ENROLLING IN EARLY COLLEGE:
AGENCY AND CIRCUMSTANCE IN THE LIVES OF RURAL STUDENTS
By
Stavroula S. Erfourth

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education – Doctor of Philosophy
2017

ABSTRACT
ENROLLING IN EARLY COLLEGE:
AGENCY AND CIRCUMSTANCE IN THE LIVES OF RURAL STUDENTS
By
Stavroula S. Erfourth
Most empirical work on dual enrollment has been quantitative and concerned with issues
of demographic participation (minority, first-generation, etc.) and college persistence (Carey,
2015; Cowan, & Goldhaber, 2015; D'Amico, Morgan, Robertson, & Rivers, 2013; Habersham,
2013; McCormick, 2010). Less research, however, has focused on the perspective of the students
and how they perceive both their experience in dual enrollment programs and in their schooling
and lives leading to the decision to participate. Fewer studies have concentrated on discovering
student motivations for participating and to better understand their experiences (Hudson, 2016;
Kanny, 2015; Wallace, 2015; Smith, 2015).
As a group, rural students from economically depressed regions have not had the same
academic opportunities as their urban and even suburban counterparts (Wallace, 2015; Koricich,
2013; Berg, 2010). By offering early college options, a particular type of dual enrollment
program, to these students, school districts and their postsecondary partners can increase the
college-going of their communities’ children, and perhaps positively impact the trajectories of
lives. However, success of these early college programs is influenced by many things including
the foundational development–academic, personal, and social–of the students that attend.
To situate my work in this space, using the portraiture method, I sought to expand the
limited use of work images and extend it by intersecting the idea with secondary students’
postsecondary choices, specifically as they apply to early college program enrollment. To
accomplish this, I employed Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) theory on human agency and

Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) social ecology as a framework to guide questions to students about
their decisions to participate in an early college program.
I made use of Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis’ (1997) approach to producing a portrait,
which is the product of the aesthetic whole. They believe,
In developing the aesthetic whole we come face to face with the tensions inherent in
blending art and science, analysis and narrative, description and interpretation, structure
and texture. We are reminded of the dual motivations guiding portraiture: to inform and
inspire, to document and transform, to speak to the head and to the heart (p. 243).
In this work, I offer the portraits of four early college students from a rural, economically
disadvantaged area who made the decision to attend college while still in high school and why
that decision is valuable for them and the institution they attend.

Copyright by
STAVROULA S. ERFOURTH
2017

For my parents and anyone else
who has ever had the desire to go to school
but circumstances of life would not allow it.
And for my Michael.
You never once made me feel like this wasn't worth it.
That is a gift I may never be able to repay,
but I will never stop trying.

	

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My intent has been to produce work that is readable and approachable to all people and
that bridges the gap between the academy and the greater interested readership. If I cannot
explain myself to someone who knows nothing about my topic, then I have failed. I am forging a
path. I am a bridge between those without formal education and others at the terminal level and
my goal is to begin to illuminate the path (perhaps in the far distance) for those who desire more.
It is a responsibility that I am deeply committed to personally and professionally, in scholarship
and in application. I extend my first acknowledgement to Michigan State University for allowing
me to find my own way forward through my educational pursuits. I have been forever changed.
I would like to acknowledge Baker College of Owosso, especially Dr. Aaron Maike, for
fully supporting my scholarly pursuits. Without your support and the support and encouragement
of the following people, I would not have reached this goal: Dr. Pete Karsten, Dr. Denise
Bannan, and Dr. Carol Dowsett. Dr. Dowsett, especially, has my strongest gratitude and love for
her mentorship and friendship for the last fourteen years, before and throughout my doctoral
work. You have believed in me since the beginning, even when I didn’t believe in myself. You
are a better role model than I could have dreamed for myself. I cannot thank you enough.
Thank you for the guidance of my MSU College of Education HALE faculty – Dr. Steve
Weiland and committee–Dr. Marilyn Amey, Dr. Patricia Marin, Dr. Terah Venzant Chambers. I
am grateful to each of you for the gift of your time and attention to my work. It is better for
having passed through your talents. And to others whom I admire and whose influence I will
take with me: Dr. Ann Austin, Dr. Rebecca Jacobsen, Dr. John Yun, Dr. Leslie Gonzales, and
Dr. Cary Roseth. Thank you for sharing your passion with me and all of your students.

