Education Commons^™

“It’S Like A Mountain”: The Lived Experience Of Homeless College Students, Valerie Karen Ambrose

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe the experience of college for homeless students. Using a phenomenological approach, the researcher completed interviews in which participants were asked to describe what college was like for them. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using a hermeneutic approach. All interviews were analyzed within the contexts of each other to identify themes. The participants all lived in a world of homelessness that they could never fully ignore. The world of homelessness was grounded in the contexts of the body and other people. An encompassing central theme of “Escaping the Homeless World through …

On The Same Page: The Experience Of Instructors And Students As They Give And Receive Written Feedback In Higher Education, Michele Heide Williams

Doctoral Dissertations

Academic writing in higher education remains a chief means of assessing student understanding, making instructor response to student writing an important way of providing summative and formative feedback for students. Writing and response offer insights into the ways in which students construct understanding within disciplinary contexts and the ways in which instructors facilitate those efforts. The present study explores two aspects of writing in higher education:1) the experience of faculty members who require and respond to writing from students, and 2) the experience of students as recipients of instructor responses to their academic writing. To explore the experience of response, …

Listening To Undocumented Mothers: The Experiences Of Undocumented Mexican Mothers Of High School Students Living In The U.S. And Receiving Social Services, Maria Alejandra Lopez

Doctoral Dissertations

The present dissertation is based on a phenomenological study on undocumented Mexican immigrant mothers of high school students who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and received social services. Most of these mothers have emigrated from rural areas of the central and southern Mexican States of Guanajuato, Michoacan, Queretaro, among others. According to the participants, socio-economic conditions forced them to leave their homelands hoping to find a better life in the U.S.

Ten undocumented mothers of high school students living in the U.S. were interviewed from a phenomenological perspective. They were monolingual Spanish speakers (only one …