High School Completion: Investigating the roles of social goals, degree of motivation/resiliency, and differential impact of sex among students in an alternative high school

The majority of literature exploring high school completion and dropout has specifically investigated dropout percentages, reasons behind drop out, and what types of students decide to drop out. Information concerning alterable variables and why students complete high school is less abundant. Often, reasons behind high school dropout include variables that are out of the students' and schools' control. For instance, location (urban, rural, suburban), socioeconomic status (SES), and family education and support are not situations that can be easily altered by students or schools. As a result, the problem of high school dropout is more understood, but is not remediated. The purpose of the current study was to determine what influence, if any, social goals, degree of motivation/resiliency, and gender had on high school completion in an alternative high school. The alterable variables of social goals and motivation/resiliency were of particular interest to the researcher as the basis for potential interventions and strategies to be implemented by schools in order to improve graduation rates. Data were collected from 212 young men (n= 102) and women (n= 110) who began the 2007-08 school year at an alternative high school in Philadelphia, PA. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was utilized for this study. Information regarding social goals and degree of motivation/resiliency was obtained with measures created by staff members at the school. Findings suggest that students who graduated from this alternative high school demonstrated more specific and realistic social goals as compared to students who dropped out.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Coveney, Tiffany Moore

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Sewell, Trevor E.
• DuCette, Joseph P.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Horvat, Erin McNamara, 1964-
• Farley, Frank
• Rosenfeld, Joseph G.

• Education, General
• Education, Secondary
• Education, Vocational
• Alternative School
• Goal
• Graduation
• High School

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Dc Identifier Other

864884627

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/1017