A critical race ecocultural agency theory of education framework: (Re)conceptualizing African American students' transitions from high school to college

African Americans remain underrepresented in U.S. institutions of higher education despite a generation of national policies and programmatic efforts designed to increase college access and equity for all. This crisis represents the failures of various institutions to improve disparities at a critical point of the K-16 educational pipeline---the high school-to-college transition process. The experiences of African Americans fail to be counted among those individuals with the authority to critique and reform their pathways to college. Therefore, it is imperative for educational policymakers and officials to interweave African Americans' voices into policies and practices about ways to facilitate their college-going outcomes.;My dissertation integrates African American students' experiential knowledge into current education discourse to illuminate ways to replace systemic inequalities in K-16 education with equitable outcomes. Through a longitudinal qualitative study, I examined the high school-to-college transition process of twenty African American students at an urban public high school in Southern California. I specifically explored factors in multiple contexts that facilitated and hindered their transitions to college. Using a Critical Race Ecocultural Agency Theory in Education (C.R.E.A.T.E.) model, an integrative framework of Critical Race Theory, Ecocultural Theory and student agency, I explored the various factors that shaped the choices students made over time in their pathways to higher education. Through interviews, informal conversations, site observations, and document analyses, I created counter-narratives to frame the interconnectedness of the students' agency and their actions and decisions towards college.;Findings from this study revealed: (1) the importance of using a qualitative methodological orientation that captures the complexities and diversity of African American students' experiences over time; (2) the ways agency was asserted on individual and collective levels across multiple contexts to achieve post-high school goals; (3) the dexterity involved in navigating and negotiating their lived realities and postsecondary goals; and (4) how students developed critical understandings of the connections and disconnections between their academic, social and personal realities. In addition, throughout this study the students provided recommendations for educational policies and practices about improving African Americans' college access, preparation and participation.