Despite a narrowing trend over the past forty years, the racial academic performance gap between non-Asian-American minority students and European-American students remains an overarching issue in K-12 schooling according to the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (2017). Du Bois’s (1903) theory of double consciousness is implicated in the performance gap phenomenon. Though not explicitly connected, Steele and Aronson’s 1995 study revealed stereotype threat (STT) to be an empirical explanation of the negative impact of double consciousness. Steele et al.’s study revealed a psycho-social contributor to the racial academic performance gap, STT. STT is characterized by performance suppression caused by the fear of fulfilling a negative stereotype or the fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype attributed to one’s social identity group. The activation of this phenomenon is related to identity threatening cues, a systemic issue laden in the academic environment (Purdie-Vaughns, Steele, Davies, Ditlmann, & Crosby, 2008). To date, over 300 studies have been conducted on STT according to a meta-analysis conducted by Pennington, Heim, Levy, and Larkin (2016). Though certain experimental studies featuring mentoring as a vehicle for shifting stereotype narratives have yielded useful practices for STT reduction (Good et al., 2003), qualitative design, which is seldomly employed in the STT field, may produce an understanding of the phenomenon that is not possible through a deductive approach (Ezzy, 2002; van Kaam, 1966). The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore African-American adolescent student perceptions of the impact that mentoring has on their schooling experiences while under STT conditions. The findings of this study demonstrated that African-American adolescents perceived mentoring to positively impact their schooling experiences and helped them to cope with STT activating cues in the environment. The participants discussed structural aspects of the relationships, personality attributes of the mentor, and specific mentor guidance. Participants also discussed a documented STT intervention that fell outside of the parameters of their mentoring relationships that positively impacted their schooling experiences and abilities to cope with STT cues – affirmations (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006; Walton et al., 2012). Recommendations for practice and future research are presented.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of having academic mentors of similar heritage to facilitate higher academic attainment of first generation Mexican immigrants. The researcher assures to demonstrate how constructs such as mentorship, self-efficacy, self-regulated learning, social and cultural capital, and similar heritage due to cultural values can positively influence and contribute to the success of English Language learners in academia. Through the mentorship relationship, students, particularly minority groups, can tap into social and cultural capital that would otherwise be limited due to their immigration to a foreign country. Immigration typically limits individuals’ ability to communicate in the predominant language, which in turn limits their ability to culturally relate or access social capital. Mentors, particularly those of similar heritage, through their shared stories can become role models as they exemplify self-efficacy and self-regulatory strategies. Family, especially for Mexican-immigrants, is one of their strongest values. Students, given their cultural values, seek opportunities to create a sense of family. Having left their country, their friends and family; it is only natural for immigrants to find comfort in relationships that resemble those with padrinos (godparents). In this case, the relationship is not through a spiritual connection, but through a mutual understanding of hardships, background, and heritage. For these reasons, mentors of similar heritage have the greatest positive impact when facilitate higher academic attainment of Mexican immigrants.

Student writing skills are a growing concern in secondary schools given the current focus on common core standards and college readiness. This qualitative case study addressed the growing problem of high school students being unprepared for the rigor of college level-writing. The study used a series of 10 interviews with writing center directors and teachers in 2 secondary schools with writing centers. This research adds to the literature on peer-managed writing centers and contributes to the body of knowledge of writing centers as a specific conceptual framework of response to intervention (RtI). The broad research questions were focused on 3 topics: student's writing abilities, the effectiveness of the intervention of the writing center, and possible improvements to the writing center. Three directors and 7 teachers were selected for interviews through purposeful sampling. Inductive analysis was used to identify emergent themes: establishing a peer-managed writing center, function of the center, student writing, effectiveness of the writing center, and suggested improvements. The culminating project for this research was the establishment of a professional development program designed to provide a foundation for schools that are creating a peer-managed writing center at the secondary level. This study promotes the development of these centers across the school district of the study and provides evidence for RtI as a method to address the problem of secondary students being unprepared for writing at the post-secondary level. Positive social change can be achieved for the local school district by expanding the use of peer-managed writing centers with a focus on using RtI to address the problem of students being unprepared for the rigors of college writing.

