Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

This dissertation investigates the influence of participation in an anti-racist educational (ARE) program upon the perceptions of, critical assessments of, and self-reported behaviors toward institutional racism in a sample of 11th-grade students enrolled in a public school district that had recently undergone compulsory, court-ordered desegregation. This quasi-experimental study measured hypothesized differences between the scores of a group of high school students on a quantitative data-gathering instrument before their participation in an Undoing Racism curriculum, with their scores on that same instrument re-administered three months after their completion of that course. It then compared the degree of pre-intervention/ post-intervention changes in this experimental study group with changes in scores on two concurrently administered rounds of the study instrument obtained from a peer control group who did not participate in the Undoing Racism program.

Following the second round of testing, the qualitative component of this study involved the researcher conducting interviews with sub-sets of study subjects drawn from both the experimental and control groups. These interviews included questions about judicially mandated racial desegregation in the school district.

Quantitative results of the study did not support any of the six study hypotheses. However, qualitative study results revealed differences in the experimental and control groups regarding their attitudes and beliefs about institutional racism. Based on the results of the study, the researcher recommended follow up studies to identify long term effects of the treatment on the study participants.