The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the underlying mechanisms within community colleges that influence cross-functional collaboration. The study also explored the role of community college leadership in fostering internal collaboration. The following questions guided the research: (1) What does cross-functional collaboration look like at a community...
This research examines two questions: 1) What stories do Christian teacher educators tell about their own White racial identity development? and 2) Is there an impact of studying White racial identity development on the praxis of Christian teacher educators? If so, in what ways? The researcher began the project with...
The purpose of this study was to describe and record the experiences of people of color in a community leadership development program. Selected people of color were asked to describe their experiences as participants in the American Leadership program in Tacoma-Pierce County in the State of Washington. The American Leadership...
The purpose of this ethnographic study was to explore White, female teachers’ attitudes and perspectives towards their African American students, the Black/White Achievement Gap, and their teaching practice in regards to their students’ achievement, through the use of focus group discussions. The target group for this study was White, female...
This study co-investigated with students with hidden disabilities the phenomenon of disability identity. This qualitative study utilized phenomenology and strategies proposed by Paulo Freire in an effort to understand identity development specific to individuals with hidden disabilities. There were seven students from a medium-sized, public university who participated in the...
Bullying prevents its targets from enjoying a safe, stress-free living, learning, and working environment. For most children, bullying experiences will be merely unpleasant childhood memories. This remains the same in adult's working environment. During the past decade, the concept of workplace abuse has had an increasing resonance within western countries....
The purpose of this case study was to examine a third-grade teacher’s effective use of mathematical discourse in the classroom setting. The study offers insights into the following research questions: 1) How does a teacher’s engagement in mathematical discourse communities influence her practice and self-efficacy as a mathematics educator? 2)...
The existence of the ethnic "barrios" (ghettos) across American society is proof of the legacy of racism, injustice and inequality in society today. In this thesis, the human experiences of Native, African, Mexican, and Asian people, are presented to contradict the notion that the "American Dream" is for all. In...
The purpose of this phenomenological study is to describe how Oregon governors
Barbara Roberts and John Kitzhaber, whose tenures both coincided with the passage
and implementation of property tax limitation measures, determined the community
college budgets within their recommended state budgets. The stories of Robert’s 1993
and Kitzhaber’s 2001 decisions...
This ethnography describes a learning context where transformational learning routinely creates an emancipatory experience. It identifies those elements that increase understanding of transformative process-describing how the context that contains and supports this learning is constructed and a perspective transformation is sparked by group synergy. It names three transformational learning outcomes:...
The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe and communicate a student-constructed model of student services for electronic distance education (EDE). This study seeks to answer the following questions: Do students enrolled in EDE perceive a need for student services? If not, why not? Which services do students want/need?...
The community college, now over 100 years old, began with the singular mission of preparing students for transfer to the university. Throughout the 20th century, the community college has expanded its missions to serve increasingly complex and comprehensive community needs. Through a textual analysis of community engagement within seven seminal...
The purpose of this study was to analyze the individual reasoning of
24 adults as they made decisions for two communities regarding municipal
wastewater treatment. The two western Oregon communities were both
responding to notices from governmental agencies of higher environmental
standards for the purification of wastewater before it could...
This is a qualitative research project that seeks to understand the meanings that Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors (CADC's) have ascribed to their life experiences in relation to their choices about higher education. The participants are four Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors in Oregon who have less than bachelor degrees....
This research addresses the complexities of White racial identity development in the lives of five elementary and middle school preservice teachers during their graduate teacher education program at a private Christian Pacific Northwestern university. Using a poststructural framework, this research investigated three questions: 1) How do the aspects of subjectivation...
The purpose of this study is to examine the role of a Filipino American college student organization at a Predominantly White Institution, and uncover elements of the organization that influence or limit the development of critical consciousness of its members. This study focuses on the aspect of critical consciousness that...
This study documents thick-description single-source data from the life and experiences of a Native American / Native Canadian language worker. The worker, raised and educated in the United States, was separated from his ancestral village until his thirties. The worker, with a Masters degree in education from Oregon State University,...
The purpose of this study was to better understand the relationship between selected academic factors and the persistence of GED recipients in community colleges in the state of Oregon. With this purpose in mind, the study addressed the following research question: Is there a relationship between selected academic variables and...
Low completion rates have created serious "leakage points" (Astin, 1988) and "severe hemorrhaging" (Lango, 1996) in higher education to a large number of Hispanics. Traditional research on college persistence, which has blamed the students' culture for low performance, is inaccurate. Little research has specifically investigated academic persistence from a cultural...
The purposes of this study were to examine the experiences of African American female students attending urban community colleges, to gain further understanding of how they interpret the meaning of persistence, and to identify the factors that affect their persistence. African American women attending community college in Los Angeles were...