This study of African American undergraduates at Emory & Henry College, Tusculum College, Western Carolina University, East Tennessee State University, Appalachian State University, and University of North Carolina at Asheville was conducted to determine students' stages of identity development, level of involvement in campus activities, and demographic characteristics within historically White Southern Appalachian colleges and universities, both public and independent. Three research questions were answered by analyzing 21 null hypotheses using the t-test and the chi square test. Hypotheses were tested at the.05 level of significance. Data collected in this study revealed that the students' perceptions of identity development and their level of involvement at historically White public or independent colleges and universities in Southern Appalachia were more similar than different. Comparative analyses sought differences in public and independent student differences in identity development, involvement, and characteristics of African American students at public and independent colleges and universities. Few statistically significant differences were found in the demographic characteristics, stages of identity development, and level of involvement. A comparative analysis of African American undergraduates at independent colleges and universities revealed significant differences in the level of involvement and demographic characteristics. Public universities enrolled more females and their students had more pre-college cultural experiences than independent students. Students enrolled in public universities were significantly less involved in sports than independent students. Specific demographic characteristics did not affect college choices. Data in this study indicated a need for improving the programs, activities, and services available to African American undergraduates attending historically White colleges and universities in Southern Appalachia. Several recommendations were made. Institutional and programmatic strategies were outlined to improve identity development and involvement of African American undergraduates at Emory & Henry College, Tusculum College, Western Carolina University, University of North Carolina at Asheville, East Tennessee State University, and Appalachian State University.

Although public education in the United States has had remarkable growth and improvement since its beginning, significant inadequacies concerning racial equity continue to cast a shadow on the system. Despite desegregation efforts and specific attention to providing integrated school settings there has been little progress in establishing educational justice. The purpose of this case study was to uncover perceptions about racial inequity within Asheville City Schools as well as potential facilitators of equity. A qualitative case study using 10 guiding research questions was conducted to evaluate the perceptions of parents as well as educators at Asheville City Schools Preschool regarding racial inequities and potential facilitators of equity. Transcripts from a Racial Equity Photovoice Project were used to identify perceptions of the presence and the impact of racial inequity as well as assets of, barriers to, and potential facilitators of equity. Findings indicate parents and educators agree that barriers of racial equity include elements of negative societal influences, antiquated educational policies and procedures, inapt curricula and instruction, external systems that perpetuate biases, meager funding structures and poor home-school connections. Further, findings indicate parents and educators agree that diverse student bodies and faculties, culturally and social-emotionally relevant curricula and instruction, positive relationships between educators and children, and authentic 2-way communication are potential facilitators of racial equity. Overarching themes incorporate concerns related to resources, mandates, personal narratives, and relationships. This research adds to the literature related to racial equity and has implications for practice as well as future research.

In this thesis, I am examining how East Tennessee State Normal School in East Tennessee and Appalachian State Normal School in Western North Carolina interpreted progressive education differently in their states. This difference is that East Tennessee State began as a state funded school to educate future teachers therefore their school and their curriculum was more rounded and set to a structured schedule. Appalachian State Normal School was initially founded to educate the uneducated in the “lost provinces” therefore, curriculum was even more progressive than East Tennessee State’s – based strongly on the practices of farming, woodworking, and other practical skills. I will also be looking at what these different interpretations tell about the states, what it says about the Appalachia region, and how both schools applied these progressive ideas in their schools. Lastly, I will be answering how Progressive education, and normal schools affected the communities in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

The teacher-student relationship is multidimensional and fluid. This is especially true for students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Educational leaders in the public school setting cannot control which students enroll at their school sites. The only thing teachers, as educational leaders in K-12 public education, have complete control over is the environment they create in their classrooms. Among those student groups most reflecting few gains on state and federal reports of proficiency data are students who typically come from backgrounds besieged with challenges or from historically underserved and marginalized communities. In this transcendental phenomenological study, the phenomenon investigated was how secondary teachers described their experiences in building relationships with students identified as at promise. A secondary public school setting was the focus of this study. The intent of this study was to understand the essence of the lived experiences of teachers as they described their experiences in building relationships with at-promise youth. Teachers must leverage themselves in the quest to form positive and strong relationships with their students. In shifting the adverse narrative about the political identity used to categorize these students, the antipathetic mindset related to these students in public schools too shall shift. Research has demonstrated that at-promise students respond best in school settings that provide a culture where teachers intentionally construct a caring interaction laden with respect and recognition. It is important to foster agency in at-promise students through the understanding of the social, political, and economic structures that served to impact their generational past, inform their present, and prepare their future. This research study focused on the complex dynamic of the teacher-student relationship. This research investigation connected the important role teachers play in the lives of their students, teacher mindset about at-promise student success, and how strong and positive teacher-student relationships have the potential to encourage agency in at-promise students through meaningful recognition of their promise for academic success over their presupposed risks. This study’s findings highlight the critical need for teachers to create intentional opportunities to foster strong teacher-student relationships with at-promise students.

