Counseling, Higher Education & Special Education Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2757
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Item RACIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, IDENTITY, AND DISSONANCE AMONG WHITE WOMEN IN STUDENT AFFAIRS GRADUATE PROGRAMS(2012) Robbins, Claire Kathleen; Jones, Susan R; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to investigate racial identity among White women enrolled in student affairs and higher education (hereafter, SA/HE) master's degree programs. Guided by a social justice epistemology encompassing constructivism, feminist inquiry, and Critical Whiteness, this grounded theory study included the following research questions: (1) how does racial identity develop over time among White women; (2) how do White women construct racial identities; (3) in what ways do educational and professional experiences, including those that occur in SA/HE master's degree programs, influence White women's racial identities; and (4) in what ways do multiple layers of social context, including power and privilege, influence White women's racial identities? Data sources included two interviews with a sample of 11 White women in SA/HE master's degree programs, and data analysis procedures were consistent with grounded theory for social justice. The outcome of this study was a grounded theory of racial consciousness, identity, and dissonance among White women in SA/HE graduate programs. The emergent theory consisted of two core processes: changing one's perspective and the emergence of racial dissonance. The first core process, changing one's perspective, foregrounded a series of developmental shifts through which participants became conscious of whiteness and developed racial identities. These shifts or "lenses" corresponded to a series of visual metaphors, including not seeing race, peripheral visions, and "opening my eyes." The second core process, the emergence of racial dissonance, disrupted the developmental process of changing one's perspective. When new insights threatened preexisting worldviews, participants were forced to confront racial dissonance, or discomfort and ambiguity about race, identity, and privilege. In response, participants developed strategies for resisting, engaging, and transforming racial dissonance. Navigating racial dissonance was a performative process that gave participants the capacity to resume the developmental process of changing one's perspective and to adopt a new lens with two regions, "a conscious lens of whiteness" and "a vision for my life." This grounded theory of racial consciousness, identity, and dissonance among White women has implications for SA/HE graduate preparation programs, social identity and student development theory, and future research.Item Asian American Racial Identity Experiences in Intergroup Dialogue: A Narrative Study(2011) Mac, Jacqueline; Quaye, Stephen J; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this constructivist narrative study was to explore how Asian American students experience their racial identity in intergroup dialogue. This study addressed the following guiding research question: how do Asian American students experience their racial identity in the context of intergroup dialogues? Two Asian American students from two intergroup dialogues participated in this study. Data collection included semi-structured individual interviews and course documents, such as journal reflections. Data were analyzed using a hybrid narrative approach that combined the analysis of the content as an entire story (inductive case analysis), of the content of themes within each story, and of the structure of a complete story (cross-case analysis). Full restories of each participant's story were provided. Four themes emerged from these restories to illuminate how students experienced their racial identity in intergroup dialogue. First, racial identities were experienced in a complicated manner that conflated race and ethnicity, within and outside of intergroup dialogue. Second, the salience of racial identity impacted how and what participants shared about their experiences. Third, both participants shared stories of internal conflict related to their racial identities, which were illuminated by their experiences in intergroup dialogue. Lastly, participants shared similar experiences participating in intergroup dialogue, which included holding back, taking risks, and responding to stereotypes. However, these experiences varied in the ways they were explicitly connected to participants' racial identity.Item EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COLLECTIVE RACIAL ESTEEM AND LEADERSHIP SELF-EFFICACY AMONG ASIAN AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENTS(2011) Lee, Douglas Henri; Jacoby, Barbara; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis explored whether collective racial esteem was a significant predictor of leadership self-efficacy for Asian American college students. The subjects of the study were undergraduate students from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership who identified as Asian and United States citizens. An aggregated Asian, Chinese, Filipino, and Indian/Pakistani samples were drawn from the MSL in order to study the diverse Asian American population. The aggregated Asian sample included all the ethnicities in addition to the three samples. The hypothesis was tested using a modified Input-Environment-Outcome model as an organizing framework and hierarchical multiple regression as the statistical method. Collective racial esteem was observed as a significant predictor of leadership self-efficacy for the aggregated Asian sample, the Chinese sample, and the Indian/Pakistani sample. The null hypothesis was rejected for these three samples. The null hypothesis failed to reject for the Filipino sample. The study's findings offer suggestions for practitioners and researchers.