There is a lack of research on the academic resilience of minority, first-generation, online doctoral students (MFOD) who experienced poverty and parental substance abuse (PSA). The purpose of this study was to explore how MFOD who overcame poverty and PSA developed academic resilience. Resilience theory and Kember's model of attrition in online programs provided a conceptual framework for this study. The research questions guiding this qualitative study concerned how MFOD perceive and interpret their academic resilience and protective factors. A purposeful sample of 6 students participated in semistructured interviews. An interpretative phenomenological analysis was conducted, which included a case by case analysis, and a cross-case analysis. Results indicate that academic resilience is perceived as (a) determination, (b) evolving realization of the value of education, (c) paving the way for others, and (d) leveraging strengths to succeed in an online doctoral program. Protective factors are perceived as (a) resilience in adversity, (b) mindset about school, (c) identity resilience, and (d) transformational experiences. The results of this study reveal that the participants learned to see themselves beyond the context of their immediate environments. Positive social change implications include improving existing social policy to aggressively target high-poverty school districts and communities with PSA. More specifically, at-risk minority students would benefit from targeted interventions focused on family engagement in education and school retention.

Teachers need interventions to improve at-risk students' self-efficacy, which may improve their academic performance in school. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the perceptions of elementary school teachers at a Texas public middle school as to what research-based interventions they felt would improve the self-efficacy of these students. Bandura's social cognitive theory, which framed the study, indicates that self-efficacy beliefs affect the courses of action that people seek and the choices people make. Many at-risk students who experience a lack of academic success have low self-efficacy, which may affect their school performance. The research questions that guided the study focused on teachers' perceptions of whether a school-based mentoring program, counseling services, or an afterschool program would best help at-risk students improve their self-efficacy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from 6 teacher participants who were purposely selected from different grade levels at the school. The data were transcribed and analyzed using hand-coding procedures to determine categories and themes from the transcripts. The findings revealed that teachers thought that a school-based mentoring program would have the most positive impact in improving the self-efficacy of at-risk students. The results prompted the development of a training program for mentors. Positive social change may result when at-risk students benefit from mentors who are properly trained on ways to meaningfully impact them.

Even with extensive literacy research, routines, and policy modifications, many elementary students are not provided with the needed tools to develop independent literacy skills. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine what independent literacy behaviors are developing in first through fourth grade students to determine whether the Daily 5 framework is developing the desired independent literacy skills in those students. Based on Vygotsky's social development theory, the Daily 5 literacy routine teaches students five essential habits to develop independent literacy abilities across various grade levels. This qualitative study's research questions were developed to examine what independent literacy behaviors have been observed by teachers and how student learning is reflected based on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. The study included nine participants comprised of teachers and parents of students at the study site. The data collected through open-ended interviews, email questionnaires, lesson plans from teachers, and documentation were then coded using Atlas.ti. Emergent themes were identified through data analysis, and the findings were validated through member checking, triangulation, and researcher reflexivity. The findings revealed that while some independent literacy behaviors are reported, additional support is still needed. The findings led to the development of a professional development project centered on literacy professional development activities that build collaboration. This study and project facilitates positive social change by defining how the Daily 5 routine is promoting independent literacy skills at the research site, which builds communities of readers and positive reading experiences that circulate within the school and home.

Middle and high school general education teachers in the school district in this bounded case study were facing challenges with meeting the needs of students who have autism in the current inclusion program. The purpose of this study was to understand teachers' challenges with components of the inclusion program and serving students with autism in the general education classroom. The conceptual framework was Villa and Thousand's 5 system-level best practices for successful inclusive education. A purposeful sampling procedure was used to select 4 general education teachers who were teaching autistic students in an inclusive setting; this sample included 2 middle school level and 2 high school level teachers from 2 schools in the small rural district. The data collected through classroom observations and semi structured interviews were coded based on Villa and Thousand's best practices of leadership, redefined roles, collaboration, adult support, and promotion as each related to inclusion of autistic students. Results were used to identify challenges teachers were facing that prevented the 5 system-level best practices from being implemented. Key challenges were collaboration between general and special education teachers and lack of professional development for all teachers on inclusion. Findings were used to provide recommendations for how to address challenges in middle and high school inclusion programs and for conducting future studies in different settings. The results of this study could be used by school leaders and other stakeholders to make informed decisions about system level implementation of inclusion program components and for enhancing the learning of students who have autism in the inclusive setting.

