Finding My Way Back to the Backyard: First-Generation College Students Mediate Class and Family

• In Event: 32.083 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 32.083-9 - Social Class and Experiences With Schooling

Abstract

This study examines digital storytelling as a vehicle for identity construction and agency among first generation college students as they navigate the social terrain between family and campus. For these students, becoming educated is entangled with social class mobility that distances students from families. The paper reports on analysis of a) 46 digital stories produced in workshops across the U.S. and b) post-workshop interviews. The study suggests the potential of mediated, participatory research methods for articulating that which has been silenced by the shame of marginalization, while also contributing to the literature on the class-based, structural obstacles to the success of first generation students. In focusing on family relationships, the study examines how students’ navigate often- unnamed classed identities.

Author

• Jane A. Van Galen, University of Washington - Bothell