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theses

As many as 40% of first-year college students are required to take one or more non-credit remedial courses, including developmental, or basic, composition. Research has shown that these courses do not increase a student’s chances of graduating and may actually impede them, and that a disproportionately large number of minority students are assigned to them. This study focuses on seven students who have been assigned to a developmental composition course, with the goal of learning about their literacy practices in order to understand the social structures, cultures, and relationships that surround them. Informed by the New Literacy Studies and Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this dissertation represents a three-semester qualitative study in ethnographic style, and addresses the following questions: 1. What are the literacy practices of first-year college students who have been placed into a developmental writing course? 2. How do developmental college students’ literacy practices reflect their relationships with educational institutions and the larger society? 3. What do developmental college students’ literacy practices reveal about how they construct their identities amid conflicting pressures from school, family, and peers? The data included interviews, field notes from observations, academic documents, and social media, with analysis following the tenets of grounded theory. Findings revealed the multimodal, varied, and creative uses of literacy by the participants, and brought to light the previously unrecognized injustices imposed on them through symbolic violence by the educational system. In addition, the findings have led to a deeper understanding of how marginalized students in their first year of college constructed their identities through texts, to make sense of their challenges and to resist forces that worked against them, as they attempted to adjust to the academic discourse required to complete college successfully. The study concludes that virtually every student who enters college requires guidance in some aspect of academic literacy, and that, rather than singling out certain students, higher education should work toward providing the necessary guidance to all students proactively.

ETD_8779

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Rosemary Griffin Carolan

doi:10.7282/T32R3W40

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.