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Full-Text Articles in Education
(Social) Class Is In Session: Examining The Experiences Of Working-Class Students Through Social Class Identity, Class-Based Allyship, And Sense Of Belonging, Genia M. Bettencourt
(Social) Class Is In Session: Examining The Experiences Of Working-Class Students Through Social Class Identity, Class-Based Allyship, And Sense Of Belonging, Genia M. Bettencourt
Doctoral Dissertations
Working-class students experience numerous barriers in accessing and persisting within higher education. These barriers are often amplified at public research institutions that facilitate greater social class diversity, career opportunities, and degree completion, but cater to middle- and upper-class students. The result is a contrast for working-class students in which higher education can serve as a tool for social mobility while also reinforcing barriers that reproduce class inequality. In this dissertation, I used narrative inquiry to conduct 44 interviews with 24 working-class students regarding their social class meaning-making, perceptions of class-based allyship, and sense of belonging. All three concepts have been …
Dropping The Invisibility Cloak: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Sense Of Belonging And Place Identity Among Rural, First Generation, Low Income College Students From Appalachian Kentucky, Brenda Abbott
Doctoral Dissertations
In a country that once was 95% rural in the late 1700s, only 19.3% of the population of the United States now live in rural areas (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). The shift in population from rural to urban areas is not simply demographic; it imbues a shift in who and what matters. Only 13.6% of adults over 25 in Appalachian Kentucky have earned bachelor's degrees, 18.9% below the national average (Appalachian Regional Commission, 2016). This phenomenological study seeks to understand how rural, first generation, low income college students from Appalachian Kentucky experience a sense of belonging in their first year …