Social Work Commons^™

Staying Within The Margins: The Educational Stories Of First-Generation, Low-Income College Students, Diane Lyn Cole

Dissertations and Theses

his research addressed educational persistence among first-generation, low-income college students. The educational paths of 22 first-generation, low-income undergraduate students attending a large, urban university in the Northwest region of the United States were examined through a narrative framework. Half of the participants had persisted from year one to year two, and the other half left the university after their first year. Analytic procedures consisted of thematic qualitative coding, an analysis of student trajectories over educational histories, and the reconstruction of narrative stories. Data were used to examine: (1) How first-generation, low-income students understood and described their journey through their first …