Community College Noncompletion: The Missing Voices of Underserved Students in Educational Research and Improvement Efforts

• In Event: 75.041 - MTCC Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.041-4 - Intersectionalities of Lived Experience: Social Context as Evidence to Democratize Educational Research

Abstract

This research addresses issues of inequity in completion rates at the community college level for historically marginalized students. Students who enroll in community colleges are more often from educationally underserved populations (Baum & Ma, 2016; Yameen, 2014). However, despite their high numbers of enrollment, community colleges students from low-economic status families, those who are the first in their family to attend college, and students of color, are over-represented in college non-completion statistics (AACC, 2014). This Participatory Action Research (PAR) project allowed community college students to not only document what it is like to be a student in a small New England community college; it also shares student-generated findings, actions, and suggestions that push toward improving completion rates.
Traditional educational research modalities often fail to give voice to what are the complex lived-experiences of community college students. These voices of community college students are needed to inform efforts to increase completion rates for disenfranchised students. This PAR project is rooted in transformative praxis, critical race theory, and desire-based theory to empower those who have been silenced by institutionalized, colonial, and positivistic educational policies. The interwoven approach of the project allowed for a complexity of experiences to be articulated by the students themselves.
This project used a mix of standard and evolving methods, such as cognitive bio-mapping, focus group interviews, narrative reflections, data analysis, literature review, and student-run presentations that culminated in the students taking action on campus. Data was gathered from 117 cognitive bodymaps, as well as from five semi-structured interviews, 10 written narrative essays on educational social justice, and two student presentations. Each data source represents a form of research which, taken together, help to more accurately document students’ lived-experiences. These data sources more completely articulate the intersectionality and nuances of students’ experiences than studies done to collect data using only traditional methods of data collection. The results of this multi-modal approach reveals that students experience feelings of isolation, struggle with inflexible course schedules, and articulate feeling a general lack of a “community feeling” on campus. Students linked these experiences with their success at the college.
This study has scholarly significance because it reveals that despite being relegated to the margins of community college completion statistics, these students have the ability to help themselves and the campus community in ways that that are not currently being recognized or utilized by the college. Whereas more traditional positivist, empirical studies often attempt to isolate and separate out what are complex and interconnected aspects of students’ experiences, the co-constructive, participatory nature of PAR allowed this socially oriented research to give credence to their lived-knowledge. These findings exist at the intersection of qualitative and quantitative analysis and provide a much needed perspective that should be taken into account as we continue to work to “democratize” (p. 1) community college completion rates.

Author

• Tara Gully-Hightower, Massasoit Community College