ANALISIS DE RESULTADOS

This descriptive case study has explored how public high school students in a western Nebraska high school perceive the value of participating in liberal arts activities and how these activities influence their academic success, choice of major, and activities post-graduation. A descriptive case study helps answer “how” and “why” questions yet allows for a real-life

contextual study. It is a technique used when the researcher has little/no possibility to control the behavior of the participants (Yin, 1994). Within this study, this researcher used the tools of individual interviews and observation to gain insight into the participants’ perceptions of why they chose to be involved in liberal arts classes and activities, how they perceived these types of activities in their current life, and how these influenced their leadership roles and their future decisions regarding college and career. Participants were also asked to bring an artifact from one of their activities to the first interview. Eight participants, who participated in both a liberal arts activity and a leadership activity at the research site, chose to be involved in this descriptive case study. The small sample size in this study means it is difficult to generalize the results to the general population. However, in spite of the small sample size, several forms of validity as well as data saturation were used in this study to ensure the conclusions in this study still add to the academic literature on the benefits of liberal arts participation for high school age students. The research questions that guided this case study were:

RQ1: How do public high school students describe their involvement in both liberal arts

and leadership activities?

o How do public high school students perceive participation in liberal arts and leadership activities with relation to academic success?

Liberal Arts Benefits

In December of 2015, educators and policy makers had to adjust to new educational policies set by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (Darrow, 2016; Fránquiz & Oritz, 2016). ESSA required schools to include a variety of programs that support college and career readiness (Every Student Succeeds Act, 2015). While ESSA encourages including music and arts in schools as programs that help prepare students with college and career readiness skills, it does not specify which programs or how many should be included, leaving schools to decide how many programs are necessary to meet the demands of ESSA (Mathis & Trujillo, 2016). Schools could include a variety of music and arts classes, such as band, visual art, choir, and drama, or create a music and arts program that features only band. Hence, even with the support of the ESSA, it is important for researchers to continue to study the benefits of liberal arts classes and activities for students in order to encourage schools to maintain the liberal arts programs that currently exist in their schools and add more liberal arts opportunities for their students.

The literature stated that in order to gain future success in the areas of leadership and college readiness, students need to develop strong oral and written skills, interpersonal skills, the ability to find new and creative solutions to problems, and possess scientific thinking skills (Adler, 2006; Conley, 2008; Franklin, 2011; Mumford et al., 2007). Furthermore, liberal arts classes and activities benefit students by helping increase academic performance, enhance their development of cognitive skills (Bugai & Brenner, 2011; Costa-Giomi, 2015; Nutley et al., 2014; Sittiprapaporn, 2010), build a stronger sense of self-esteem (Culp, 2016; Severs, 2016), increase their ability to self-regulate educational time, develop a higher sense of self-efficacy to achieve goals (Kindekens et al., 2013; Ritchie & Williamon, 2007), and augment their development of good written, oral, and critical thinking skills, along with acquiring more tolerance for diversity,

whether cultural or political (Bahls, 2013; Conley, 2008; Ruppert, 2006; Stapleton, 2011). However, the literature review revealed a paucity of qualitative studies to support these findings. While this researcher found many quantitative studies focused on the benefits of liberal arts classes and activities, only a few studies included both quantitative and qualitative research methods. As a result, the decision was made to explore this topic from the perspective of the lived experience of high school students and employ only qualitative methods to conduct research into the benefits of liberal arts classes and activities.

The findings in this study support the conclusions found in the literature on the benefits of participation in liberal arts classes and activities, including an increase in self-esteem, self- efficacy, self-concept, and increased cognitive skills. Participants’ perceptions of the benefits of their liberal arts involvement indicate a stronger sense of self-esteem, self-identity, and

leadership, a drive to achieve academically, as well as a sense of accomplishment. Moreover, there was a demonstrated increase in interpersonal communication skills, including the ability to work in teams and time management skills. As indicated by the academic literature provided throughout this dissertation, these skills help students gain future success in leadership roles and college preparedness. The results of this paper and how this study related to the literature referred to in this dissertation will be discussed in the next sections, including the implication of the results and recommendations for future practice.

Summary of the Results

As stated earlier, this descriptive case study explored how public high school students perceived the value of participating in liberal arts activities. Chapter 4 discussed the emergent themes and findings of the research. A review of the themes discussed in chapter 4 can be found in Table 5.

Table 5

Themes and Subthemes Review

Theme Subthemes

Leadership development Access and opportunity.

Enhanced self-confidence Growth of roles as the student, leader, and participant.

Enhancement of self-identity. Increased self-efficacy Drive to achieve.

Sense of Accomplishment. Interpersonal communication skills Teamwork.

Time Management.

The summary of the results is broken down in the following sections as they relate to the

research questions in this study. Themes and subthemes are discussed in the section(s) in which they most relate. The research questions for this study focus on participants’ perceptions of their involvement in both liberal arts and leadership activities, and how these activities affect their academics and future decisions.