9 research outputs found
Using Institutional Habitus to Position Colleges and Universities as Social Actors
No full textIn this article, derria byrd contends that more robust interrogation of the organizational contribution to inequity in higher education would be aided by understanding higher education organizations as social actors. Organizational social actor theory demonstrates that colleges and universities are more than inert contexts in which marginalized students\u27 experiences and outcomes play out. They are entities that possess unique dispositional orientations, motives, and inclinations toward action. This conceptual article argues that engagement with institutional habitus, grounded in Pierre Bourdieu\u27s theory of practice, situates colleges and universities as social actors whose structural positions generate interests, beliefs, and behaviors that tend to constrain opportunity for students. The concept shifts the empirical gaze from students to colleges and universities in examinations of education inequity and facilitates analysis of how colleges\u27 social position and the organizational identity, opportunities, and limitations it engenders support and/or inhibit organizational practice, including transformation toward equity. byrd crafts this argument in five parts: (1) exploration of organizational social actorhood theory, (2) overview of Bourdieu\u27s theoretical framework and key conceptual tools, (3) expansions on Bourdieu\u27s foundational formula to demonstrate how institutional habitus supplements the theorist\u27s framework, (4) purposeful engagement with critiques of how institutional habitus has been employed in educational research, and (5) guiding principles for empirical engagement with institutional habitus. Throughout, byrd employs a collective case study of three college campuses to ground the theoretical review in empirical realities and uncover the invisible influence of social power on organizational practice. Given Bourdieu\u27s attention to higher education and broad concern for systemic inequities reproduced at this level, this article focuses on higher education but has implications for educational research more broadly
How Diversity Fails: An Empirical Investigation of Organizational Status and Policy Implementation on Three Public Campuses
No full textAlthough diversity has been a guiding preoccupation in higher education for several decades, organizational diversity practice, i.e., what happens when colleges and universities implement diversity plans, is rarely a subject of inquiry. As a result, there is relatively little empirical understanding of why diversity has failed to significantly advance racial equity on college campuses. In response, this ethnographic, collective case study draws on interviews with 54 respondents, archival and organizational documents, and campus observations to interrogate diversity practice on three campuses of different status in one public system in the U.S. This study employs Bourdieu’s theory of practice, specifically institutional habitus as an analytic lens, to examine the influence of campus social status on diversity practice related to a statewide policy. Findings reveal that each campus has a unique institutional habitus—that is, a status-linked sense of campus identity, constraints, and opportunities—that prefigured and, on most campuses, derailed diversity practice in response to the policy. Only the middle-status campus made any substantive progress. By juxtaposing these findings, this analysis demonstrates that diversity practice does not exist within a campus vacuum; instead, it is inevitably influenced, constrained, or aided by the institutional habitus of the organizational environment. The paper concludes by arguing that organizational change efforts that recognize diversity work as a situated organizational practice that reflects broader power relations can better challenge inequities to spur transformative change across educational levels and contexts
Beyond Ramen: Students\u27 Lived Experiences of Campus Food Insecurity at Two Catholic Universities
No full textFood insecurity (FI) among college students is a relatively new area of study that has revealed alarming rates of FI on four-year campuses. Most current scholarship on food insecure college students (FICS) measures the extent of the problem with scant attention paid to the lived experience of FI or to FICS at private institutions, including Catholic colleges. This study fills these gaps by exploring the issue of campus FI through the eyes of those experiencing it within the context of the Catholic environment. This study utilized a case study method to understand the lived experiences of FICS at two Catholic colleges. It applied the concepts of uncritical resilience, critical resilience, and shame in a novel approach to understand how participants made meaning of their experiences. Twenty-three participant interviews were included in the findings. Additional data were gathered from site visits, publicly available documents, maps, and conversations with university staff. The findings are illustrated through a figure labeled the Ecological Model of College Students’ Experiences with Food Insecurity. This model centers the FICS within their campus environment and identifies the forces that influence the severity of the students’ FI. The adverse forces are comprised of the individual’s financial situation, which cause their FI, and the factors that exacerbate it. The favorable forces propelling the FICS towards food security consist of coping strategies and support from family, friends, faculty, and university staff. Experiencing FI leads to mostly negative academic, social, and health outcomes. The findings revealed students used three interchangeable filters to make meaning of their experiences. The filters of uncritical resilience, critical resilience, and shame were incorporated into a framework, which was labeled the Kaleidoscope of Meaning-Making. The Kaleidoscope shows how these filters influence students’ understandings of who is responsible for causing and fixing FI, and whether FI is shameful. By illuminating these filters, this study exposes the poverty stereotypes that drove participants to avoid resources, hide their FI, and blame themselves for their situation. These findings demonstrate the need for universities to combat poverty stereotypes surrounding FI in order to promote students’ use of resources, address systemic causes of FI, and diminish its stigmatization
