Through ethnographic interviewing and participant observation, this study examines the motivation of sixteen women of different ethnic backgrounds to attend college and to major in a helping profession. The women, aged nineteen to forty-two, come from low-income rural areas of the southeastern United States. The study is set in a two-year unit of a state university system. / The existing literature appears to establish the motivational factors for white, urban, middle-class males. Researchers know less, however, about the factors influencing working-class people, females, or members of minorities. The dominant view associates academic achievement with the Protestant work ethic and success orientation as measured by grades and test scores. Findings incorporate motivations for enrollment, factors affecting persistence, post-enrollment changes in motivation, and the modifications in achievement anticipated after graduation. / The investigation focused on the importance of the participants' concept of education and the resulting effects on motivation for achievement, on the role of children both as motivators and as impediments to scholastic success, on the impact of menial or manual labor, and on the respondents' attitudes toward men, welfare, and dependency. Findings include the following: (1) in contrast to males in other studies, women in this study rank motivating factors in a different order of importance, (2) different considerations shape their primary motivators, and (3) enrollment motivators for women can become barriers to success in higher education. / Among these participants, social forces leading to the desire to matriculate and to the ability to persevere in higher education differ from those found in traditional participants. Whereas "mainstream" studies noted that mate selection was among women's motivators for attending college, this study found that the desire to escape abusive men was a major motivator for returning women. Some motivators also became pressures that impeded success when the women became students (e.g., need for child care, lack of money). In their drive for upward mobility, these women often were caught between family responsibilities and school or between community and classroom. The study integrates critical theory with constructs from developmental psychology and sociology to explain behaviors in this group. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-05, Section: A, page: 1706. / Major Professor: Rodney F. Allen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

Previous research on correctional reform has been empirically fragmented and guided by narrow theoretical frameworks. The research has been empirically fragmented because analysis of correctional reform has been "disconnected;" studies have viewed the origins, operations and outcomes of correctional reform as distinct and separate units of analysis. Moreover, singular explanatory frameworks (i.e., critical, organizational) have dominated the research, facilitating a narrow understanding of the origins, operations, and/or outcomes of reform. In essence, theoretical divisiveness and a limited empirical focus have impeded our ability to fully comprehend the meanings and consequences of correctional reform. / This study proposes an integrated and comprehensive approach to the study of correctional reform. The approach incorporates components of several theoretical perspectives (i.e., social context, organizational, professional-ideological) that, collectively, advance understanding of the salient processes involved in correctional reform. Moreover the approach views correctional reform as a comprehensive process, whereby the origins, operations, and outcomes of reform are parts of a connected whole. / The utility of an integrated and comprehensive approach is explored through its application to the origins, operations, and outcomes of a county intermediate punishment system. This illustrative case study, in effect, responds to the calls in the punishment literature for theory integration, and a concrete level of analysis that captures the day to day empirical reality of correctional reform processes. The study concludes with discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of an integrated and comprehensive approach. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-12, Section: A, page: 3999. / Major Professor: Thomas Blomberg. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

The purposes of the study were: (1) to examine the perceptions of students across a number of socio-economic and demographic categories; (2) to gauge their satisfaction with home responsibilities and attitude toward family; and (3) to identify perception of teachers' expectations as they related to student's expectation to graduate. Of particular interest was the pattern of interrelationship on selected variables for Hispanic female students as an ethnic-gender group, when compared to Hispanic males, non-Hispanic females, non-Hispanic males and all others. The variables included in this study were: satisfaction with home responsibilities; attitude toward family; student's perception of teachers' expectations; and student's expectation to graduate. / The study sample consisted of 406 eighth grade students enrolled in an urban public school. The six schools were chosen by stratified random sampling. All of the eighth graders were surveyed including the limited-English-proficient, bilingual (Spanish) and students with learning disabilities. A questionnaire was developed and administered, which provided the basis on which to measure the four variables of interest in this study. / Five multiple regression models developed and analysed. The significance of the regression co-efficient were assessed the Alpha value of.05. / Results of the multiple regression analysis revealed that for the entire population, all three independent variables were found to be significant. For Hispanic Females, the variables Student's Satisfaction with Home Responsibilities and Student's Expectation to Graduate were found to be significant. For Hispanic Males, only Student's Expectation to Graduate was found to be significant. Other Females the variables, Student's Attitude toward family and Student's Expectation to Graduate were found to be significant. Like the Hispanic Males, Other males also found Student's Perception of Teacher's Expectation to be significant. For All Other Groups (combination of Hispanic Males, Other Females, and Other Males) the variable Student's Perception of Teachers' Expectations was found to be significant. / The results of this study seem to indicate that there is an interrelationship between home and school values as they related to the expectations of Hispanic females to graduate from high school. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1541. / Major Professor: Byron Massialas. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

