Graduate Student Identities Explored, During COVID-19, Through the Person Process Context Time Model

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: COVID-19's Impact on Higher Education's Sociopolitical Landscape

Abstract

This qualitative study drew focus group data from a larger, NSF-funded, sequential mixed methods study that examined graduate students’ experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic and the sociopolitical context it was embedded within. Using Bronfenbrenner’s theory of human development as an ecological model to situate graduate students’ identities and their varying impacts of the sociopolitical context of the summer of 2020, which included the perseverance of a global pandemic, a significant increase in anti-Asian rhetoric and violence, and the multiple, high profile and widely viewed murders of unarmed Black people. Higher education researchers and practitioners can use this ecological model to examine the role played by the individual graduate student, and the impact of time and proximal processes.

Authors

• Laura Lee Smith, University of Michigan

• Rosemary J. Perez, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Sarah Rodriguez, Texas A&M University - Commerce

• Thomas Brooks, New Mexico Highlands University