Excellence and Equity: Admission Merit and Diversity in Physical Therapist Education Programs
No full textHealth disparities stemming from inequities in healthcare are of growing concern particularly because of their existence among many of the largest growing segments of the U.S. population. To address persistent disparities, the health professions have been compelled to increase the number of health professionals from diverse backgrounds to the existing workforce. Despite these recommendations, the physical therapy profession has struggled to graduate clinicians into the workforce who are fully representative of the U.S. population. The purpose of this study originates from the need to achieve a greater understanding of the admission practices and meaning-making processes through which merit is socially constructed by faculty in physical therapist education programs. Identifying the meaning of merit and implicit and explicit values espoused by faculty will ultimately assist in the development of a better-informed approach to address underrepresentation in physical therapist education.This study employs Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction, a dynamic model of structural inequality enabling the examination of social and educational advantage. Using interpretive research methodology and case study methods, the meaning of merit was explored across three programs each possessing varied amounts of program resources and representing differing status positions within the field of physical therapist education. Findings reveal differences in the meaning of merit across programs with wide-ranging levels of commitment to addressing underrepresentation. Faculty display a preference for institutionalized academic capital contextualized by judgements of rigor which are often conflated with factors which further legitimize dominant social class capital. Predilections for varied forms of capital which privilege a narrow set of social ties and patterns of cultural knowledge and behavior are reflective of class-based dispositions. Findings further indicate faculty habitus serves to orient value and judgement applied to various forms of capital within the stratified field of physical therapist education. Differing interests which are reflective of the interaction of habitus and field serve to both challenge and reproduce traditional barriers for underrepresented applicants. By challenging the arbitrary values and meanings offered as legitimate, this study underscores the need for a paradigm shift in physical therapist admissions, one which unites excellence and equity and supports a meaning of merit which upholds a broad commitment to addressing underrepresentation
Understanding Baccalaureate Nursing Education Progression from the Student Perspective Using a Grounded Theory Approach
No full textNational data provides evidence there is a significant gap between the number of first-generation college students (FGCs) and members of underrepresented minority groups (URMs) who are enrolling in baccalaureate programs of nursing (BSN) and those that persist beyond graduation and become members of the nursing workforce. There is a need to graduate more underrepresented student populations from BSN programs and understanding their progression through baccalaureate education can inform our efforts to support them. The purpose of this study was to explore and understand the needs of FGCs and URMs enrolled in BSN programs and to use online mentoring as a method to track progression and capture the students’ perspective. Mentoring is one approach nursing programs use to recruit URMs, however its use in the online environment has not been explored in the literature. This study used a constructivist philosophy and grounded theory methodology to develop a framework that explained the progression of baccalaureate nursing education and validated the use of online mentoring to support and retain FGC and URM groups. With institutional review board (IRB) approval, 38 FGCs and URMs from 6 different BSN programs participated in a 16-week online mentoring program. Over 250 discussion postings and 12 one-time in-depth interviews were collected as data from August 2017 to May 2019. Demographic data and a program evaluation were also collected as data. Research memos were compared to data collected to contribute to the context and rigor of the study. Constant comparative analysis was used to develop a framework that explained the progression through BSN education from the students’ perspective. The framework developed uses the categories of seeking help, coping and accountability as reported by FGCs and URMs. Results from the program evaluation indicated 65% (N=13) of participants were more satisfied with their performance in school and 75% (N=15) of participants reported an improvement in their professional skills prior to participating in the program. The findings from this study contribute to what is known about how FGCs and URMs progress through BSN education and supports the use of online mentoring as a strategy to assist and retain these groups
The Diversity Distraction: A Critical Comparative Analysis of Discourse in Higher Education Scholarship
No full textThis critical literature review investigates how diversity and equity are employed in top-cited higher education scholarship published between 2000 and 2015. No analysis to date has offered such a comparative exploration relative to well-recognized racial disparities in higher education. Findings reveal a divergence with diversity largely attending to affirmative action concerns and equity to analyses of the pursuit of equity in higher education. The article concludes with advocacy for the equity frame because of its presumption of a normative justice-oriented standard and embedded orientation toward inquiry and action, both of which offer greater promise for policy, practice, and research that aim to enhance racial justice in higher education