This dissertation is an attempt to explore first year college students' Facebook use in association with their relationship development with their previously unacquainted roommates. Survey data indicated that it is very common for freshmen to look up their roommates on Facebook after receiving their roommate assignment from school. Being able to get an idea of who the roommate is helps reduce a student's uncertainty about living with a complete stranger. Both the uncertainty reduction theory (URT) and the predicted outcome value (POV) theory provide a solid theoretical framework to predict students' information-seeking behaviors on Facebook. Social information processing (SIP) theory and hyperpersonal model are proved to be helpful in explaining students' impression formation process on Facebook. This research predicts that information-seeking behaviors as well as the impressions formed based on information available on Facebook will reduce students' uncertainty about the roommates. Moreover, the study aims to take a further step by applying expectancy violations theory to investigate whether the discrepant impressions formed between Facebook and offline experience have an impact on students' level of uncertainty upon move-in with the roommates, and more importantly, the impact on the development of roommate relationship closeness. / A combination of a three-wave survey method and in-depth interviews with 19 students was used for this study. Survey data were collected at three different time points: (1) two weeks before college freshmen moved in with their roommates; (2) one week after they moved into the dormitory; and (3) seven weeks after living together with the roommates. The interviews were conducted after the three-wave survey was completed. / Statistical analyses using multiple linear regressions, multiple analysis of variance, and mixed-design ANOVA were applied for the hypotheses testing. The findings were mostly consistent with the hypotheses: (A) before moving in with the roommates, incoming first year students' uncertainty level was affected by how often they interacted with the roommates on Facebook, how many channels they used to communicate with the roommates, and their impressions of roommates' appearance and task attractiveness; (B) freshmen who formed positive initial Facebook impressions engaged in more information-seeking behaviors and had greater certainty than those who formed negative initial impressions of the roommates; (C) upon moving in with the roommates, students' uncertainty level was influenced by their offline impressions of the roommates' social and appearance attractiveness; (D) discrepancies between initial Facebook and offline impressions produced significant group differences in students' level of uncertainty and relational outcomes with the roommates; and (E) students' uncertainty and the impressions of roommates change over time and among groups.

This grounded theory study responds to the 21st Century dilemma medical schools encounter as online social networking sites like Facebook reveal more and more about their students---do professionally incongruous online behaviors indicate a lack of essential traits required to be a physician? By contextually situating the inquiry at one medical school over a period of three years, findings revealed the main concerns students had regarding professionalism as it relates to Facebook and detailed strategies employed to resolve those concerns as a substantive theory of digital identity dissonance. Participants revealed an awareness of desired behaviors espoused by professionalism expectations, but discovery of a looped pattern of telling demonstrated a reactive reasoning process seemingly incompatible with institutional norms but indicative of identity acquisition tension. Theoretical conceptualization of the data expanded Bourdieu's notion of habitus to a novel concept of Facebook Native Habitus (FBNH). Identity guarding emerged in analysis as a basic social process characterized by a reactive reasoning process through which enculturated members of a group negotiate thoughts and feelings perceived to be incongruent with in-group expectations. Identity guarding is a subconscious strategy used in managing presentation of self and is the formal theory developed in this study.

