Educational sociology

Promoting diversity in STEM fields is essential to fostering innovation and addressing global challenges. Despite extensive efforts, the representation of minority groups, including women, in undergraduate computer science and engineering programs remains low, posing significant barriers to equity and inclusivity in STEM education (Nicole & DeBoer, 2020).
This systematic review explores the socio-economic and cultural challenges discouraging minority students from pursuing degrees, specifically computer science and engineering disciplines. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across databases such as IEEE Xplore, Google Scholar, and Scopus using specific search terms. Studies were chosen based on clear inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Data was carefully extracted and analyzed, focusing on primary obstacles such as the scarcity of role models, biases, and educational barriers. To evaluate the quality of the studies included in the review, Covidence’s quality assessment tools were used, ensuring methodological rigor and consistency across the studies.

This study aims to identify [or create] equitable accountability systems that can be used to drive sustainable school improvement. In this context, equitable accountability is defined as a measure more of the school’s impact on student achievement and less a measure of the socio-economic status of the students enrolled in the school. To do this, the study begins with a review of the history and current state of school accountability policies in the US and its relation to the concepts of school improvement, between accountability and student achievement, a review of accountability policy in each state and the possible future model of accountability policy. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods with a policy analysis informing state correlational comparisons, which in turn informed the models to be applied to the Florida data to identify how they perform (correlate), culminating in the development of a new school accountability model. The policy analysis revealed current school accountability in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as well as the relationship between socio-economic status and school accountability in each where data were available. Five of these state models were shown to be significantly less related to socio-economic status than Florida. However, only two of these models performed similarly when applied to Florida data. Finally, a model was proposed that included aspects from these states and available literature that performed similarly to these two states. This study represents an important first step in a larger policy discussion of how to hold schools accountable for their impact on students and not a measure of the demographics of the students they are serving.

The growing Haitian population in the United States is directly affecting all
institutions of higher education As institutions continue to diversify across the
country, HBCUs are also responding to this trend According to Ricard and
Brown (2008), HBCUs are changing in order to keep up with the growing demand
of institutional diversity, and they recognize that having a diversified student body
will make the institutions more competitive
Although their historic mission focuses on educating Black students, there
remains a gap in the literature on HBCUs on one of the largest Black groups in
the United States: the Haitian immigrant In the literature, the Haitian population
constitutes approximately 15% of the total US foreign-born population, and
15% of the total Black immigrant population in the US, behind Jamaicans at
18%, respectively Moreover, Haitians make up the fourth largest immigrant population from the Caribbean behind Cubans, Dominicans, and Jamaicans
(Anderson, 2015) However, these numbers do not include the hundreds of
thousands of Haitians who fled the Country after the devastating earthquake of
2010 nor the thousands of undocumented Haitian immigrants currently living in
the US
This qualitative phenomenological study sought to explore the college
choice process of ten Haitian students who chose to attend a highly selective
HBCU located in the Northeast region of the United States Moreover, this study
sought to explore how these ten Haitian students developed a sense of
belonging to the HBCU campus The primary methods for data collection
included semi-structured one-on-one interviews, a demographic questionnaire,
and artifact analysis Using the theoretical frameworks of Chapman’s (1981)
Model of College Choice and Sense of Belonging, this study discovered the
factors that influence Haitian students’ decision to attend a highly selective
HBCU centers around family Moreover, this study discovered that Haitian
students at a highly selective HBCU described their sense of belonging through
various forms of relationships

This qualitative case study investigated how six National Board Certified secondary mathematics teachers integrate knowledge of students into their practice to create socio- academic spaces for learning. Individual audiotaped interviews were utilized to generate data about what knowledge these teachers had of their students, how they gathered this knowledge, and how this knowledge of students influenced their decisions related to curriculum and instruction. The data were used to form an understanding of the nature and function of the socio- academic spaces that teachers create in planning for and delivering instruction. The study revealed that as teachers interact independently with the curriculum, they create spaces for analysis and reflection. In addition, as they interact with their students around the curriculum, they create spaces for their students to practice, to make connections, to communicate, and to apply and experience math.

