SAGE Journal Articles

(1.1) Mercier, C., Piat, M., Peladeau, N., & Dagenais, C. (2000).  An application of theory-driven evaluation to a drop-in youth center. Evaluation Review, 24 (1), 73-91.

Abstract
This article reports on the theory-driven evaluation of a drop-in center for youth that incorporated a literature search, concept mapping with staff, and focus groups with youth. Findings revealed strong agreement among the three sources of data around specific elements identified as critical components of a program theory of global prevention in after-school-hours initiatives, such as drop-in centers. These results are used to illustrate how a theory-driven approach was relevant for the context and objectives of this evaluation, as well as how it was used to develop knowledge useful for action, social intervention theory, and further research.

(1.2) DeBlase, G.L. (2003). Missing stories, missing lives: Urban girls (re)constructing race and gender in the literacy classroom. Urban Education, 38 (3), 279-329. 

Abstract
In this critical ethnography, interpretivist methods were used to focus on the perspectives of African American, Latina, and Native American girls in an urban middle-school classroom to better understand how they constructed social identities of gender and race through their experiences with literacy. Because the enacted curriculum lacked critical awareness of the sociocultural contexts of gender and race, the perspectives of the girls in this classroom were largely missing from transactions with literacy. Consequently, girls' efforts to make intertextual links to their own lived stories were not taken up in meaningful ways. Transactions with literacy created a felt sense of fractured or compartmentalized social identities, and the girls in this study learned to separate their public, academic lives from their private lives. As a result, the girls did not take up the literature in ways that could potentially enable them to realize social and cognitive transformation in their lives.

(1.3) Renzulli, J.S., & Park, S. (2000). Gifted dropouts: The who and the why. Gifted Child Quarterly, 44 (4): 261-271. 

Abstract
Two studies were conducted to obtain comprehensive information about gifted high school dropouts and to examine factors that are related to their dropout behavior using the Dropout and Student questionnaires of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). The results indicated that many gifted dropouts were from low socioeconomic-status families and racial minority groups; had parents with low levels of education; and participated less in extracurricular activities. Also, reasons for gifted male dropouts were more related to economic issues, while reasons for gifted female dropouts were more related to personal issues, although both males and females were likely to offer school-related reasons. The logistic regression analysis results indicated that dropout behavior for gifted students was significantly related to students' educational aspirations, pregnancy or child-rearing, gender, father's highest level of education, and mother's highest level of education.