Teetering at the fulcrum: Possibilities and constraints in a college worker education program.
Item
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Title
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Teetering at the fulcrum: Possibilities and constraints in a college worker education program.
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Identifier
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AAI3283134
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identifier
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3283134
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Creator
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Schnee, Emily.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Sondra Perl
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Education, Higher
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Abstract
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This dissertation explores the impact of college on adult students enrolled in a union-supported worker education program at an urban public university. Using qualitative research methods, including the writing of educational memoirs by research participants, this dissertation examines the impact of students' educational biographies on their college experiences and explores the ways in which the worker education program functions to produce successful college outcomes for nontraditional students.;Specifically, this research explores the mobility desires and dilemmas of adult college students and, in considering their lack of career advancement, theorizes alternate explanations for their persistence in school. The research further examines the roots of students' academic motivation and explores the ways in which students' racial identities serve as a deep source of academic motivation despite the negative effects of exclusionary acts based on race and class, within schools, which acted to diminish their high academic aspirations as youth. This dissertation further examines the connections between student experience and school context and explores the complex relationship between care and academic rigor in the worker education program. It reveals the ways in which care is both central to adult students' academic success and implicated in challenges to achieving rigorous academic standards for under-prepared college students. This research explores the role of race, class, and gender in determining academic expectations and outcomes and highlights the crucial role of institutional constraints to implementing rigorous education for non-traditional students.;This research also considers the possibilities and limits of enacting education for social change and poses lessons to be learned from this one small educational site as it attempts to live out its commitment to equal access and outcomes in higher education and simultaneously practice education for transformation. Lastly, this dissertation explores the use of personal narrative writing by research participants in qualitative research and examines the impact writing their educational memoirs had on students' understanding of their educational journeys.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
