Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Narrating The Future: Understanding How Student Narratives Relate To Outcomes In Community College, Tanzina Ahmed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Community colleges are an increasingly important entry point into higher education for adults in the United States (21^st-Century Commission, 2012). Students often hold diverse opinions on and engage in complex meaning-making around the community college institution (Daiute & Kreniske, 2016; Deil-Amen, 2016). Furthermore, students’ varied interpretations of community college might influence and predict their academic performance. To investigate that assumption, this study asked 104 students to write about community college within three genres (i.e. types) of narratives that afford different author-purpose-audience opportunities for meaning-making. In the Letters genre, students wrote a letter to a close partner about their …