Uncovering Hegemony in Higher Education: A Critical Appraisal of the Use of “Institutional Habitus” in Empirical Scholarship
No full textThis article critically examines the empirical scholarship that applies institutional habitus, a conceptual extension of Bourdieu’s theory of practice, to investigations of higher education. Given Bourdieu’s extensive scholarly focus on higher education as well as the field’s undertheorization of its own exclusionary history, application of institutional habitus to higher education is particularly apt. This critical appraisal finds that the reviewed scholarship corroborates the concept’s value by drawing attention to the role of institutional habitus in differentially privileging and rewarding students based on their possession of institutionally legitimized knowledge, values, and behaviors. Nevertheless, this review reveals a series of missed opportunities, including a tendency to conflate individual and institutional habitus and limited attention to the impact of institutions’ own social status. These oversights dampen the theoretical and empirical richness of the concept and obscure a significant influence on institutional beliefs and behavior as well as a mechanism of exclusion for marginalized populations. After discussing contributions and critiques of the reviewed scholarship, I propose a definition of institutional habitus that centers the social position of educational institutions as the primary avenue through which social power influences institutional practice and offer a set of guiding principles to inform the application of institutional habitus within education research. It is argued that such robust operationalization of institutional habitus would greatly enhance organizational analysis within educational contexts by helping scholars and practitioners to identify and remediate the institutional mechanisms that facilitate student failure. In clarifying this problem, different, and perhaps more equitable, solutions may emerge
Leaning on Experience: First-Generation Faculty as Institutional Agents
No full textFirst-generation faculty (FGF), who were the first in their families to graduate from college, are often hailed as resources for first-generation students. Despite a wealth of narratives written by FGF, limited systematic empirical inquiry investigates if FGF pursue student success and how. Drawing on open-ended interviews with a racially diverse, purposeful sample of FGF employed in the United States (n = 19), this narrative analysis leverages Stanton-Salazar’s institutional agent framework to explore how, if at all, FGF employ their experiences and resources on behalf of students, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds. I found that these FGF enact agentic strategies that rely on one-on-one interactions with students (i.e., direct support, interpersonal engagement, and instructional support), which manifested in three primary ways: (a) philosophical belief in the inherent link between teaching and mentorship; (b) strategic and authentic disclosure of their identities, backgrounds, and challenges; and (c) facilitating success by “demystifying” the academy. The influence of first-generation status was evident throughout. This study demonstrates the significance of shared background between institutional agents and students, extends previous scholarship on faculty’s unique role in student success, and underscores the value of storying as an agentic tool—all related to a population that receives limited scholarly attention. Although FGF can meaningfully leverage shared experience to influence student success, colleges and universities must assume responsibility for interrupting and eradicating the obstacles the academy presents to first-generation students and FGF. Given the diversity among FGF, future research should investigate variation by social identity in student success dispositions and approaches
A Critical Examination of First-Generation Faculty Scholarship: Demonstrating the Need for Intersectional, Empirical Analysis
No full textThe triumphs, tribulations, and trials associated with first-generation status during the undergraduate years are well-established in educational research; however, limited scholarship systematically investigates the dispositions, experiences, and practices of first-generation faculty (FGF)—that is, former first-generation college students who have joined the professoriate. In this critical review of literature, the authors identified and analyzed 173 sources, uncovering five dominant themes—(a) negotiating a discordant culture, (b) reframing success, (c) relating to family, (d) seeking social networks, and (e) leveraging identity—that provide insights into how FGF navigate the social, cultural, and professional norms of the academy. Despite recent expansions that center FGF of color, this scholarship largely centers White academics from a narrow set of disciplines whose experiences are captured through personal narratives. Thus, we argue that an intersectional orientation toward first-generation status is critical for systematic, empirical engagement with its long-term implications, complexities, and complications, and any relationship to equity-oriented work on behalf of marginalized students among FGF. Given the definitional concerns, the limited demographic and methodological diversity of this scholarship, and the predominance of retrospective personal narratives, we conclude by advocating for the development of a robust research agenda focused on FGF and offering three critical questions that can guide systematic inquiry into FGF experiences, practices, and outcomes. Implications for equity in higher education are discussed
