Title: Making It Factors that Promote Resilience in First Generation College Students
1 Making It Factors that Promote Resilience in
First Generation College Students
- NCTT Winter WorkshopSan Francisco - January 12,
2007
2"What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?Langston Hughes
3In Urban Areas
- Nearly 50 or 60 percent of adolescents leave high
school prior to graduation with neither degree
nor diploma. - 43 of men return for a GED
- 25 of women return for a GED
4Risk and Resilience
- The structure of schooling with its high
regard for the cultural capital of the upper
classes, promotes a belief among working-class
students that they are unlikely to achieve
academic success. Thus, there is a correlation
between objective probabilities and subjective
aspirations, between institutional structures and
cultural practices. (MacLeod, p. 13)
5Low-Income Adults
- Fifty-four percent of low-income adult students
are single parents. Among middle- to
upper-income adult students, the figure is 21
percent. - Fifty-seven percent of low-income adult students
work full time. - Forty-five percent of low-income adult students
are enrolled half time or less.
6Low-Income Adults
- Fifty-three percent of low-income adult students
attend community colleges. - In 1995-1996, 47 percent of low-income adult
students aspired to earn a bachelor's degree,
and, by 2001, 7 percent had succeeded. During the
same time, 20 percent of low-income adults said
they desired an associate's degree, and by 2001 8
percent had reached their goal. - Forty percent of adult students, about 2.5
million, made less than 25,000 in 1999-2000
- American Council on Education and Lumina
Foundation Report
7Mrs. Smith Mrs. Jones
8Resilience
Resilience encompasses diverse and complex
phenomena. Understanding resilience is going to
require sustained efforts by many investigators
with different perspectives and expertise. ..
(Masten, 1994, p. 21).
9Resilience
Resilience research, like many areas of social
science, needs serious attention given to theory
building that focuses on understanding the causal
structures and processes that give meaning and
direction to social life. Further accumulation of
new or redundant data that we do not know how to
interpret will simply cause stagnation in the
research tradition. (Rigsby, 1994, p. 94)
10Risk and Resilience
- Rather than deny the existence of barriers to
success the schools should acknowledge them
explicitly while motivating students by teaching
them for example, about local figures (with whom
the students can identify) who share the
students' socioeconomic origins but overcame the
odds. Teachers can strive to include material
about which the students, drawing on the skills
they have developed in their neighborhoods, are
the experts. (MacLeod, p. 153)
11Resilience in Popular Culture
- Although some people are unable to recover from
illness, disappointment, or bad luck, others can
rebound from a hurricane of difficult times. This
ability to cope with physical and psychological
strain or damage, which the writer calls the
bounce-back factor, exists in a potential form
within each person. Factors that promote
resilience are healthy living cultivation of
open-mindedness, a sense of humor, and other
positive ways of thinking and strong social
connections. Prevention (Rodale, 1988, p. 90)
12Resilience in Popular Culture
- Resilience, the ability to withstand both
physical and psychological shock without
suffering any permanent damage can be a valuable
aspect of a woman's life. Since stress in life is
unavoidable, resilience is a desirable quality to
cultivate. Psychologists believe that commitment,
control, and challenge are integral parts of
resilience. Vogue 1985 (Bradoff, 1985, p. 235)
13Resilience
- The rationale for examining resilience phenomena
rests on the fundamental assumption that
understanding how individuals overcome challenges
to development and recover from trauma will
reveal processes of adaptation that can guide
intervention efforts with others at risk.
(Masten, 1994, p. 3)
14Resilience Myths
- Although the negative terms of at-risk, and
vulnerability were exchanged for the more
positive term "resilience", the meaning was the
same if you were a special person with special
characteristics of "resilience" then you would
make it despite adversity. - Horatio Alger, exceptional person
15Why Oral History?
- when paradigms change, there are usually
significant shifts in the criteria determining
the legitimacy both of problems and of proposed
solutions. Kuhn, 1970 Among the most
pressing items on the agenda for research on
adult development is the need to delineate in
womens own terms the experience of their adult
life. Gilligan, 1982
16Why Oral History?
- The practice oral history counters the elite
assumption of the unreflected silence of ordinary
people and makes their self-representing
expressions authoritative. Where traditional
history plays a role in social legitimation, the
life history movement works to disperse
authority. Life history research offers as a
model of social relations in education not system
reproduction and resistance, but hermeneutic
conversation. As research, it refuses to separate
research and practice. It aims to amplify the
capacity for intentional and historical memory
(Wexler, 1992, p.95).
17Psychic disequilibrium!
- When those who have power to name and to socially
construct reality choose not to see you or hear
you, whether you are dark-skinned, old, disabled,
female, speak with a different accent or dialect
than theirs, when someone with the authority of a
teacher, say, describes the world and you are not
in it, there is a moment of psychic
disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror
and saw nothing. Adrienne Rich, Invisible in
the Academe
18Definition of Terms
- Resilience the capacity to overcome, or the
experience of having overcome adversity in
defiance of the odds. - Risk factors determined by research to be
associated with social/academic/economic failure
including - Low Socioeconomic Status
- Large Family Size
- Minority Status
- High School Drop Out
- Teen Age Mother/Father
- Poverty
19 - Successthe product of the interactions between
the persons various characteristics, the
characteristics of the environment, and the
characteristics of the situation in which both
development and achievement can occur. (Gordon
and Song, 1994)Low socio-economic status
reflects several factors including - Low income
- Low parental educational level
- Low level of occupation
- Few Household Items (peng, 1994)
20 Making It Defining Success
- Access to higher education
- Knowledge of Self in Societal/Historical/Spiritual
Context - Making a Difference/Giving Back
21 Barriers to Educational Persistence
- a. Negotiation with Dominant Cultural Capital
- Societal/Cultural expectations of
low-income women - The Forms
- Clothing as Indicator of Status
- b. The "Terminators"
- "Naming" Race/Class Stereotyping
- Unjust Grading
- Sexual harassment
22Factors in Overcoming Adversity
- Structural support (scholarships, special
programs) - Strong Relationships with Family, Friends,
Spiritual Community - The "Healers
23What Can We Do?
- Those who are truly interested in creating an
equitable and just system of higher education
which embraces a diversity of perspectives and
strengths, must begin to listen, listen, listen
to the voices of those who are most affected by
their practice and decisions. Only in the
respectful listening over long periods of time,
listening when there is a conflict with the
currently held theories, listening when long held
biases are challenged, listening with complete
attention and listening with the willingness to
change as a result of what is heard.
24Grow More Healers
- Faculty and Staff Development that encourages and
validates connection, relationship, reflection. - Professionals do their own reflective work
- Acknowledge the extra work involved with our
high-risk students - Connect reward system to those who are on the
front lines.
25- When we speak we are afraid
- our words will not be heard nor welcomed
- but when we are silent
- we are still afraid.
- So it is better to speak
- remembering
- we were never meant
- to survive. -- Audre Lorde