Browsing by Subject "achievement gaps"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item An Interpretive Case Study of Stakeholders' Perceptions on the Enrollment and Progression of African American Students in High School Foreign Language Courses(2012-10-19) Schoener III, HerbertThe "achievement gap" is a common term in Texas public education, often referring to academic differences in achievement among student ethnic groups within the core curriculum. Seldom is Foreign Language referenced in, nor even considered relevant to such discussions in addressing the achievement gaps that exist in our public schools, although Foreign Language holds significant influence on both students' high school and post-secondary academic trajectories. Throughout the state of Texas, it has been found that African American students are not progressing in foreign language study at the same rate and length as Hispanic, White, and Asian students; these stark achievement gaps appear to be going unmentioned, unnoticed, and/or unaddressed. This interpretive case study examined the perceptions of foreign language teachers, counselors, and administrators at a central Texas high school campus through a critical lens, regarding why they felt African American students are not progressing in foreign language courses, as compared to other student ethnic groups. Data collection for this qualitative study included individual interviews, focus group sessions, field notes, documents, and school records. For data analysis, the study employed the constant comparative method. Four general themes emerged from interviews and focus group sessions with stakeholders. These themes included deficit views, racial erasure, paralogical beliefs and behaviors, and organizational constraints, which described obstacles standing in the way of creating an equitable campus for all students. This study offers implications for educational policy, practice, and future research. For policy, Texas high school graduation requirements for foreign language should be increased and accountability measures for student learning in foreign languages should be instated. For practice, the high school should commit itself to ongoing, yearlong staff development to address equity traps at the campus. Practice should also include student performance data in foreign languages to help guide discussions about achievement gaps with African Americans and other student ethnic groups. Implications for future research include the need to examine the transferability of this study's findings to public middle school and high school campuses in Texas. Future studies should also investigate the equity trap avoidance and employment of the gaze in the context of public high school foreign language courses.Item The Achievement Gaps and Mathematics Education: An Analysis of the U.S. Political Discourse in Light of Foucault's Governmentality(2013-08-06) Indiogine, Salvatore Enrico PaoloThe research question that I posed for this investigation is how the principles of Foucault?s governmentality can shed light on the political discourse on the achievement gaps (AGs) at the federal level. The AGs have been for some years now an actively researched phenomenon in education in the U.S. as well as in the rest of the world. Many in the education profession community, politicians, social activists, researchers and others have considered the differences in educational outcomes an indication of a grave deficiency of the educational process and even of the society at large. I began this work with a review of the educational research relevant to the above mentioned research question. Then I presented my research methodology and de- scribed how obtained my data and analyzed them both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results of the analysis were discussed in the light of federal legislation, the work of Foucault on governmentality, and the relevant literature and woven into a series of narratives. Finally, I abstracted these narratives into a model for under- standing the federal policy discourse. This model consists of an intersection of eight antitheses: (1) the rgime of discipline versus the apparatuses of security, (2) the appeal to danger versus assurances of progress or even success, (3) the acknowledgement of the association between the AGs and the ?disadvantage? of the students and the disregard and even prohibition of the equalization of school funding, (4) the desire for all students to be ?equal,? but they have to be dis-aggregated, the (5) injunction of research based instruction practices imposed by an ideology-driven reform policy, (6) we expect equal outcomes by using market forces, which are known to produce a diversity of results, (7) the teacher is a ?highly qualified? professional, but also a functionary of the government, and finally (8) the claim to honor local control and school flexibility versus the unprecedented federalization and bureaucratization of the schools, which is a mirror of the contrast between the desire to establish apparatuses of security in schools and the means to establishing them through rgimes of discipline.