	

vi

To the HALE PhD 2013 cohort, I am a better person for having met you all. I learned
from each of you and that makes us the best cohort ever, obviously. A special thank you to my
friend and partner-in-research and other scholarly shenanigans, Nate Cradit. You pushed me
when you did not even realize I needed pushing, just by being supportive of our shared research
interests. Thank you for your example and friendship. An additional and special HALE-IE I
would be remiss not to mention is Dr. Qiana Green. On more than one occasion, by divine
intervention (no other explanation), you were exactly where and when I needed someone. Thank
you for being in the right place at the right time, and mainly for being gracious with your
experience.
Thank you to Greg Nave, Kristina Marshall, and Michalene Lichon for listening through
my ideas, papers, and research for the last several years. I am lucky to have colleagues like you.
And thank you to Phil Gobel for his graphic design advice. I didn’t use it, but I am grateful for
your calming assurance when I needed just that.
I am humbled and lifted up by the memory and lives of my grandmothers, Yiayia Athena
Skoutelas and Yiayia Stavroula Oiknomou, one who traveled far to find more for herself and her
children and one who sent her baby just as far for the same reasons. I stand on the shoulders of
these giants. My mom has taught me so much and still does. Thank you, Mama, for the important
lesson that there is honor in making and keeping a home and that not all important
accomplishments happen outside of those walls. These lessons have taught me the importance of
balance. To Bean, thank you for doing all the right things which cleared a path for me to do it
differently. If you had been the rebellious one, what role would I have to fill? To Bobby, you did
everything better, easier, and quicker than me, and that has really annoyed me. But it also
motivates me. Thank you. To my Debbie, thank you for teaching me that family is made by more

	

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than blood, it is also made by serendipity and circumstance. To my cousins, all of them. Because
everyone should have Greek cousins. To Christine and Thanasi, you made our sibling family
complete. To Simon, Aleko, Leo, Nina, Edward, Penelope, Daphne, and Violet. I only gave birth
to two of you, but you are all my babies. You can be whatever you want. All you have to do is
work for it.
Finally, Baba, you passed on to me your love of learning. In your 41st year you earned
your GED in the country you adopted. In my 41st year I give you this. You passed up your
chances for us, so this is for you.

	

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES ························································································· xi
LIST OF FIGURES ······················································································· xii
Chapter 1: Introduction···················································································· 1
Early College Overview ·················································································· 2
Early College: Policy History and Trends ······························································ 4
Purpose of the Study ······················································································ 6
Research Question ························································································· 9
Portraiture: A Qualitative Design········································································ 9
Current Situation of the Rural Poor in America ······················································10
Poor college students in America ·······························································11
Students in rural, under-resourced county of study ···········································12
Significance of the Study ················································································14
Chapter 2: Literature Review ·········································································· 17
Adolescent Social Development ········································································17
Social development ···············································································18
				Occupational Identity ·····················································································19
Occupational inheritance becomes occupational choice ·····································20
Occupational vs. vocational identity····························································21
Occupational identity status ·····································································22
Work in Social Class ·····················································································25
Social class defined ···············································································25
Socioeconomic status ·············································································27
Images of Work ···························································································28
Forming images ···················································································29
Ideas of work ······················································································30
Work images ·······················································································31
The Early College Research Landscape ·······························································32
Theoretical Frameworks: Human Agency and Social Ecology ····································33
Human agency ·····················································································34
Social ecology ·····················································································38
Chapter 3: Methodology ················································································· 42
Portraiture as a Methodology ···········································································43
Selection of Participants ·················································································45
Data Collection····························································································46
Observation ························································································46
Individual interviews ·············································································47
Analysis ····································································································50
Confidentiality ····························································································51
Limitations and Exclusions ··············································································51
Trustworthiness ···························································································52

