University policies in action : 'identity work' and first generation college students
Alvarado, José Gerardo
Íñiguez Rueda, Lupicinio, dir. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Psicologia Social)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Psicologia de la Salut i de Psicologia Social

Imprint:	Bellaterra : Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2010
Abstract:	Generation College Student (FGCS) is defined as a person whose parents have little knowledge about higher education and the objective of this ethnography is to show how this social category is used at a university in the southwest of the United States of America. The first chapter serves as an introduction. The second chapter situates the study within ethnography, approached as a perspective in the social sciences. It offers a conceptual mapping of a number of ethnography as a method references and presents the necessary elements for doing an "ethnomethodologically informed ethnography". The third chapter is a literature review of the FGCS social category and the academic work done on it from within and outside of the confines of scientific research. What follows are two chapters devoted to the Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) of a variety of ethnographic data. The first one analyses the transcript of a educational marketing DVD, an institutional artefact that presents the experiences of a group of FGCSs. The second chapter is an analysis of field notes in combination with documents that were gathered throughout the ethnography. Many categories appeared in relation to the social category of FGCS during the analysis of the DVD, the documents and the field notes. These are categories that emerge in events and MCA helps us think about the extent and pervasiveness of the "identity work" the occurs in the day-to-day activities of higher education. The concept of membership knowledge helps foreground the categories of lived interactions, the ones that get constituted by interaction members themselves. In the data sets presented in this dissertation we begin to see that FGCS also pertains to a variety of minorities in terms of ethnicity, race and sex. This happens in the DVD where a group of students are asked to talk about their experience as the first in their family to enter the world of higher education. This is also evident in the prominence given to a sash that certain students add to their academic regalia for the official graduation ceremony. The different categories also arise in a state grant application, written by the directors of a program to prepare FGCSs as social workers. It is in this document that the traditional student category appears, but in a ubiquitous manner and similar to how it arises in the rest of the data sets, as well as in the literature review of the third chapter. The subject of a fourth data set is an analysis of some reflections written in reference to an interaction that occurred between a child and some adults at the university. It shows university policies "in action" using various types of the differences identified throughout this study. The conclusions cover three basic aspects that appeared throughout the whole study: a) biographical notes the describe why I became interested in this subject of study in relation to the production of knowledge by our disciplines and their expression through a variety of technologies of the self; b) the methodological modality of an ethnomethodologically informed ethnography that is able to reveal the categories that emerge in quotidian interactions; and c) the instrumentality of the knowledge we produce in the social sciences. As such, the results of this study offer one more opportunity to think about our forms of life.
Note:	Descripció del recurs: el 22-06-2011
Note:	Tesi doctoral - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament de Psicologia Social, 2011
Note:	Bibliografia
Rights:	ADVERTIMENT. L'accés als continguts d'aquesta tesi doctoral i la seva utilització ha de respectar els drets de la persona autora. Pot ser utilitzada per a consulta o estudi personal, així com en activitats o materials d'investigació i docència en els termes establerts a l'art. 32 del Text Refós de la Llei de Propietat Intel·lectual (RDL 1/1996). Per altres utilitzacions es requereix l'autorització prèvia i expressa de la persona autora. En qualsevol cas, en la utilització dels seus continguts caldrà indicar de forma clara el nom i cognoms de la persona autora i el títol de la tesi doctoral. No s'autoritza la seva reproducció o altres formes d'explotació efectuades amb finalitats de lucre ni la seva comunicació pública des d'un lloc aliè al servei TDX. Tampoc s'autoritza la presentació del seu contingut en una finestra o marc aliè a TDX (framing). Aquesta reserva de drets afecta tant als continguts de la tesi com als seus resums i índexs.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Tesi doctoral
Subject:	Estudiants universitaris ; Aspectes socials
ISBN:	9788469389065

Adreça alternativa: https://hdl.handle.net/10803/5477

362 p, 1.7 MB

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Research literature > Doctoral theses