The present study consisted of a phenomenological investigation of African American males who have been expelled from traditional educational settings in New Orleans, LA in order to provide educators with information geared towards increasing academic achievement in African American males. It has been noted that one of the reasons that Black males graduation rates are so low is because in addition to other factors that lead to non-completion, black males are more likely to be expelled from school. In this study, I used a Critical Race theoretical framework to explore gain experiential knowledge of these excluded young men, what they perceive as barriers to their success, and their sentiments on the relationships they have had with educators and peers whom they have encountered. Based on the participants’ responses, seven categories emerged from the data including: (a) Race and Racism, (b) Self Perceptions, (c) Family Expectations and Support, (d) Male Role Models and Mentors, (e) The School Environment, (f) School Discipline, and (g) Alternative School. Study participants described the totality of their education experiences by opening up about what they felt were key factors at play. The stories of the participants provided a deeper context of the nuances of racism and how it impacts their day to day educational experiences overall The results of this study provides data that may enable educators to begin steps to dismantle the school to prison pipeline by ensuring at-risk students are supported and successful in school without having to be removed. This information serves as a catalyst for future inquiry into additional nuances that effect the academic achievement of African American male students in K-12 schools.

Étant une représentation formelle et explicite des connaissances d'un domaine, les ontologies font régulièrement l'objet de nombreux changements et ont ainsi besoin d'être constamment adaptées pour notamment pouvoir être réutilisées et répondre aux nouveaux besoins. Leur réutilisation peut prendre différentes formes (évolution, alignement, fusion, etc.), et présente plusieurs verrous scientifiques. L'un des plus importants est la préservation de la consistance de l'ontologie lors de son changement. Afin d'y répondre, nous nous intéressons dans cette thèse à étudier les changements ontologiques et proposons un cadre formel capable de faire évoluer et de fusionner des ontologies sans affecter leur consistance. Premièrement, nous proposons TGGOnto (Typed Graph Grammars for Ontologies), un nouveau formalisme permettant la représentation des ontologies et leurs changements par les grammaires de graphes typés. Un couplage entre ces deux formalismes est défini afin de profiter des concepts des grammaires de graphes, notamment les NAC (Negative Application Conditions), pour la préservation de la consistance de l'ontologie adaptée.Deuxièmement, nous proposons EvOGG (Evolving Ontologies with Graph Grammars), une approche d'évolution d'ontologies qui se base sur le formalisme GGTOnto et traite les inconsistances d'une manière a priori. Nous nous intéressons aux ontologies OWL et nous traitons à la fois : (1) l'enrichissement d'ontologies en étudiant leur niveau structurel et (2) le peuplement d'ontologies en étudiant les changements qui affectent les individus et leurs assertions. L'approche EvOGG définit des changements ontologiques de différents types (élémentaires, composées et complexes) et assure leur implémentation par l'approche algébrique de transformation de graphes, SPO (Simple PushOut). Troisièmement, nous proposons GROM (Graph Rewriting for Ontology Merging), une approche de fusion d'ontologies capable d'éviter les redondances de données et de diminuer les conflits dans le résultat de fusion. L'approche proposée se décompose en trois étapes : (1) la recherche de similarité entre concepts en se basant sur des techniques syntaxiques, structurelles et sémantiques ; (2) la fusion d'ontologies par l'approche algébrique SPO ; (3) l'adaptation de l'ontologie globale résultante par le biais des règles de réécriture de graphes.Afin de valider les travaux menés dans cette thèse, nous avons développé plusieurs outils open source basés sur l'outil AGG (Attributed Graph Grammar). Ces outils ont été appliqués sur un ensemble d'ontologies, essentiellement sur celles développées dans le cadre du projet européen CCAlps (Creatives Companies in Alpine Space) qui a financé les travaux de cette thèse. / Ontologies are a formal and explicit knowledge representation. They represent a given domain by their concepts and axioms while creating a consensus between a user community. To satisfy the new requirements of the represented domain, ontologies have to be regularly updated and adapted to maintain their consistency. The adaptation may take different forms (evolution, alignment, merging, etc.), and represents several scientific challenges. One of the most important is to preserve the consistency of the ontology during the changes. To address this issue, we are interested in this thesis to study the ontology changes and we propose a formal framework that can evolve and merge ontologies without affecting their consistency.First we propose TGGOnto (Typed Graph Grammars for Ontologies), a new formalism for the representation of ontologies and their changes using typed graph grammars (TGG). A coupling between ontologies and TGG is defined in order to take advantage of the graph grammars concepts, such as the NAC (Negative Application Conditions), in preserving the adapted ontology consistency. Second, we propose EvOGG (Evolving Ontologies with Graph Grammars), an ontology evolution approach that is based on the TGGOnto formalism that avoids inconsistencies using an a priori approach. We focus on OWL ontologies and we address both : (1) ontology enrichment by studying their structural level and (2) ontology population by studying the changes affecting individuals and their assertions. EvOGG approach defines different types of ontology changes (elementary, composite and complex) and ensures their implementation by the algebraic approach of graph transformation, SPO (Single pushout).Third, we propose GROM (Graph Rewriting for Ontology Merging), an ontologies merging approach that avoids data redundancy and reduces conflict in the merged result. The proposed approach consists of three steps: (1) the similarity search between concepts based on syntactic, structural and semantic techniques; (2) the ontologies merging by the algebraic approach SPO; (3) the global ontology adaptation with graph rewriting rules.To validate our proposals, we have developed several open source tools based on AGG (Attributed Graph Grammar) tool. These tools were applied to a set of ontologies, mainly on those developed in the frame of the CCAlps (Creatives Companies in Alpine Space) European project, which funded this thesis work.