	

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Researcher Positionality and Reflexivity ······························································53
Chapter 4: Student Narrative Portraits ······························································ 57
Carlos ·······································································································57
Rachel ······································································································66
Taylor ······································································································74
Bralyn ······································································································83
Chapter 5: Analysis, Discussion, and Implications ················································· 94
Beliefs about work ························································································95
Influences ··································································································98
Impactful family dynamics ······································································98
Normalized traumatic events ·································································· 102
Personality mismatches for traditional high school········································· 105
Why this vehicle? ······················································································· 107
Sense of urgency to progress ·································································· 108
Family first ······················································································· 110
Analysis ·································································································· 111
Four-quadrant model of agency and circumstance ········································· 112
Opportunity gaps (as inputs) ··································································· 113
Achievement gaps (as outputs) ································································ 114
Tradeoffs ························································································· 115
Discussion ······························································································· 116
Recommendations ······················································································ 120
Implications for future research······································································· 122
Epilogue ···································································································· 125
APPENDICES ···························································································· 127
APPENDIX A: Participation Request ·································································· 128
APPENDIX B: Early College Students Research Consent Form ··································· 129
APPENDIX C: Interview Protocol ······································································ 131
APPENDIX D: Participant Chart ········································································ 134
APPENDIX E: Code Book ··············································································· 135
REFERENCES ··························································································· 136

	

x

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Benefits and obstacles of dual enrollment programs ·········································· 6
Table 2: 2014-2015 MI School Data for EMC Participating School Districts ······················13
Table 3: Applying Bronfenbrenner’s systems to early college students (from the perspective of
the college) ···································································································39

	

xi

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Four-quadrant model of agency and circumstance ········································ 112

	

xii

Chapter 1: Introduction
“The coolest thing I’ve done, at least on paper, is graduate from Yale Law School,
something thirteen-year-old J.D. Vance would have considered ludicrous…The statistics
tell you that kids like me face a grim future – that if they’re lucky, they’ll manage to
avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll die of a heroin overdose, as happened to
dozens in my small hometown just last year. I was one of those kids with a grim future. I
almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment
harbored by everyone around me. Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League
credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a true extraordinary
person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I
think that theory is a load of bullshit. Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a
handful of loving people rescued me” (Vance, 2016, pp. 1-2).
High achieving high school students who identify as future college-goers generally start
earning college credit through Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs and
research has paid considerable attention to this population (Demaree, 2016; Klopfenstein, 2004a
& 2004b). In fact, the Education Commission of the States stated, “in another effort to improve
students’ readiness for college and career, policymakers in 25 states require school districts to
provide opportunities for advanced courses such as Advanced Placement (AP), dual enrollment
or International Baccalaureate (IB)” (ECS Blueprint, 2014).
Another group of students, however, who are cognitively capable of attending college,
but may not for a variety of reasons identify as future college-goers, is worthy of research. Often,
career and technical education or vocational education programs are often marketed to this
population of students, and these students begin to identify themselves toward their potential
future career, and not by their education. However, getting a quality job in today’s job market
generally requires some college (Coder & Green, 2016). And so now we are encouraging some
students into college even sooner, through dual enrollment options like early college, when they
may not be ready for it. While some may not be up for the challenge, for others it may be the
self-efficacy boost they need to succeed in an early college program and matriculate to higher

	

