Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education
Advisor
Keith Cameron
Committee Member
Carole Trueman
Committee Member
Ronald P. Kern
Keywords
academic resiliency, achievement gap, advanced placement, belonging, case study, classroom observations, college-bound students, educational equity, first-generation students, high school, institutional agents, International Baccalaureate, interviews, Latino students, Mexican American education, motivation, National School Lunch Program, No Child Left Behind Act, qualitative research, resilience, semistructured interviews, socioeconomic status, student diversity, thematic analysis, urban education, White students
Abstract
The achievement gap has been at the center of much educational discourse for the past 20 years, and it has become even more prevalent since the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. References in the literature regarding the achievement gap often center on raising ethnic minority and low-socioeconomic students to the same average academic performance as White, middle-class students (Gandara, 2005). This case study went beyond that and examined the achievement gap in terms of the experiences of 1stgeneration, college-bound, and low-income Latino students in advanced-level high school courses, such as advanced placement (AP) and international baccalaureate (IB). The central research question that guided this study was the following: What, if any, critical themes emerge from the experiences of individual Latino students in advanced level high school courses?
This study used qualitative methods of semi structured interviews with target students and AP and IB teachers. Semi structured classroom observations were also used to triangulate data. In the classroom observations, the researcher used an observation protocol form and performed several observations a week for 15 weeks. The classroom observations were conducted in the AP and IB classes of the teachers who were interviewed for this study. Each of these teachers had the target students enrolled in class. The purpose of the observations was to note any differences in experience from what was shared by the students or their AP and IB teachers during the interviews.
The participants in this research study included 30 Latino students in 11th and 12th grades at a large comprehensive high school. The participants were selected based on purposeful sampling. The participants were Latino and enrolled in advanced-level courses, such as AP and IB; these students were also 1st-generation, college-bound, and low-income students as defined by qualifying for the National School Lunch Program (Mirtcheva & Powell, 2009).
The analysis of data from this study indicated that 1 overarching critical theme was threaded throughout the experiences of all students. This critical theme was academic resiliency. Academic resiliency is the ability of students to overcome life circumstances such as economic status and other factors to succeed and achieve in school. Within this overarching critical theme, four major themes emerged within the context of critical resiliency. These critical major themes were motivation, institutional agents, belonging, and being Latino. Several subthemes were also identified.