Award Date

1-1-1993

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Educational Administration and Higher Education

First Committee Member

Anthony Saville

Number of Pages

132

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine if there was a difference in the use of cultural coping strategies between involuntary minority and non-minority chairpersons employed at doctoral, degree-granting universities in the American Southwest. The study also examined to what degree John Ogbu's cultural coping strategies were used by the university administrators. Furthermore, the perceptions of the chairpersons with regard to their selection as a chairperson, satisfaction with the chairperson position, and future administrative plans were also determined; A 54-item questionnaire was self-administered by 119 department chairpersons located in 64 universities in the seven Southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. The instrument was designed to measure if chairpersons use Ogbu's cultural coping strategies which comprise the eight adaptive types he classified as assimilators, emissaries, alternators, reaffiliated, ivy-leaguers, regulars, ambivalents, and encapsulated; T-test scores were utilized at the.05 level to determine statistical significance. The t-scores indicated that part of Ogbu's concept (emissaries, reaffiliated, ivy-leaguers, and regulars adaptive types) was statistically significant at the.05 confidence interval. The t-test scores of the assimilators, alternators, ambivalents, and encapsulated adaptive types were statistically insignificant at the.05 confidence level. The means ranged from a 13.7 to 24.9 and indicated the degree of utilization of cultural coping strategies; Approximately two thirds (61.1%) of non-minority and 69.3% of involuntary minority chairs agreed that they were selected to the chairperson position because they were fully qualified and not because of their ethnic status. The majority (72.2%) of involuntary minority and of non-minority (64.8%) chairs felt the chairperson position provided excellent administrative experience, but only 35% of involuntary minority and 29% of the non-minority chairs plan to pursue higher level administrative positions. The majority of the chairs (67.7% non-minority and 75.4% involuntary minority) replied that they had a high level of satisfaction with the university department chair position. Based on the analysis, five recommendations for further study were suggested.

Keywords

Coping; Cultural; Involuntary; Level; Minority; Strategies; University

Controlled Subject

School management and organization; Education, Higher; Education, bilingual

File Format

pdf

File Size

4362.24 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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