Our ever-changing society has placed new challenges on our schools to educate a new generation of students. This generation comes to the schoolhouse doors with the same hunger and need to learn, with differences in culture, spoken language, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The challenge is not the ability of the students to learn, but the inability of the schools to teach them. Due, in part, to dwindling economic support, there is an increased interest in collaborations between schools and institutions of higher education. Such collaboration can be useful in addressing some of the additional support and academic needs of these students. Since my arrival three years ago at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, I have been working with the Lawrence High School Guidance Office to develop a supplemental educational project known as the College Prep Program. The project is conducted at the University, and it provides academic, social, and cultural opportunities to Lawrence High students during a summer program as well as on Saturdays during the school year. The program has been designed so that students and teachers have a voice in the decisions made about the program. In addition, the program theory of action draws from current research on learning and teaching. The focus of the project is to inspire students to pursue higher education. The subject of this proposal is to examine this program design and how this approach has affected the students who have graduated from Lawrence High School and the College Prep Program over the last three years. The study proposes to measure this phenomenon by documenting three case studies, using one student from each graduating class (1990, 1991, and 1992). In addition, the study administered a questionnaire to a group of 25 individuals drawn from the same pool of students. The intention of the questionnaire was to enrich the discussion of the case studies with the additional information obtained from these questionnaires. This method ensured the availability of both qualitative and quantitative information to verify the impact of the program on the lives of the students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8683 |
| Date | 01 January 1993 |
| Creators | Carballo, Eduardo Baire |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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