1

education. No less significant is that students who participate in early college programs elect to
extend their high school graduation by a year to participate. The decision to participate is fraught
with concerns, both social and academic.
The purpose of highlighting early college participation is to provide a different
perspective of a population of students taking advantage of education funding aimed at
increasing and improving college and career preparation. Through a lens of social ecology and
agency, this study sheds light on what this population of students thinks about work and college
and how they make decisions to participate in early college programs.
In this chapter, I will provide an introduction of the history and trends on dual
enrollment, specifically early college programs, and the effect of early college programs on a
certain population of high school students. Following this introduction, I will provide the
purposes of the study and how these purposes inform the guiding research question to address
the problem–that rural students, for various reasons, may by unprepared for the rigors of early
college programs, which could negatively impact the trajectory of their future college-going and,
potentially their career path. The research question will guide a discussion of the study design.
Finally, this chapter will conclude with an explanation of the significance of this research.
Early College Overview
Secondary institutions in the United States are not generally directly aligned with
vocational training, as they are in some other countries in the world (Labaree, 2010). This leads
high school students to feel encouraged to be ready for the workforce, while simultaneously only
having vague notions, at best, of how to do so. Vuolo, Mortimer, and Staff (2104) note, “In this
challenging context, most youth today attempt to obtain as much schooling as they can to situate
themselves favorably in the labor market” (p. 146). Getting to college is important to get a good

	

2

job and thus, college access remains a vital conversation for higher education in the U.S. context.
We must continue to deepen the conversation, however, to consider that getting to college is not
enough, especially for certain populations of students.
Students from rural, low-income areas can often get to college, but they do not complete
degrees at the same rates as urban or suburban, more financially stable students (Berg, 2010;
Jacobs & Dirlam, 2016; Pretlow & Wathington, 2014; Reardon, 2011). Federal and state policies
have produced many programs meant to help these types of students get to, and thus complete,
college sooner. Dual enrollment programs (those where students are simultaneously earning
secondary and postsecondary credits) currently have the most momentum in the P20 educational
pipeline, which is a way to consider the complete trajectory of education from preschool to
professional or post-graduate work. Much literature is devoted to the success of these programs
for more at-risk populations of students, but that is not the complete story.
Often, rural students from under-resourced areas are the ones who not only take longer to
finish college upon matriculation, but drop out at higher rates (“Time to Degree,” 2016). In their
longitudinal studies on pathways from school to work, Vuolo et al. (2014) said that “…youth
from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to follow BC [Bachelor
degree to career] pathways…those from more disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to
leave college early and subsequently flounder [in career]” (p. 159, brackets added for
clarification). Many factors contribute to this, most of which are around non-cognitive or
foundational support issues. Ultimately, they get to college, but are not always ready, because no
one has assisted them to be ready for what will be expected of them in college.
Students from rural, low-income places may or may not be college-ready, they may or
may not have self-efficacy toward college work, but they are interested in the idea that they can

	

3

earn college credit for free, and get to work sooner than they might have expected. Generally,
this provides an impetus for the families of the types of students who are encouraged to
participate–students who may be academically capable, but not emotionally or socially ready for
what college work will entail.
Early college programs are a solution and attempt to fill an important gap that, in order
for our workforce to be prepared for the jobs of the future, those wishing to be employed will
need a college credential. Programs like early college are rationally derived. They serve to offer
opportunities and fill gaps. Rational solutions and policy and funding implementations are often
at odds with the identity development and resulting decision-making process of students,
however. The current literature suggests that dual enrollment programs positively impact the
college-going of students (Kilgore & Taylor, 2016; Pertlow & Wathington, 2014), however, we
have not unpacked the complicated decision-making of adolescents who have images of how
they want to meet personal goals, but not always the support and foundation to do so
successfully. There are dangers for policy-makers, for institutions, and for the students and
families in ignoring these tension points. As policy-makers direct funding toward these
programs, if students are not prepared for the rigor of college-level work, that money could be
wasted. For students, unsuccessful attempts at college coursework while still in high school
could lead to reduced self-efficacy toward college.
Early College: Policy History and Trends
Early/middle colleges serve as an outreach to underserved, underrepresented and
underachieving students by allowing them to earn college credit at reduced time and cost to
families. According to the Michigan Department of Education, “Early/Middle College (EMC)
schools and programs are an extension of the Postsecondary Enrollment Options Act (PA 160 of

