Critical Interactions: How Student-College Personnel Interactions Shape Low-Income Students’ Navigation of a Community College

• In Event: Critical Transitions, Junctures, and Interactions for Postsecondary Success: Low-Income Students’ Meaning-Making of Their Educational Pathways

Abstract

In this exploratory case study of low-income women attending a community college district, we build upon emerging research that highlights how student meaning-making about classes, support programs, and interactions with institutional actors play an important role in shaping action and decision making about college going (Cox, 2009; Deil-Amen & Rosenbaum, 2003; Karp, 2011; Stanton-Salazar, 2010). In this paper, we draw upon the meaning making (Baxter-Magolda, 2009; Kegan, 1982; 1994) and sensemaking (Weber & Glynn, 2006; Weick, 1995) literatures to examine how low-income women, many of whom are single mothers, make sense of their interactions within a community college and the information with which they are provided as they engage with institutional actors of varied positions and programs (e.g. counselors, program advisors, instructors, staff, etc). Additionally, we discuss how the meaning students make of these interactions informs their decision making about the role and execution of education in their lives.

We draw upon data from 96 interviews with students and 10 semi-structured interviews with institutional actors to present findings on the following two fundamental components present in the interaction between a student and college actor: 1) the information that is made available and transmitted to students and 2) how students interpret and act upon such information. With regards to the former, we identify and discuss not only the kind of information transmitted to students, but highlight how complete and accurate this information is—two components we argue to be essential to the fruitful guidance of students in their educational endeavors. With regards to the latter, we draw upon students’ narratives to discuss what meaning they make of the information with which they are provided and how their interpretation of such information informs their plans and actions regarding their educational endeavors. Findings reveal a wide range of the degree of accuracy and completeness of information passed on to students that, in turn, affected students’ ability to make informed decisions about their educational plans. We also present students’ perceptions of the varied information with which they are presented and highlight how some techniques in the ways in which information is presented to students resonated with them and was more effective in providing them with direction in their educational aspirations. Our intention in this work is to move beyond the individual-focused student attainment models and inform the development of a multi-dimensional model of student persistence that places the interaction among the student, institutional context, institutional agents at its center.

Authors

• Christine Cerven, University of California - San Diego

• Vicki Park, San Jose State University