Dissertation Defense Announcements

One recurring difficulty in American education is the academic underachievement of male African American pupils, which persists despite several interventions, underscoring the need for fresh viewpoints. The problem addressed was the academic underachievement of African American male students, often referred to as the achievement gap, as a persistent challenge in American education. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather high school leaders’ perceptions of the efficacy of initiatives to address the achievement gap among African American male students. This research filled a gap by investigating the perspectives of school administrators and was theoretically grounded in social learning and transformational leadership theories. The first research question explored school leaders' views on the impact of changes in school culture on the achievement gap among African American male students. The second research question delved into the strategies and initiatives that school leaders employ to address the gap. This study focused on high school administrators throughout the United States and included a sample size of 15–20 participants who satisfied inclusion requirements on goals for school reform. Participants indicated the programs used were mentoring and tutoring, curriculum additions, and professional development options. These programs varied in degree of success but were more successful with stable administration and consistent implementation. Educators noted that incentive-based programs connected to extracurricular activities were successful. The recommendations included sustained and accountable professional development, systemic implementation of mentoring and tutoring programs, and the use of extrinsic motivators to increase initial motivation in new programming.

The field of English Language Teaching has evolved over the years, with newer approaches integrating content learning or adopting a bilingual view of language learning, as reflected in more standards and curricula, as the standard reform In Latvia in 2018 and 2019 demonstrated. A wide variety of factors impact the way teachers understand and practice approaches such as plurilingualism and content integration. While it is clear that these practices are contextualized, more studies need to examine how teachers feel about these approaches and what drives their understanding and application of them. This pragmatic, utilization-focused evaluation seeks to understand: How have the standards designed to develop plurilingual repertoires and integrate language and content learning impacted classroom practices? A survey, interviews, and submitted materials are analyzed in relation to Latvian policies on foreign language teaching, and the results are examined through a translingual lens and contextual framing. The Latvian EFL teachers’ understanding of the pedagogy has been influenced more by national socio-political context and individual factors than by policy. Integrating content is an opportunity for teachers to plan relevant and motivating lessons while the integration of languages happens, but is largely seen as an undesirable necessity. There is great potential in asking teachers to focus on transversal skills, which is a way to support the integration of content and languages. Teachers need professional development at the school level, allowing for targeted collaboration with teachers of other subjects, and they need to analyze the role of languages in the local context with students in order to build on their full range of language and content knowledge into the EFL classroom.