	

4

1996), and designed to afford students with the opportunity to earn a high school diploma and
either an associate's degree, the Michigan Early/Middle College Association (MEMCA)
technical certification, or up to 60 transferable college credits at the same time” (EMC FAQs,
2015). While dual enrollment programs like EMCs have existed for decades, they have grown
considerably since the turn of this century as a result of policy interest to increase college-going
rates.
In the early college program included in this study, eligible high school students must
have an earned minimum grade point average of 2.5 (on a standard 4.0 scale) to participate. They
must apply by spring of their 10th grade year to begin college classes in the fall semester of 11th
grade. Finally, the institution requires them to select a program of study geared toward a specific
major or career as their academic path to follow. These students hold back a high school credit,
thus delaying their official high school graduation, which makes them eligible to receive funding
for their full-time participation in college classes in the 13th year, which otherwise would have
been their first year of college. So, for appearances, they are a traditional college freshman
during the 13th year, however, their school district receives funding to pay for them to attend
college classes, thus making the program free for the students and their families.
Participation in EMC improves the college-going of underserved students (like those
from rural, economically disadvantaged areas), but does it improve degree-earning? Like
anything involving people, there are benefits and obstacles for all stakeholders (see Table 1).
EMCs are great in theory and on paper when initially created by policymakers, but difficult to
put into practice for individual students with unique circumstances and desires. These obstacles
provide the impetus for studying the decision-making of students who participate.

	

5

Table 1: Benefits and obstacles of dual enrollment programs
Benefits

Obstacles

Postsecondary institution

-Recruitment/enrollment tool
-Meeting institutional mission
-Community service mechanism

School districts

-Students who are academically
and otherwise unprepared for the
rigors of coursework and campus
culture
-Transcript issues (transfer credit)
-Low matriculation post-EMC
-Funding
-College readiness of students
-Qualified instructors

-Potential for increased
graduation rates
-Better opportunities for their
community students
-Free or reduced college credits
-Funding
-Complete college and begin
-Transportation to college campus
work sooner
-Wi-Fi or computer access
-Potential for increased college- -Academic unpreparedness
going self-efficacy
-Lack of family support or
-Increased future career
encouragement
opportunity
-Access to curricular options not
found at smaller or underfunded
schools.
	
	
										(Kilgore & Taylor, 2016, Pertlow & Wathington, 2014)	

Students

	
	
	
	
Purpose of the Study

In this study, I aimed to discover how the work images formed and held by high school
students from a rural, low socioeconomic (SES) background influence decisions to participate in
career-focused early college programs. Increasingly, postsecondary education is necessary for
people to be employed at a level adequate enough to live comfortably. In fact, many current
employers expect some level of degree attainment to adequately fill required work roles (Coder
& Green, 2016). This has changed in the last several decades. Where a high school graduate was
able to find stable employment that offered a certain quality of life, those jobs are becoming
more rare. School, family, and the workplace today tell high school students that in order to
make a living, they need education beyond a high school diploma.

	

