Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Leadership & Policy Studies

Committee Chair

Derrick Robinson

Committee Member

Reginald Green

Committee Member

Steven Nelson

Committee Member

J. Helen Perkins

Abstract

Black students in the United States are permanently operating within systemicallyinequitable environments that produce inequitable outcomes. Despite thesecircumstances, they exhibit resilience and overcome challenges to ultimately succeed.This study proposes a Critically Conscious Institution Framework that illustrates theimpact of critically conscious educational institutions on the resilience of Black Students.The framework is meant to inform the educational environments that help Black studentsdeal with the sustained adversity of functioning within anti-Black systems and considernarratives of current and former Black students to explore the various characteristics ofinstitutions on their own resilience capacity. The CCI Framework seeks to support theability of institutions to address the education debt owed to Black students that has beentraditionally neglected as a society.Using a transcendental phenomenological methodology, a purposive, nonrandomsample of Black students currently enrolled in a degree seeking college program wereinterviewed using a protocol of questions aligned to each research question and the corecomponents of the studys theoretical framework: antiblackness, social ecological modelof resilience, Afrocentricity, and critical consciousness by way of transformativepotential. This provided the opportunity to collect the lived experiences of Blackstudents and to analyze their responses using a phenomenological analysis protocol.Findings suggest four themes that serve to answer the research questionsaddressed by the study. Schools will either negatively or positively impact personalresilience capacity based on the way they center blackness and depending on whetherthey promote a collectivist culture. Providing freedom to define success to students is a schooling experience that greatly impacts the success level of Black graduates of K-12schools. Finally, institutions that actively care provide the quality, nurturing environmentneeded to support resilience by buffering the effects of adverse situations that putchildren at risk for negative outcomes. These findings support the conclusion that theCCI Framework informs transformative potential of institutions given that the surfacethemes reflect the need to filter critical reflection through the lens of antiblackness thatthe known tenets of Afrocentricity exists within the critical action institutions should taketo positively impact the resilience capacity of students.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

Notes

embargoed

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