Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2007, Educational Leadership

Access to a quality education is a recurring theme in the history of African-Americans. From America's infancy to the present, African-Americans have steadfastly held to the conviction that a quality education was inextricably intertwined with notions of freedom and upward mobility. Historically, most African-American parents relied on public schools to provide that education. However, by the mid-1980's, many African American parents became disillusioned with public education, and those who possessed the requisite resources to do so, began to abandon urban public schools, choosing to educate their children in suburban schools, independent private schools, and parochial schools. Researchers studying school choice primarily focus on charter schools and school voucher programs, giving little consideration to the abandonment of urban public schools by the African-American middle class. This qualitative study investigates the experiences of seven middle class African-American parents to ascertain how they constructed their decisions to exclude urban public schools as educational options for their children. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews, which allowed for the structure of qualitative inquiry and the flexibility and fluidity of natural conversations. In addition, more than twenty-five informal interviews and conversations with African-American parents of various socioeconomic levels were conducted. The parents' narratives revealed five concerns: academic achievement; discipline and safety; teacher quality; racism, and cultural issues. An analysis of those concerns resulted in two major findings. First, parents do not believe urban schools possess the requisite resources to effectively educate their children and enable them to gain admission to a reputable college or university. Second, parents do not believe their children can acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed as a prerequisite to become economically and socially successful i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Hofmann (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Education, Miami University, 2020, Educational Leadership

Students make a choice to attend the Career Technical Centers (CTC) in Ohio. This choice involves leaving their home school district(s). Students are leaving the known to go to the unknown. The research question is, "Why did students choose to attend a CTC, and how did their career outcome expectations influence their decision to attend?" The data were collected utilizing both a quantitative questionnaire and a qualitative focus group. Utilizing the theoretical framework, Social Cognitive Career Theory, the data were analyzed through the lens of a student's self-efficacy, career interests, and career outcome expectations. The analysis indicated three themes: career education, decision-making, and career and college readiness. The participants in the study were current second year students at the career center, which made them seniors in high school. These students had made the choice to attend a CTC and also made the choice to return and stay for a second year. Participants voluntarily participated and completed an anonymous survey and also volunteered to participate in a focus group. The survey and focus group questions focused on the reasons students enrolled in the CTC. The results indicated a strong influence of a student's self-efficacy in the decision process that included career interests and career outcome expectations. The quantitative data of the questionnaire provided statistical analysis of questions asked; the qualitative questions provided additional details and specific examples. The research project was a problem-in-practice, and the data gathered will be utilized to implement strategies to maintain and grow enrollment at the Ohio CTC. The final analysis indicated five areas of implication to the problem-in-practice. The study collected the research data directly from the students who experienced the decision-making process personally. This is their opportunity to tell their story.

Committee: Kathleen Knight Abowitz Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Lucian Szlizewski Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); James Swartz Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Vocational Education

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2018, English

This thesis argues that the emergence of the reproductive justice (RJ) framework in reproductive politics not only shifted activist strategies and discourses, but also fostered the emergence and circulation of more complex abortion representations in U.S. popular culture. I examine these (still)-emergent counter-hegemonic reproductive justice abortion counternarratives as potentially transformational interventions in both RJ theory and activist practice. Chapter 1 introduces my project and highlights the differences between the “pro-choice” and reproductive justice frameworks. In Chapter 2, I outline RJ's theoretical foundations, analyze its historical emergence in reproductive politics, and juxtapose how abortion is represented in dominant cultural discourses vs. emerging RJ counterdiscourses through a comparative analysis of the abortion plotlines in Joan Didion's Play it as it Lays and Alice Walker's Meridian. Chapter 3 traces the post-Roe trends of abortion representations on television, and the last decade's shift towards more counter-hegemonic representations, analyzing abortion plotlines from television shows including Scandal, Shameless, and Black Mirror through the RJ framework. Finally, through a brief examination of abortion storytelling campaigns in ongoing RJ advocacy efforts, Chapter 4 frames the emergence of RJ counternarratives as a vital component of RJ movement strategies and an urgent intervention into dominant cultural discourses of abortion.

Committee: Stefanie Dunning Dr. (Committee Chair); Mary Jean Corbett Dr. (Committee Member); Madelyn Detloff Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; Comparative; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Literature; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Political Science

States exercise authority over citizens' lives and property through the judicial system. In principle, judicial bodies ought to justify this responsibility by providing consistent rationales for their judgments. Consistency means that the outcome of a dispute is supported by reasoning which itself is supported by a majority of judges on a collegial court. Yet without strong assumptions, collective decision making in collegial courts and other bodies is susceptible to inconsistency. Resolving fundamental questions of life, liberty, and property in an inconsistent manner lacks legitimacy due to the lack of reasons given for the exercise of authority. Further, the fractured reasoning of these decisions means that lower courts bound by precedent to follow an inconsistent decision may struggle to determine which rationale or legal rule to apply and thus decide cases inconsistently themselves, cascading the weakening of legitimacy through the legal system. Despite the gravity of these potential consequences, the severity of the problem of judgment-rationale inconsistency is unknown. To remedy this lack of knowledge, I undertake a systematic study of inconsistency, focusing on the United States Supreme Court. I analyze the properties of inconsistent decisions, explore the impact of inconsistency on the lower federal courts, and investigate the frequency of inconsistency over time. My analysis advances knowledge about the Supreme Court and social choice theory in several ways. First, the investigation of the case-level correlates of inconsistency shows that the strongest form of inconsistency, the discursive dilemma, arises with unsettling frequency in politically salient cases and in exercises of judicial review over Congress. Second, an analysis of Supreme Court precedent showed that discursive dilemmas are followed significantly less than other precedents at the district court level. This finding indicates that inconsistent precedents are of little use to the legal sy (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gregory Caldeira (Advisor); Janet Box-Steffensmeier (Committee Member); Lawrence Baum (Committee Member); William Minozzi (Committee Member); Michael Neblo (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Political Science

Spatial conceptualizations of ideology dominate the political science literature. In this dissertation, I challenge the comprehensiveness of such conceptualizations, and the standard self-placement measure associated with them, by analyzing the social identity components of ideological identification. My theoretical motivation for this analysis is Social Identity Theory (SIT), which posits that individuals often view valued social groups as extensions of self-identity, which in turn motivate group-based thought and action. SIT is highly influential within the social science literature, and it has become increasingly influential in political science. Yet scholars have never examined the potential for ideological social identity and what effects it might have on political attitudes and behavior, by itself and in combination with other politically-relevant social identities. In this dissertation, I use two original surveys and data from the 1984-2008 American National Election Studies (ANES) to study the credibility and empirical value of a social identity approach to ideological identification. My analysis indicates that ideological social identity (ISI) represents a distinct dimension of ideological identification not adequately captured by the standard ideological self-placement measure. In the mass public, and particularly among party elites, feelings of psychological attachment to an ideological in-group are common today and they have become increasingly common over the past quarter-century. For approximately one-quarter of the mass public, and one-third of party elites, ideological social identity even exceeds the strength of partisan social identity. What is more, ISI is somewhat stronger among conservatives and it clearly becomes stronger in response to electoral competition. Most importantly, ideological social identity influences a variety of important political attitudes and behaviors. ISI significantly impacts evaluations of political in-groups and out-gr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kathleen McGraw PhD (Committee Chair); Herbert Weisberg PhD (Committee Member); Paul Allen Beck PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science