6

A current trend in education and government policy is to introduce opportunities and
provide funding to allow students to earn college credits while still in high school. These bodies
recognize the need to reduce time and cost to degree, as well as better prepare students for
postsecondary education experiences (college and career readiness.) A well-known example of
this is Advanced Placement, a program that has been around for many years and is targeted to
high-achieving students, which allows students to prove mastery on subjects by taking courses in
high school and being tested on them, thus potentially earning college credit (Klopfenstein,
2004). Another example is early college, where students attend both high school classes and
college courses simultaneously and then delay high school graduation for one year with the goal
of earning a high school diploma and an associate degree by the end of the 13th year [or the year
after they would have graduated high school] (Kilgore & Taylor, 2016).
Students from rural, low SES backgrounds hear the same message as other students about
the importance of college, and although they generally matriculate to higher education at lower
rates than even their urban counterparts (Diete Courrégé, 2013; Marré, 2014), they have ideas of
the types of jobs that will give them the kind of life believe they want. And the message is that in
order to get that job, they have to go to college. High achieving high school students typically
identify as future college-goers, based on family and school expectations. The next tier of
students, however, many of who are capable of attending college, but may not for a variety of
reasons identify as future college-goers, might be overlooked. Often, Career & Technical
Education or Vocational education programs are often marketed to this population of students,
and these students begin to identify themselves toward their potential future career (Morehead,
2015; Rabren et al., 2014), and not by their education. However, these students know that college
is necessary to get them to that career. And families want to take advantage of any opportunities

	

7

provided to them to help students earn college credit sooner and at no cost, often because of their
own economic situations (i.e., out of perceived financial necessity.)
We know, though, that not all of these students are mentally and academically prepared
for the effort that succeeding in college entails (Koricich, 2014; Reardon, 2011). The hazard of
programs like early college, is that they seem to fail these students in meeting both the students’
and families’ goal of getting closer to a career, and the goal of the programs themselves, which is
to graduate students with a college degree. My purpose was to develop a deeper understanding of
what leads rural students to make decisions to participate in early college programs. What is
missing from the current body of literature are the stories of students who begin these programs,
but may not complete them and why.
I believe that there is more to student decision-making than rational goals; that they make
emotional decisions based on non-rational goals, which they may create and might be informed
by their social context. Ultimately, many of these students do not reach their intended goals. I
wonder if they do not fully consider implications of participation in early college programs
because they focus on the work images they hold to propel them into the program.
With my study, I am telling the stories of a group of students who have chosen to
participate in a college program while still in high school. By better understanding the decisions
and experiences of early college students, I hope to assist school districts and higher education
partners to better prepare students and families for success and to avoid potential implications of
failure (reduced self-efficacy, loss of financial aid, a poor academic transcript, and potentially an
unbroken cycle of poverty).

	

8

Research Question
Through this research, I hoped to better understand the motivating factors that lead rural
high school students from under-resourced areas to college earlier. Dual enrollment programs are
drawing these students to college sooner, and these programs, early college as one example, are
growing quickly. All stakeholders, from higher education to K12, from policymakers to local
communities need to better understand the students that take advantage of these opportunities. I
was curious about how the work images formed and held by high school students from a rural,
low socioeconomic background influence decisions to enroll in career-focused early college
programs. To discover this, I sought to answer the following research question:
How does the social context (circumstance) of students from a rural, economically
disadvantaged area influence them to make a decision and take action (agency) to enroll in an
early college program?
Portraiture: A Qualitative Design
The study, based on the research question, examined and discovered the stories of a
population of students from a rural, economically disadvantaged area who make decisions to
begin college-level coursework while still enrolled and actively completing their high school
education. Through portraiture, I investigated the research question by collecting stories of
students from within a specific context: an early college program at a single, career-focused,
Midwestern, postsecondary institution. A research portrait is a written narrative “designed to
capture the richness, complexity, and dimensionality of human experience in social and cultural
context, conveying the perspectives of the people who are negotiating those experiences. The
portraits are shaped through dialogue between the portraitist and the subject, each one
participating in the drawing of the image” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p.3). Thus, the

	

