Date Created

5-2026

Embargo Date

5-2027

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

College of Education and Behavioral Sciences, Leadership Policy and Development: Higher Education and P-12 Education, LPD Student Work

First Advisor

Larkins, Randy

First Committee Member

Lahman, Maria

Second Committee Member

Ortis, L.D.

Third Committee Member

Kimball, Michael

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore how single African American fathers raising children while pursuing a doctoral degree at a predominantly White institution (PWI) in the United States made meaning of their lived experiences. Designed to defy deficit-based stereotypes that marginalize Black fathers within higher education, the study centered the lived experiences, counter stories, and meaning-making practices of three Black heterosexual doctoral fathers, alongside the perspectives of their familial support networks.

The follow research questions guided this study:

Q1 How do single African American fathers raising children while pursuing a doctorate at a PWI make meaning of their lived experiences?

Q1b How do participants make meaning of the institutional support structures available to them during their doctoral journey?

Q1c How do participants make meaning of the personal support systems (e.g., family, community, peers) that influence their doctoral persistence?

Q1d What institutional barriers do participants identify as complicating or constraining their pursuit of a doctorate at a PWI?

Guided by critical constructivist and critical race frameworks, data were co-constructed through in-depth interviews, focus groups, dialogic performance, and arts-based methods including poetry, film, and narrative invocation.

Findings revealed four interrelated themes: (a) fatherhood as emotional, motivational, and historical labor; (b) support as communal, intergenerational, and ancestral work; (c) the doctoral journey as racialized precarity shaped by institutional silence and identity strain; and (d) survival and resistance amid ongoing epistemic erasure within compulsory and higher education systems. Creative expression emerged as a central methodological and analytical tool, enabling participants to reclaim authorship over their identities and doctoral trajectories.

The study demonstrated that institutional silence operated as epistemic violence, sustaining dominant curricular narratives while marginalizing Black doctoral fathers. Implications called for family-responsive doctoral policies, curricular audits addressing historical erasure, and institutional protections for scholars engaged in critical and decolonial inquiry. This research affirmed the complexity, resilience, and generative knowledge of Black doctoral fathers and called for a reimagining of doctoral education that fully recognizes their presence and contributions.

Abstract Format

html

Language

English

Extent

506 pages

Rights Statement

Copyright is held by the author.

Digital Origin

Born digital

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Available for download on Saturday, May 01, 2027

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