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The Common Ground: Case Studies and Portraits of African American Male Mentors and High Performing Mentees at an HBCU

Jackson, Michael Parrish
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397729125

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, EDU Teaching and Learning.
Today, it is still more likely to read about African American males ages 18-24 engaging in nefarious behavior involving guns, drugs, and violence than it is to see their names on honor roll, dean’s, or graduation commencement lists. For the select few young men who have successfully avoided the high school to prison pipeline (ACLU, 2008) to attend college, this is cause for celebration, and at the same time inquiry. The challenges facing African American students in higher education have been well documented (Arnold, 1993; Fleming, 1984). The need to connect with African Americans who have been successful in higher education in regards to increasing their self-efficacy (Gloria & Robinson Kurpius, 1996; Hackett & Byars, 1996), their persistence and resilience in college (Farmer-Hinton & Adams, 2006; Smith, 2007), as well as their overall satisfaction in college (Harper, Carini, Bridges, & Hayek, 2004; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005) has also been well documented. Given these findings, the purpose of this study was to explore mentor-mentee perspectives and experiences that impact African American male persistence and academic excellence in an Historically Black College and University (HBCU). The overarching question driving this research is: How and when does the mentoring relationship, created between African American male scholars/administrators and African American male students impact the willingness of students to persist and excel in an HBCU? This study employed qualitative methods and portraiture to generate, analyze, and report data (Lightfoot & Hoffman Davis, 1997; Yin, 2006). Specifically, two individual interviews were conducted with each student participant and each mentor. In addition, the researcher’s narrative and voice, informed by portraiture methods, was included to illuminate an African American mentee-mentor experience over time. The study is the first in the research literature on mentoring African American males to explore case studies of mentor and mentee perspectives in side-by-side portraits. Following established protocols for interpreting qualitative data, five themes emerged to characterize mentors’ and mentees’ values and needs: 1) racial uplift 2) mending 3) nurture 4) timelines and relevance 5) mirroring, seeing, and perceiving and 6) future path. Within each of these subthemes mentors and mentees expressed distinct needs. Thus the concept of like-person role model asserted by Tinto (1993) can be expanded to include specific features of mentors’ and mentees’ lives and emerging understanding of one another’s values. Further, findings from this research point to the importance of mentor and mentee positioning (e.g. leading, following, and parallel negotiations about the mentee’s future) and the role and value of spirituality in mentoring relationships. Overall, findings from this research support the assumption that mentors and mentees should be `matched’ along more than ethnic identity characteristics alone in order to protect the inherently fragile nature of mutual understanding and acceptance in the mentor-mentee relationships.
Patricia Enciso (Advisor)
Antoinette Errante (Committee Member)
Strayhorn Terrell (Committee Member)
294 p.
Adult Education; African American Studies; African Americans; Education; Higher Education; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Personal Relationships
Mentor, Mentee, Mentoring, African American Males, HBCU, Spirituality, Case Study, Portraiture, Like-person, Qualitative Research

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jackson, M. P. (2014). The Common Ground: Case Studies and Portraits of African American Male Mentors and High Performing Mentees at an HBCU [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397729125

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jackson, Michael. The Common Ground: Case Studies and Portraits of African American Male Mentors and High Performing Mentees at an HBCU. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397729125.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jackson, Michael. "The Common Ground: Case Studies and Portraits of African American Male Mentors and High Performing Mentees at an HBCU." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397729125

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1397729125
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.