9

interviews allowed me to develop a relationship with the participants, which was vital to the
process. The feelings they communicated while telling their stories were as important as the
words the participants spoke. This specific context is bound by post-industrialization and a postrecession job climate, where the parents of the students have likely experienced job insecurity or
underemployment in the last several years or more with the changing nature of the auto and other
manufacturing industries in the Midwest. One goal for the research was to describe the
phenomenon from within its context and to do so, both the population and guiding idea require a
clear definition.
Current Situation of the Rural Poor in America
In the final quarter of the last century, the wealth disparity between rich and poor grew
much more quickly than any measured economic change in the entire century. Additionally, the
earners at the bottom are getting poorer (Berg, 2010; Jacobs & Dirlam, 2016; Reardon, 2011).
Two perpetuating beliefs about the poor that many people incorrectly hold are: 1. They are poor
because of their values and ability and 2. They can change if they want to (Berg, 2010.) The
reality of the situation is that students from rural and inadequately funded school districts simply
do not have the same opportunities as their more suburban or urban peers in more resource-rich
geographic areas.
Rural education and students fall behind their urban peers in college-going and
postsecondary opportunities (Berg, 2010; Koricich, 2014; “National College Progression Rates,”
2013). While some programs have been implemented to assist them, these programs are new in
many places and often lack clear direction for school districts and communities to leverage. And
so, while school districts attempt to take advantage of funding available to support college-going
by high school students, many programs focus on career and technical education or similar

	

10

programs that might attract students that would benefit most from the programs. This is
significant because many of the students may not have developed a college-going identity, but
choose to participate because they understand the need for a college degree to get steady and
quality work.
Poor college students in America
The current U.S. political and economic context is such that the gap between the wealthy
and poor is growing (Jacobs, & Dirlam, 2016). What this means is that the struggle for people
with limited economic means is likely becoming greater. And yet, in order to try to improve their
situation, students hear the same message as others, which is that they need college to get a job to
do so, in a system that was inherently not designed for them. Sentier Research, in their “Annual
Earnings by Detailed Occupations 2014 Report” (2016), aggregated data collected in the Census
Bureau’s “American Community Survey for 2014” to explain the highest and lowest paid
occupations (Coder & Green, 2016). They found that of the top 25 paid occupations, 19.4% of
workers have completed a high school diploma, but not a bachelor degree (many of these are
business owners.) Of the lowest 25 paid occupations, 65.4% of workers have completed high
school, but not a bachelor degree. Also relevant, 9.4% of bachelor degree-holding workers hold
jobs in the lowest 25 paid occupations, where that number jumps to 80.2% for workers in the 25
top paid occupations list (Coder & Green). Essentially, it still pays to earn a college degree.
Many students, though, have to navigate difficulties within their current context at home,
school, and in their community to get to a comfortable pay grade. Achieve, an “independent,
nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization” reported that in Michigan, among low
income students, only 19% met the college readiness benchmark in math, and 42% in evidencebased reading and writing, based on 11th grade SAT scores (“Michigan State Report,” 2017, p.

	

11

4). Those with less are at a disadvantage academically, and more. With a greater wealth disparity
in the United States (Reardon, 2011), more students are experiencing things like food
insecurities, housing insecurities, and financial stress as they attempt college. While “no
comprehensive national research has been conducted to firmly establish the prevalence of food
insecurity among college students, available literature suggests that the rate of food insecurity
among college students is up to four times greater than the national average” (Dubick, Mathews,
& Cady, 2016). Dubick, et al. surveyed 3,765 college students in early 2016 to get a sense of
their experiences with hunger. They report that,
48 percent of respondents reported food insecurity in the previous 30 days, including 22
percent with very low levels of food security that quality them as hungry…more than half
of all first-generation students (56 percent) were food insecure…sixty-four percent of
food insecure students reported experiencing some type of housing insecurity…fifteen
percent of food insecure students reported experiencing some form of homelessness…of
the food insecure students in the study, 32 percent believed that hunger or housing
problems had an impact on their education (Dubick, Mathews, & Cady, 2016, p. 7).
The educational impacts were because they could not buy a textbook, or because they missed or
dropped a class because of their food and housing problems (Dubick, et al., 2016). While early
college students do not have to pay for tuition or books, they experience some of the same food
and housing issues as other college students, which may affect program persistence and success.
For example, how do the poorest students participate when they are responsible for
transportation to get to their college classes? Most school districts do not provide transportation
for early college students to get to class. To overcome this obstacle, some institutions allow
students to complete classes fully online. However, do the poorest students have reliable wireless

