Rural students comprise nearly half of all students enrolled in public schools in the nation. With increasing amounts of students living in poverty, rural school districts are combating many issues but with fewer resources than urban and suburban school districts. In addition, new Federal and state regulations continue to be enacted, sometimes to…

The purpose of this study is to explore how students' prior knowledge, skills, experiences, and networks (including family and community) influence major choice decisions among low-income and working-class students at Arizona's three state universities. Using a funds of knowledge framework, a survey was distributed to students at the three…

This qualitative study, limited to only three female participants and bounded by proximity, sought to provide a better understanding of how the social class background of teachers may impact pedagogy. Utilizing Crenshaw's intersectionality of identity lens and Bourdieu's Cultural Reproduction Theory, this research focused on a social…

In this dissertation, I examine the socioeconomic impacts of college degree attainment on white working-class Millennials. I conducted a qualitative study in Western New York, individually interviewing twenty men and twenty women. Additionally, I facilitated three focus groups (one male, one female, and one mixed gender) to further discuss these…

This study intends to better understand the experiences of poor and working-class undergraduate college students who are enrolled full-time at state flagship universities and who hold on-campus leadership positions within high-intensity student organizations. This study explores how poor and working-class students come to high-intensity…

This dissertation examines how the recent rise in college going for young people from low-income families in the United States has shaped processes that reproduce poverty. Drawing on 2,400 hours of ethnographic fieldwork conducted over 25 months with eight young Black men in New Orleans, the study provides an in-depth look at the experience of…

This study utilizes adult learning, working-class masculinity, and political economy theories to explore the education and learning that supports engagement in the Just Transition movement in Central Appalachia. The central research question is as follows: in communities with economies formerly dominated by the coal industry, how does an…

This study utilizes qualitative narrative inquiry methods to explore the cultural experiences in higher education of rural students from poor and working-class backgrounds. These explorations occurred through individually interviewing seven rural, poor and working-class student participants, conducting focus group interviews with all participants,…

The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to understand the experiences of first generation working class students/graduates as they navigated the transition from the K-12 system into the postsecondary degree-granting institution. This study aimed to explore the academic preparation, including the attainment of social and cultural capital,…

Lower-class language, logics, and ways of being have been excluded from higher education, especially at selective universities. Fewer people from the lower classes enroll, and those who manage to matriculate do so as outsiders. To counter social reproduction perpetuated by educational inequality, this dissertation creates a program to restore…

Latinx college students at predominately White institutions (PWI) encounter a culture incongruence between the culture of college and back home, which can make them feel like they have to juggle two cultures. This cultural incongruence (Gloria & Kurpius, 1996) is often engendered through racial hostility from White peers, that diminishes their…

On November 15, 1981, the University of Illinois British Brass Band performed its first concert, conducted by University of Illinois Assistant Director of Bands James Curnow. The ensemble's antecedents lay in the brass bands established in Victorian England that were populated by members of the working classes, while its 1980s founding occurred in…

Within the CCC system, mathematics has been identified as the most considerable barrier to persistence, transfer, and degree completion (Cooper et al., 2022). Recent research corroborated the notion that mathematics serves as a gatekeeper for Black and Latinx students; historically, this subject has impeded students of color from accessing…

This qualitative, phenomenological study situated in grounded theory aimed to identify the forces that impede or support white working-class males in pursuing, adapting to, and remaining in higher education and making meaningful progress in their educational goals. Utilizing a feminist ecological perspective, the researcher was able to outline and…

Over the last four decades, access to higher education for poor and working-class students has increased though social class disparities remain across many key higher education outcomes. To identify strategies and interventions that might support poor and working-class students, it is necessary to better understand the nature of poor and…