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| Daniel Cox with his doctoral committee, (from left) Drs. William Black, Edward Fletcher, Victor Hernandez, and Yi-Hsin Chen. |
The purpose of his study was to describe participation patterns at the district level of students enrolled in career academies and determine whether participation in career academies is a function of demographic and/or prior learning experience and prior performance variables. His doctoral committee included Dr. Victor Hernandez and Dr. Edward Fletcher who served as his Co-Major Professors, Dr. Yi-Hsin Chen, and Dr. Bill Black. To facilitate the dissertation defense, Dr. Black, Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy Sudies, served as the Outside Chair.
Daniel has worked in education for more than 20 years. He began his career in the K-12 public school arena working in Migrant Education where he developed a dropout prevention program targeting students in grades 4-6. During the 1990s, he taught middle school technology education in a rural school district located in north-central Florida. In 2000, Daniel transitioned into a district-level position providing support to career and technical education (CTE) programs within the Volusia County School District. Daniel holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of Florida, and a master’s in educational technology leadership from The George Washington University.
Building upon his professional background and interests at the Volusia County School District, and upon joining the Doctoral Program in CWE at USF, Daniel set out to study the participation rates of underrepresented in career academies. In collaboration with Dr. Edward Fletcher he conducted a preliminary study to explore student motivation for enrollment in career in career academies. For his dissertation research, he followed up with three questions:
- What are the participation trends in career academies over a recent six-year period (2007-2012) based on demographic variables including gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status (SES)?
- To what extent do demographic, prior learning experience, and performance variables predict participation in career academies?
- To what extent do demographic, prior learning experience, and performance variables predict participation within specific types of career academies (based upon Career Clusters™)?
To conduct his study, Daniel used a non-experimental descriptive/causal-comparative research design. To learn more about his study, you may visit his dissertation page and for additional pictures of his dissertation defense you may check here.
Congratulations!