The dissertation is a qualitative inquiry into the vexed state of public education reform in the contemporary United States. It focuses on the introduction of charter schools as reform instruments, the emergence of a widely-celebrated chain of college preparatory charters, and internal conflicts within the Texas charter school community that were enacted in 2007 with a proposed piece of charter school reform legislation, Senate Bill 4. Drawing on interviews with administrators, observations of schools and association meetings, analysis of media and policy documents and public testimony from the Texas legislature, it describes contemporary cultural anxieties about the competencies of present and future citizens. The dissertation is structured in the form of four observational essays. The method involved in the writing is to enter into dialogue with the cultural discourses preceding, produced by, or trailing along in the wake of the public debate over SB 4. It works to tease out the implications and interconnections gathered in the field, including representations produced for other, more straightforwardly informative purposes, in order to provoke new ways of thinking about them. The first essay is based on interview-based research I conducted with school administrators in San Antonio. It begins with an assessment of a similar study of public school reform conducted by anthropologists in North Carolina that is more straightforwardly informed by critical theory and an oppositional moral stance to neoliberalism and offers in the place of critique a more humble account of my own fieldwork in San Antonio that was not motivated by clear cut moral certainties. The second is based on media representations of charter schools, educational assessments, and the widely-celebrated and discussed KIPP network of schools and seeks to situate the debate over SB 4 within a broader national context of public debate on the problem of education reform. The third essay continues to probe the sources of KIPP's broad popular appeal through observations of daily activities of one of its middle school campuses. The final essay returns to the public testimony on SB 4 to problematize what appear to be simple solutions to immensely complicated problems.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Wanda S. Pillow. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-257) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Michelle Perry. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-196) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> This dissertation presents two participatory action research case studies focusing upon how students viewed the influence of the pedagogy and curriculum of the Chican@ Literature, Art and Social Studies (CLASS) program upon their personal, ethnic, and academic identities. In addition, these studies examined the various ways that youth perceive their role in addressing critical issues in their lives. I conducted this study as a teacher researcher in collaboration with my students. The first study focuses upon eight of the students in the CLASS program as a collective, and the second study is concentrated upon the only student in CLASS who was not of Chican@/Latin@ descent. </p><p> Both case studies were ten months in duration where I used ethnographic research methods for data collection, which included transcripts from one-on one interviews with the students, as well as artifacts they produced during CLASS. The eight students in this study were an average age of 18.5 years old and all but one had experience in the now defunct Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in Tucson; a program that produced positive educational outcomes in terms of graduation rates and state standardized tests through culturally responsive and critical pedagogy rooted in Indigenous epistemologies (Cabrera, Milem, Jacquette, &amp; Marx, 2014). CLASS was a similar in structure and practice to MAS since I was a teacher in both programs. However, due to unprecedented legislation in Arizona banning Mexican American Studies, CLASS became the last vestiges of the former program outside of public school spaces in order to adhere to the law (Acosta, 2014a; 2014b). </p><p> Implications include the impact of Indigenous epistemologies, decolonizing and humanizing methodologies and theoretical frameworks upon teaching practices for Chican@ students and other students of color. Furthermore, culturally sustaining pedagogies and critical multicultural and responsive curriculum can increase student engagement and the formation of a positive academic identity (Banks, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Paris &amp; Alim, 2014; Valenzuela, 1999). Finally, counter narratives (Delgado &amp; Stefancic, 2001), ethnic studies, and social justice curricula (Sleeter, 2011) coupled with Indigenous epistemologies can assist in the development of critical consciousness in students, and serve as a guide to taking collective action in their community and lives.</p>

During the past two decades, major advances in the field of HIV/AIDS research have occurred. With advances in medications and treatments, children born with HIV/AIDS are experiencing greater life expectancies and beginning to enter the school systems. However, this new population of children with HIV/AIDS has a variety of new and unique needs that must be addressed by schools. Given the new needs, schools may have to re-examine present policies by eliciting the views of the people most affected by the policies. The purpose of the present study was to provide a preliminary opportunity for the families of children with HIV/AIDS to express their expectations and reservations in regard to school systems and policies related to disclosure. A multi-case study research design was used to learn more about the perspectives of four parents/guardians of school-aged children with HIV/AIDS. This study was intended to challenge the assumption that the issues facing families affected by HIV/AIDS today are the same as they were in the late 1980's and early 1990's by providing a voice to families of children with HIV/AIDS and recommendations for new policies.