This project used data from the School Readiness Survey (SR) of the 2007 National Household Education Surveys Program collected by the National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Science. A subsample of 1,712 to 2,622 subjects who participated in the survey was used for this project. The purpose of the study was to examine parent perceptions, behaviors, and reported child ability related to school readiness and the effect ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) had on each comparison. Variables from the existing data were matched to one of the five domains of School Readiness: Health and Physical Development, Social and Emotional Development, Approaches to Learning, Communication, and General Knowledge. Data were analyzed by means of Pearson correlations and Moderate Multiple Regression analyses. Findings revealed weak, but significant, correlations among parent perceptions, parent behaviors, and parent reported child ability in specific domains. SES and ethnicity were found to be a moderator of parent perceptions and parent behaviors. SES was also shown to affect the relationship between parent behaviors and parent reported child ability in the domains of communication and general knowledge. Several limitations are presented, including possible reasons for the significant but weak results. Findings from this study suggest much more can be learned regarding parent perceptions across ethnicity and SES and the influence it has on school readiness.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the perception of school social workers’ levels of satisfaction and ways it is impacted by one or more of the following factors: the level of decision making, workload management, professional development, collaboration, and advocacy. Specifically, this study sought to determine if school social workers are satisfied with their roles in the school system and daily practice. The 130 participants of the study were district presidents who reached out to all Georgia school social workers and members of the state’s School Social Workers Association (SSWAG) which is the state’s charter of the larger national organization—School Social Workers Association of America (SSWAA). All respondents participated in the study voluntarily. The data analysis was conducted on two levels: descriptive findings and analytical procedures. The first section presented descriptive findings associated with demographic variables, the social work practice experience, and school social work settings results. The second level of the analysis tested the hypotheses under study. This section used Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient to test the strength of the relationship between the dependent variable—overall levels of satisfaction in professional practice—and each of the independent variables: perceived level of decision making, workload management, professional development, collaboration, and advocacy. The researcher found that there was a moderately strong positive correlation between the overall levels of satisfaction with professional practice and perceived level of decision making and workload management. There was a strong positive correlation with the perceived level of professional development. The perceived level of collaboration resulted in a weak positive correlation and a moderate positive correlation was found in the perceived level of advocacy. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that all five independent variables showed a correlation with the dependent variable. These study findings may be useful not only for school social workers but also for support staff (school psychologist, counselors, etc.) and school administrators.

This non-experimental, correlational study (N = 513) examined the relationships among self-actualization, well-being, and metacognition. Need-satisfaction and non-defensiveness were also tested as mediators in the relationship between metacognition and self-actualization. A battery of paper-and-pencil self-report measures was administered to a sample of undergraduate and graduate students in a public university in South Florida. Correlational and hierarchical regression analyses and structural equation modeling for mediational analysis were used to test the hypotheses. The results largely supported the hypotheses with only a few exceptions. Students who demonstrated higher level of self-actualization experienced higher well-being as well (the result of this hypothesized relationship was equivocal for parent students, n = 61). Moreover, need-satisfaction and non-defensiveness were found to be significantly and positively associated with self-actualization, providing preliminary supporting evidence for Maslow’s (1968) and Rogers’ (1951, 1961) theories of self-actualization. In addition, students with higher levels of general metacognitive competence were more likely to demonstrate higher level of need-satisfaction, non-defensiveness, self-actualization, and well-being (the result of the third hypothesized relationship was equivocal for female immigrant education students, n = 78). Further, metacognition and need-satisfaction, and metacognition and non-defensiveness shared common variance in predicting self-actualization. The relationship between metacognition and self-actualization was mediated by need-satisfaction and non-defensiveness, except for non-education students (n = 201), for whom no mediational effect was detected by non-defensiveness. In sum, the findings imply that general metacognitive competence, which can be taught as a set of skills, theoretically contributes to students’ self-actualization and well-being. This study provides support for a conceptual model of self-actualization, which introduces this phenomenon as a goal-oriented process that is essential to students’ well-being and can be attained by exercising metacognition. The discussion of the findings highlights implications of this study for theory, research, and practice as a guide for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of education and psychology.