A narrative inquiry of four female first-year, first-generation student perspectives of the university experience
Date
2007
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Abstract
This narrative qualitative study explored the experiences of four first-generation female college students during their first year at Colorado State University. Guiding research questions addressed various influences impacting on this first year as a first-generation student, including social, familial, campus environmental issues, and perceptions of self and expectations. While the characteristic of being a first-generation student female overlapped with other characteristics such as race or socio-economics, the essence of this gender specific study sought to give voice to first-generation, first-year, female-dedicated accounts of the college experience. While shared themes were explored and while these proved useful in displaying index streams of some frequent female experiences, the academically mandated process of reducing individual participant experience into generalized themes appeared antithetical to the researcher's felt sense of directing a study toward the individual and the distinct voice and experience of each woman participant. Using a feminist theoretical lens to secure the ecology of the female experience, the researcher interpreted the experiences of these women and shared recommendations toward female leadership strategies. Although evocative insight emerged due to this marginalized group (females) striking out into unfamiliar academic territory for both themselves and their families, a telling wisdom came from what these women expected. While themes of Self-Expectation/Agency, The Familiar, Involvement, Challenges, and Other-Expectation surfaced, the dual expectations of Self and Other provoked a curious antagonistic binary wherein the first courted dynamic self-agency and the latter bred an acquired avoidance/acquiescence. As a result, the researcher questioned an existing perception of responsive gender equality in the college environment and challenged educators toward vital conversations regarding how equal-in-premise and equal-in-lived-reality present themselves for women on a college campus. The researcher also advanced the Fens Behavior Model, an oppositional resistance/avoidance of perceived negative female imaging utilized to defend and/or preserve a positive personal declaration of the female self. It is the researcher's belief that while the instinctive story these women tell themselves is one of personal strength and leadership, the grand narrative they seemingly, sensibly must acknowledge as regards gender may demonstrate a counter-productive adulteration.
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Subject
college
female
first-generation
first-generation students
first-year
first-year students
narrative
student
university
women students