Date

8-2019

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Education in Curriculum & Instruction (EdD)

Chair

James Swezey

Keywords

Grandparent, Non-custodial Grandparent, Grandparent Resources, Role of Grandparent, Christian School Education, Christian School

Disciplines

Education

Abstract

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenology was to discover the lived experiences of non-custodial grandparents who contribute resources toward their grandchild’s Christian school education. The guiding theory for this study was Erikson’s (1950) theory of psychosocial development and the specific psychological stage of pursuing Generativity action versus Stagnation. This transcendental phenomenology included 15 non-custodial grandparents who had a grandchild who attended a K-12 Christian school and who had contributed resources operationally defined as financial, physical, emotional, intellectual, and/or spiritual for the grandchild’s Christian school education within the United States. The data was collected through grandparent interviews, focus group, support documents, and a grandparent letter by the grandparents and completed through the transcendental phenomenology model of reflective analysis and interpretation of the grandparents’ accounts. The results of the study identified one main theme of support and the five subthemes: (a) why grandparents support, (b) ways grandparents support, (c) aids or barriers to contributing resources, (d) generative results in supporting, and (e) encouragement to be a support. Recommendations were made to families, non-involved grandparents, and school stakeholders encouraging grandparent resource contribution as well as recommended future study on the impact of grandparent contributions on the family unit, the custodial grandparent experience in contributing, grandparent contribution in public schools, and model grandparent contributions in Christian schools.

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