The findings suggest that the first-generation participants employed two different strategies for determining expectations for performance—a social approach and an individual approach. These strategies may have a relationship with how students positioned themselves within the undergraduate academic community when they first arrived at college. Students who initially positioned themselves as insiders in the community appeared to be more likely to interact with their professors to fill knowledge gaps, receive clarification on assignments, and to begin developing relationships, thus emphasizing the social nature of situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Students who perceived their peripherality, however, appeared to be less likely to initiate interactions with their professors and did not begin to proactively build their academic support networks until they entered their college major(s), thus emphasizing the individual nature of situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The latter finding is consistent with previous research about first-generation students’ academic engagement strategies; however, the presence of the social approach challenges the findings of previous research (see Collier & Morgan, 2008; Yee, 2016), which suggests that first-generation students primarily rely upon the individual
approach. In addition, these findings provide a more nuanced understanding of first-generation students’ academic engagement strategies than previous research, which has typically sought to understand these students’ strategies in comparison to continuing-generation students (see Collier & Morgan, 2008; Soria & Stebleton, 2012; Stebleton & Soria, 2012; Yee, 2016). Findings of these past studies generally indicated that first-generation students behave one way and continuing-generation students behave in a different, typically more desirable, way. At best, this continued emphasis on comparison has resulted in a superficial understanding of first- generation students’ academic engagement strategies. At worst, this comparative emphasis has resulted in an inaccurate, monolithic understanding of this diverse student population and has established the continuing-generation students’ behaviors and experiences as normative and the lens through which first-generation students’ behaviors and experiences should be understood. For example, the relationship between participants’ approaches to determining expectations and their perceived positionality suggests that the ways in which first-generation students engage in the academic domain is likely more complex than previous research has indicated.
In addition, the findings indicate that most participants exhibited a social approach as they transitioned into their major field(s) of study and moved toward full participation, regardless of their initial approach. This suggests that first-generation students’ engagement strategies may be dynamic, changing or evolving as they become more established within the undergraduate academic community. This finding extends what was previously known about first-generation students’ academic engagement strategies as they transition within the undergraduate academic community, as first-generation students in their final years of undergraduate study have been largely neglected in research examining their engagement strategies. Previous research has focused on first-generation students’ first two years of college (see Soria & Stebleton, 2012;
Stebleton & Soria, 2012; Terenzini et al., 1996; Yee, 2016), resulting in an inadequate understanding of first-generation students’ engagement strategies as they transition to upper- level courses within their major field(s) of study and the longer-term implications of these initial approaches to academic engagement. In the current study, only participants who relied on a social approach when they first arrived at college seemed to have access to opportunities for mentorship (Crisp & Cruz, 2009) and higher levels of achievement, particularly related to their capstone experience, which is consistent with existing research (Fuentes et al., 2014) about the implications of early faculty interactions for mentorship. Although these mentoring experiences were evident only in a small portion of the overall sample, it is notable that these kinds of opportunities were not evident in the experiences shared by students who relied on an individual approach when they first arrived at college. By focusing on the reflections on both the transition into and within college, the findings have uncovered both the shift in engagement strategies and the longer-term implications for students’ initial engagement strategies.
5.1.2 Approaches to research assignments
The participants in this study indicated that they often turned to their identities, lived experiences, prior knowledge, and interests to select topics for their research assignments when given the opportunity to do so. This finding suggests that research assignments could serve as opportunities for students to integrate their lived experiences, prior knowledge, and identities— their funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992)—into their academic work and may serve as academic engagement opportunities. This is noteworthy, as the incorporation of students’ funds of knowledge provides students with the opportunity to leverage their lived
another, and academic success (Eodice, Geller, & Lerner, 2017; Kiyama, Rios-Aguilar, & Deil- Amen, 2017), meaning that research assignments that encourage students to draw upon their funds of knowledge may have positive implications for narrowing the social-class achievement gap.
