I just wanna be successful in life: Revealing struggles, strategies, selves, and wisdom in a narrative study of students assigned to remedial classes.
Item
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Title
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I just wanna be successful in life: Revealing struggles, strategies, selves, and wisdom in a narrative study of students assigned to remedial classes.
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Identifier
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AAI3310645
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identifier
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3310645
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Creator
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VanOra, Jason.
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Contributor
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Advisers: Suzanne C. Ouellette | Michelle Fine
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Date
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2008
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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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Psychology, Personality | Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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This dissertation uses a narrative approach to explore the phenomenological experiences of students assigned to remedial classes within a large urban university system. The eleven-student participants were primarily African American and Latino working-class men and women, whose ages ranged between 19 and 47. Each student participated in three semi-structured interviews: A life-history interview, an interview about experiences within the college classroom, and a follow-up telephone conversation concerning themes that emerged across interviews. A sub-sample of five students also participated in a dyadic interview in which they spoke with a "significant other" about how s/he helped them remain in college, despite obstacles. Three research questions were addressed: (1) What are students' central struggles and strategies for persevering within the college classroom? (2) What are the roles of self, identity, and relationships in students' persistence-based efforts? (3) To what degree do students assigned to remedial classes articulate psychological and existential forms of "wisdom?" The first research question was addressed through an inductive, thematically-oriented analysis, which identified students' struggles with writing, administrative chaos, and feelings of failure and powerlessness within the classroom. This analysis also revealed that students persevered through compromising on original goals, transforming previous selves and behaviors, and using the help of family and friends. The second research question was addressed through a narrative, personality-based analysis, which revealed students' multiple selves and imagoes. Multiple selves included scholar-selves, religious-selves, parent-selves, desired selves, and revisable selves. By engaging these selves dialogically, students deepened commitments to scholarship, constructed more agentic understandings of God and religion, and understood themselves as better parents. The third research question was addressed through a theoretically-grounded content analysis, which revealed students' creative re-imaginings of the college classroom, (re)framings of failure as a component of a larger, successful trajectory, and existentially-grounded searches for self and home. Implications of the current findings on larger understandings of self and identity, remediation policies, and everyday representations of "remedial students" are discussed.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.