There is a tendency in education theory to place the focus on the consequences of racial hegemony (racism, Eurocentric education, low performance by racial minorities) and ignore that race is antecedent to these consequences. This dissertation explores the treatment of race within critical theory in education. I conduct a metaphysical analysis to examine the race concept as it emerges from the works of various critical theorists in education. This examination shows how some scholars affirm the scientifically discredited race concept by offering racial essentialist approaches for emancipatory education. I argue that one of consequences of these approaches is the further tightening of racial constraints on the student’s personal autonomy. This mandates that critical theorists gain a deeper understanding of race as a problem, conceptually, epistemically, ideologically, and existentially. I argue that critical theorists of education draw from work conducted in the philosophy of race by theorists such as K. Anthony Appiah, Jorge Gracia, Charles Mills, and Naomi Zack to gain insights on the metaphysics of race to better inform theory and praxis. I further recommend the creation of a critical philosophy of race in education to address and combat race as a problem and its consequences. I contend that the groundwork for philosophy of race in education must entail strategies that encourage and assist theorists and teachers to move toward the elimination of the race in society, while utilizing race only as heuristic tool to address its consequences. Additionally, I argue that a philosophy of race in education must advocate for an education for autonomy as a means to racial liberation for students.

The study examined the relationship between the degree of involvement in co-curricular activities and academic performance, as measured by Grade Point Average (GPA) among college students enrolled at Western Kentucky University (WKU). Three hundred thirty-six sophomores were surveyed via TOPNET, an electronic registration management system, regarding their level of involvement in campus organizations and other factors, including employment status and gender. The cumulative GPAs and the number of credit hours in which the survey participants were enrolled during Fall Semester 2005 were obtained through a survey using TOPNET. Pearson product-moment correlations revealed statistically significant relationships between GPA and the number of student organizations in which they participated, officer status within student organizations, and the length of time of participation in student organization(s). The relationships were considered too weak to be of any practical significance. A statistically significant relationship was also found between number of credit hours enrolled and GPA.

Stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995) refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group in a particular performance domain. The theory assumes that performance in the stereotyped domain is most negatively affected when individuals are more highly identified with the domain in question. As federal law has increased the importance of standardized testing at the elementary level, it can be reasonably hypothesized that the standardized test performance of African American children will be depressed when they are aware of negative societal stereotypes about the academic competence of African Americans. This sequential mixed-methods study investigated whether the standardized testing experiences of African American children in an urban elementary school are related to their level of stereotype awareness. The quantitative phase utilized data from 198 African American children at an urban elementary school. Both ex-post facto and experimental designs were employed. Experimental conditions were diagnostic and non-diagnostic testing experiences. The qualitative phase utilized data from a series of six focus group interviews conducted with a purposefully selected group of 4 African American children. The interview data were supplemented with data from 30 hours of classroom observations. Quantitative findings indicated that the stereotype threat condition evoked by diagnostic testing depresses the reading test performance of stereotype-aware African American children (F[1, 194] = 2.21, p < .01). This was particularly true of students who are most highly domain-identified with reading (F[1, 91] = 19.18, p < .01). Moreover, findings indicated that only stereotype-aware African American children who were highly domain-identified were more likely to experience anxiety in the diagnostic condition (F[1, 91] = 5.97, p < .025). Qualitative findings revealed 4 themes regarding how African American children perceive and experience the factors related to stereotype threat: (1) a narrow perception of education as strictly test preparation, (2) feelings of stress and anxiety related to the state test, (3) concern with what “others” think (racial salience), and (4) stereotypes. A new conceptual model for stereotype threat is presented, and future directions including implications for practice and policy are discussed.

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.

School vouchers.

Despite credible research to support a constructivist-based approach in early childhood programs, policymakers continued to push for a more academic-based philosophy in an effort to reach standardized testing goals. Reggio Emilia, a constructivist-based early childhood philosophy that originated in Northern Italy, has been shown to be an excellent model to facilitate optimum learning in young children. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate parental experiences when choosing the constructivist-based early childhood program, Reggio Emilia, for their children and to explore parents' perceived benefits after their children attended. A constructivist conceptual framework was used to provide context for the Reggio Emilia philosophy. A purposeful sampling strategy was used to select a Reggio Emilia inspired program, Foundations Early Learning Center, in the American Midwest. Five parents who had enrolled their children at Foundations Early Learning Center for a minimum of 6 months participated through in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed, categorized, and clustered into similar themes that described the phenomenon. Results indicated parents identified an overall satisfaction for choosing a Reggio Emilia experience for their preschool children. Ten perceived benefits from parents were identified that were associated with their children after they attended the Reggio Emilia inspired program. Findings of the current study have the potential to bring awareness to policymakers and early childhood program directors when making decisions on what type of educational philosophy to implement into early childhood programs with results favoring the choice of a constructivist-based Reggio Emilia inspired program over alternative options.