Students’ motivation to incorporate their funds of knowledge into their research assignments was not uniform; this strategy had two manifestations—a performance orientation or a learning orientation. Although students reported using both of these strategies successfully, the orientation a student exhibited seemed to be related to the ways in which they described finding, evaluating, and using information in that assignment, regardless of their class standing. Students who exhibited a performance orientation to their assignment mostly described a checklist approach to finding, evaluating, and using information, whereas some of the dispositions and knowledge practices related to information literacy were present in the reflections of students who exhibited a learning orientation. This finding suggests that a student’s goal orientation (Dweck, 1999) may be important in students’ development and demonstration of the dispositions and knowledge practices related to information literacy. In general, students who subscribe to a performance goal orientation focus on demonstrating competence and achieving a particular grade, and students with a mastery goal orientation emphasize the development of competence through learning (Dweck, 1999; O’Keefe, Ben-Eliyahu, & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2013). Based on the findings of the current study, a performance goal orientation may allow students to be successful on research assignments (i.e. receiving a passing or acceptable grade), but it does not seem to allow for or encourage the development of more sophisticated information literacy skills as outlined in The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2015). Given that previous research
indicates that students who reach out for help with finding, evaluating, and using information for their research assignments often do so with a performance goal orientation in mind (Folk, Safin, & Williford, 2017), this finding might suggest that a performance orientation to research assignments may be more common than a mastery orientation.
The findings of this study indicate that faculty may be reinforcing and rewarding these strategies. Students rarely reported receiving feedback on their information sources and how their sources were being integrated in the assignment. In addition, some students reported receiving information sources directly from their professors, even as they were working on more rigorous research assignments in research methods and capstone courses. Although students perceived the latter to be an indication of support, with both of these practices faculty may be signaling that critical engagement with the information sources students are using in their assignments neither is necessary nor desired. This is consistent with previous research related to the development of critical thinking, research, reading, and writing skills in college (Arum & Roksa, 2011; Lea & Street, 1998, 2006; Manarin, Carey, Rathburn, Ryland, & Hutchings, 2015). The ways in which instructors communicate and reward these behaviors, or their failure to do so, likely have implications for the strategies that students apply to successfully completing their research assignments. Because of this, students may not perceive the development of dispositions and knowledge practices associated with information literacy as being important for their success and instructors may not be effectively communicating the expectation that students develop and apply the critical, reflective, and analytical modes of thinking related to information literacy (Valentine, 2001).
A particularly noteworthy finding is that participants of color in this study more directly drew upon their funds of knowledge, exhibit a learning orientation to research assignments, and
describe the dispositions and knowledge practices related to information literacy, regardless of their initial positionality within the undergraduate academic community. This is noteworthy because past research indicates that first-generation students of color, in particular, may feel alienated or isolated within the undergraduate academic community (Jehangir, 2010), because their own experiences and identities are not present nor valued in their academic work. In addition, students of color are often approached through a deficit lens, meaning that they must somehow be remediated to be successful in academic culture (Bensimon, 2005). The finding that students of color were more likely to describe the complex modes of thinking related to information literacy suggests that this student population has unrecognized strengths that they bring to their collegiate academic experience, which is consistent with the findings of existing research (Carpenter & Peña, 2017; Castillo-Montoya, 2017). This finding lends further support to existing research in this area, suggesting that the first-generation students of color may be more advanced in developing and demonstrating the critical, reflective, and analytical modes of thinking related to information, and provides a potential practical opportunity for institutions and instructors to surface and develop these unrecognized strengths through carefully designed research assignments.
A glaring omission from participants’ reflections on their experiences with research assignments, regardless of their orientation to a particular assignment, was a discussion of an information source’s relevance to their research question, argument, or thesis statement. This suggests that students do not perceive the application of critical or close reading skills to be important for doing research and completing research assignments (Marain et al., 2015). Students’ potential avoidance of critical reading is not surprising, as reading critically is cognitively demanding (Broussard, 2017, p.2). It requires the reader to go beyond skimming an
information source and grapple with the evidence, interpretations, and arguments being made in relationship to their goals for research and writing. In addition, students may be unprepared to read scholarly or technical texts on topics with which they have little familiarity (Broussard, 2017). One may expect students who drew upon their funds of knowledge to select a topic, particularly those who exhibited a learning orientation, to discuss the ways in which they used sources to support their investigations or arguments, but this was only present in the reflection of a single participant. Regardless of their orientation to a research assignment, if students have not been taught critical or close reading skills as an essential component of successful research and writing, and if faculty are reinforcing a check-list approach to information use, then students may not perceive these skills as being important to successfully completing research assignments in college.