Student Engagement and Achievement of Middle School Black Males in Single-Gender and Co-Educational Reading Classes

This dissertation presents an historical overview of the systematic educational limitations that have been faced by African-American's in the United States and then considers issues facing contemporary educational leaders in the context of current educational policy and institutional inequality. A portrait of the Black male in the United States, the developmental process that is often experienced by young adolescent Black males, and the cultural collision with traditional Anglo-American approaches to instructional leadership is then discussed as a foundation for this mixed-method study. The purpose of this research was to analyze the academic achievement and level of engagement of adolescent Black males participating in single-gender and co-educational reading classes utilizing culturally relevant pedagogy. The findings of this study reveled that while student engagement for both groups on average remained about the same, student achievement for the single-gender reading class showed statistically significant gains in comparison to the co-educational reading class. The research also revealed that three specific themes were found to be instrumental as it relates to factors that impacted student engagement: (1) Cultural Understanding; (2) Community and Family Structure; and (3) Psychosocial Needs. Based upon these findings, the dissertation concludes with a series of recommendations for school sites, district administrators, and future researchers in hopes of facilitating changes to our educational processes and approaches.