Date
2-7-2024
Department
School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Chair
Darren D. Howland
Keywords
African American undergraduate students, predominantly white institution, formative assessment, summative assessment
Disciplines
Education
Recommended Citation
Phillips, Virgil Clyde Jr., "The Lived Experiences of African American Undergraduate Students with Formative and Summative Assessments at a Predominantly White Institution: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Qualitative Study" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 5181.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5181
Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the lived experiences of African American undergraduate students who have taken formative and summative assessments while attending a predominantly white institution. The theory guiding this study is Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory as it relates to its main three elements of person, behavior, and environment. The research framework for this qualitative study was hermeneutic phenomenology, which focuses on obtaining, describing, and interpreting lived experiences of individuals. The central research question asks, “What are the experiences of African American undergraduate students attending a predominantly white institution (PWI) taking summative and formative assessments?” The setting was a predominantly white institution in Virginia. The sample was twelve African American undergraduate students between the ages of 18 to 21 who were members of the organization centered around multicultural student services, specifically the multicultural Greek council and the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC). Data collection was conducted through three methods, individual interviews, focus group, and a journal prompt. The data analysis approach was accomplished through thematic analysis. The thematic findings for this study were performance anxiety with sub-themes being on edge, high expectations, and feeling not wanted, lack of cultural competence with sub-themes racial discrimination and need to assimilate, marginalization with sub-themes loneliness and misunderstood, multifaceted with sub-themes authenticity in minority spaces, ambiguous relationships, lack of external culture, and political environment, university confliction with sub-themes lack of university intercultural and global awareness, university intercultural and global awareness, and division in minority.
