An inquiry into Scott's institutional theory: The relationship between sports and academics in urban public high schools.

摘要

This dissertation evaluates the veracity of Richard Scott's three pillars of institutionalization: regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive. The test of his theory is whether the processes and practices within the environments of the three pillars can account for differences between academic performance and athletic performance in Miami-Dade County, Florida public schools. Scott's model of institutionalization works better in predicting academic success than it does athletic success in the context of this study as evidenced by the majority of the findings coming from the scholastic realm.;The primary methodological approach was to obtain publicly available measures of academic performance and resources for 31 high schools in Miami-Dade County, FL, and then evaluate relationships between these academic indicators and measures of school athletic performance. Pearson (parametric) and Spearman (non-parametric) correlation coefficients were calculated to estimate the strength of association between school characteristics and measures of academic and athletic performance. These analyses further informed the construction of stepwise multiple linear regression models that regressed the dependent variable (a measure of academic or athletic performance) with a range of possible independent variables all related to individual school characteristics.;Improvement in the academic categories included in this dissertation (math, science, reading, and writing) has been the goal of a great deal of legislation that deals with education at the federal, state, and local level. The top indicator of a school's academic performance was the number of highly qualified teachers within a school. Cultural-cognitive pillar indicators of socioeconomic status, including minority rate and percentage of students in a school who are eligible for free lunch, were negatively associated with academic performance. Thus, normative and cultural-cognitive processes can have a significant impact on whether laws and legislation have their intended effect. In the end, it is reasonable to conclude that all three pillars complement each other in interdependent ways within Scott's institutional framework with different pillars taking prominence as time and circumstances change.