A Phenomenological Case Study of the Experiences of African American High School Students

Abstract

In a progression of scholarly research on the achievement gap, the results remain the same. The data show that there is a statistically significant difference in the achievement of African American and Hispanic students compared with their Caucasian and Asian academic counterparts. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the implications of the gap in achievement for young urban adults. The participants were five African American students who had dropped out of traditional school. These students described their academic decline through interviews and focus group sessions at two alternative educational sites. The data were collected and the results indicated that the students felt disconnected from their teachers and the process of education. As a result of this disconnection, they became adrift in the educational system and were eventually swallowed by the undertow.

Perceptions of peer group interactions on self-efficacy and academic identity of African-American students in advanced placement classes.

“…In order to capture the experiences of participants effectively, I aligned these two approaches into a phenomenological case study. This collaborative design provided the framework for existing studies such as Sumsion (2002) and West (2013) in which participant experiences were explored in relation to a phenomenon. In the aforementioned studies, researchers explored group (West, 2013) and individual (Sumsion, 2002) participant experiences as they related to a particular phenomenon-each remaining innately focused on capturing the essence experience.…”