Identify qualitative methodology in a journal article and critically review its applicability to the study

Peter Sheppard 's Successful African-American Mathematics Students in Academically Unacceptable High Schools : A Review

Successful African-American Mathematics Students in Academically Unacceptable High Schools ' is author Peter A . Sheppard IV 's dissertation for his Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Science and Mathematics Education . And although there have been numerous studies already conducted on successful African-Americans , as revealed by Sheppard 's Review of Literature , not much has been made regarding the accountability aspect of the No Child Left behind Act (NCLB ) 2001 (where states are required to publicly identify low-performing schools ) and

its influence on students . Hence , Sheppard sought to explore the relation between academically unacceptable schools - which , as defined by the NCLB 2001 , refer to schools that got a School Performance Score of 44 .9 or below - and the existence of quite a number of African-American math students in such seemingly negatively labeled academic institutions

Completed on May 2005 , Sheppard 's article posed two primary and four secondary research questions . The main questions that the study aimed to address are

Why are successful African-American mathematics students (with successful student ' defined as someone who scored `Advanced ' or `Mastery ' on the math portion of Louisiana 's Graduate Exit Exam or GEE able to thrive in academically unacceptable schools

Why have these successful African-American math students chosen to stay in academically unacceptable schools despite being given an option to transfer to a better-performing school

In an attempt to answer the above questions , Sheppard (2005 ) also hopes to stumble upon answers to the following sub-questions

Is the negative school designation , academically unacceptable , an appropriate of the schools in this study

What is the role of the teacher in the achievement of successful math students in state-recognized poor schools

What is the role of the school-based leader (principal ) in the achievement of successful math students in state-recognized poor schools

To what extent do peers affect the achievement of successful math students in state-recognized poor schools

Sheppard made it clear that his was in no way an attempt to generalize the situation of all African-American students in all academically unacceptable schools . In fact , the answers he 'll be deriving at will be applicable only to a small non-probability purposeful sample ' that is limited to the eleven successful African-American math students who studied in either Lake High School or River High School and who participated in the study (Sheppard , 2005 . It is for this reason that Sheppard approached his study with a qualitative design

Since Sheppard was attacking his research qualitatively , the theoretical construct used is not that well-defined . The use of a theory in a qualitative study is , after all , not as clear as its use in quantitative researches . John Creswell (1994 ) explains , In a qualitative study , one does not begin with a theory to test or verify . Instead , consistent with the inductive model of thinking , a theory may emerge during the data collection and analysis phase of the research ' But even with an undefined theoretical construct , it may be safe to assume that...