes identity development through ways in which women make meaning of their lived experience and perceived interactions in the workplace. Data collection derived from 22 semi-structured interviews. Deeper data analysis surfaced through dramaturgical coding. Three analytical categories emerged: 1) Generations, 2) Race and 3) Sexual Orientation. The findings exposed power and positionality barriers as obstacles and challenges that undermine women’s careers. Three conclusions emerged: 1) Women continue to struggle with barriers that pose as obstacles and challenges to their learning and identity development in the workplace, 2) Women of color experience the double bind barriers of racism and sexism and 3) Women learn through storytelling and sharing workplace stories. This study privileges storytelling, a form of presentational knowing, as a legitimate way of knowing and has been shown to be conducive to learning and identity development. Women’s perspectives changed through theatre techniques using critical reflection and action; they engaged in communities of practice that offered supportive structures. Also, there continues to be resistance to hard conversations around race and inequality. Diversity programs that build upon Paulo Freire’s praxis of reflection and action hold leaders who espouse diversity initiatives to account. To avoid the paradox of diversity, human resources diversity training, organizational learning, professional development and community based social programs can leverage the power of storytelling. Affective empathy as an embodied component of storytelling establishes empathic connections between dominant culture and the marginalized. Critical and constructive development theories need to be embedded into curriculum to address systemic racism. Presentational knowing is an effective tool for social action and social justice by broadening learning beyond adult education to encourage empathy between people whose views are different. This qualitative study is grounded in critical theory, John Heron’s (1992) Presentational knowing, theories of identity and constructive development.