African American Academic Persistence: The Role of Agency, Identity, and Culture and Context

• In Event: Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: Making It Through: Predicting College Student Success, Persistence, and Attainment

Abstract

Although there are African American students who succeed academically, the voice of African American student success is often muffled by the majoritarian stories of African American student failure. I contend that specific socio-cultural characteristics and processes shape the ways in which African American students develop their own counter-narratives to persist and gain access to higher education. Specifically, agency, identity, culture and context interact to produce persistence. Through in-depth interviews with African American students, I learned about their personal and educational experiences and the factors that contributed to their persistence.

Author

• Stacey Vicario Freeman, Arizona State University - Tempe