This study measured the impact of a gender-specific school counseling curriculum,
“Girl Talk” on: relational aggressive behaviors, pro-social behaviors, student
connectedness, cohesiveness, and social self-efficacy. The “Girl Talk” program consists
of five sessions and was delivered as part of a comprehensive school counseling program. Fifth grade girls in four elementary schools (N=151) from one large, Southeastern school district participated in the study. Girls at two elementary schools received the “Girl Talk” program (treatment group; n=85) and their peer counterparts (comparison group; n=66) at the two remaining schools received their regular school counseling program. A series analysis of variance and an analysis of covariance test, using an alpha level of .05, was conducted to determine if statistically significant differences existed between participants' posttest scores by group condition on the Peer Relations Questionnaire (Rigby & Slee, 1993b), My Class Inventory–Short Form Revised (Sink & Spencer, 2005), the Peers and Friends subscales of the Hemingway Measure of Pre-Adolescent Connectedness (Karcher, 2005), and the Social self-efficacy subscale of the Self-Efficacy Questionnaire for Children (Muris, 2001). Statistically significant differences were found in the areas of relational aggressive behaviors, pro-social behaviors, student connectedness, cohesiveness, and social self-efficacy. Partial eta square effect sizes were reported for each measure. The results support the positive impact that school counselors can have when using a systemic, gender-specific classroom guidance curriculum for reducing relational aggression among pre-adolescent girls.

This study aims to analyze three popular U.S. children’s TV shows – Dora the
Explorer (Nickelodeon), Maya & Miguel (PBS) and Handy Manny (Disney Channel) – in
terms of their incorporation of Spanish. Qualitative and quantitative measures were used
to assess the frequency and types of code switching both in the context of bilingualism
and language pedagogy. The study revealed different strategies of language choice and
socio-cultural objectives for each show. A close analysis of language choice in the three
children’s TV programs revealed distinct approaches to TV writing in the name of raising awareness of ethnic diversity, developing cultural literacy, and brand marketing.

Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, has suffered through
centuries of disenfranchisement, poverty, slavery, environmental disasters, internecine
racial prejudice, and foreign infringement. Its people won independence from France in
1804 but only at the cost of huge human and financial losses. Since then, Haiti has
known little freedom or democracy. In 1991, the first truly democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected (with a 67% majority). Nine months later,
he was deposed by a military coup d'état. During that time and the chaotic years that
followed, groups of human rights observers traveled to Haiti in an attempt to record and
report publically, officially, what was actually happening to the Haitian people and their
institutions. Although much has been written about the country during that period, there
have been no studies focused on the human rights observers who were intimately
involved with the people and the country. These groups and other groups participating in similar situations have not been studied and, yet, research in that area might provide
important insights in the field of social justice. It is important to identify what encourages individuals to become a part of the effort to make a positive difference in the lives of others, in the most adverse situations, the process by which human rights observers become engaged, and how that engagement affects their lives both during and after their in-country experiences. The purpose of this phenomenological study is to see if there are commonalities (e.g., socio-cultural influence, self-directed learning readiness, etc.) among the initial in-country experiences of several human rights observers and further to discover what, if any, effect those experiences had on their leadership styles.
The study identified socio-cultural influences (self-directed learning readiness and
familial, religious, educational impact); motivational factors; methods of processing the
experience (immediate responses of connectedness/love and reasoned responses
involving individual and group reflection); and multiple outcomes (spiritualty, social
action, and creativity). The overarching findings included identification of
transformational learning in the participants and the evolution of their leadership from the servant model into a transformational/chaos model, including reflection in and on action as an operating context.

Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, and Karl Marx suggested that there is a relationship between economic and political institutions and that behaviors and attitudes are influenced by this. Viewing this postulate as a conception which posits the economic mode of production as the locus of causality for culture, this examination of capitalism as culture, investigates how education and its pedagogical techniques, as a means of "enculturation," reflects the capitalist economic mode of production. Building on the theoretical notions in the Sociology of knowledge and Structuralism, this hermeneutical analysis discusses how pedagogical techniques and curriculum arrangements of public schools in capitalist societies correlate with the organization of labor (for it is that role of the self which is dominant in capitalist societies). Data for this research was gathered through the content analysis of pedagogical techniques and curriculum arrangements adopted by The School Board of Broward County, Florida. Results show that the current shift in the organization of labor (from industrial to post-industrial) parallels, and therefore correlates with, the shift in curriculum and pedagogical arrangements' of The School Board of Broward County, Florida; as such it is a legitimate claim to suggest that the socialization of the self is determined by its relation to the mode of production.