	

12

connection and the technology tools required of the program? Also, can they complete online
coursework without support at home – academic, moral, or otherwise? The struggle of lowincome students is not new, but it still exists and is growing in all sectors of college students.
Students in rural, under-resourced county of study
The population in the county of study is described below (Table 2). Many students are from
economically disadvantaged areas, leaving them at risk of not attending or completing education
beyond high school. The rates differ greatly among the districts across the county in many
categories. Having said that, around half of all graduates go to college within six months of
graduating high school.
Table 2: 2014-2015 MI School Data for EMC Participating School Districts
Participating Economically Free-reduced
districts
disadvantaged lunch
students
participation
by eligible
students
B1
38.1%
80.7%
C2
49.6%
100%

Dropout 4-year
Rate
Grad
Rate

School bond attempts

6.82%
8.16%

86.36%
86.73%

D3
M4

50.5%
57.6%

81%
66.6%

7.14%
11.86%

83.93%
69.49%

O5

61.6%

92.9%

8.2%

81.64%

P6
Average

45.4%
50.5%

62.1%
80.6%

5.38%
7.93%

91.54%
83.3%

4 failed since 2005
8th attempt since 1998 passed
in 2015 (all rest failed)
passed last 3 since 1997
9th attempt since 1997 passed
in 2017 (all rest failed)
3 failed since 2002 (bigger
district, larger amount
requested)
3 passed since 1997

(Dashboard & Accountability Scorecard, 2014-2015, MI School Data & School Bond Election Results, State of MI)

In the 2014-2015 school year, of all county high school graduates, 56.4% began college
within six months. That number dropped to 45.7% for economically disadvantaged students (MI
School Data, n.d.). Some school districts had more college-goers than others, which ranged from

	

13

63.1.% to 44.2% for the entire group of graduates, to 58.8% to 36.8% of their economically
disadvantaged students going to college within six months of graduation.
Additionally, based on the American Community Survey conducted by the US Census
Bureau French (2016) reported there is a college dropout problem in Michigan. “Nationally,
Michigan ranks 28th in the percent of high school grads entering college (61 percent), but drops
to 41st in graduation rates” (par. 5). In the county of study specifically, 29.8% of adults have
some college, but no degree, and 28.7% have earned an associate degree or higher, compared to
the next county, where a major research university exists, where 47.3% have an associate degree
or higher (French, 2016). When taking the factors presented into consideration, it becomes
evident that students are well served with college and career preparation opportunities like an
early college program.
Significance of the Study
In light of the recent economic recession, rural students are seeking opportunities to get
ahead by earning college credentials to get jobs that will lead to steady income and a comfortable
life. Two linked issues I address in my work, dual-enrollment options and the necessity for an
educated workforce, both appear in the “Top 10 issues for Higher Education State Policy Issues”
as annually disseminated by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities
(“Policy Matters,” 2017). Carnevale, Jayasundera, and Gulish (2016) note that the recession is
ending and “nearly all the jobs created in the recovery, 11.5 million out of 11.6 million, have
gone to workers with at least some postsecondary education” (p. 3). Additionally, they recognize
that “college access and success have been the defining factors in the growing economic divide
in America since the early 1980s” (p. 5). Students understand that they need college to meet their
work goals.

	

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As a group, rural students from economically depressed regions have not had the same
opportunities as their urban and even suburban counterparts (Berg, 2010; Koricich, 2013;
Wallace, 2015). By offering early college options to these students, school districts and their
postsecondary partners can increase the college-going of their communities’ children, and
perhaps positively impact the trajectories of lives. However, success of these early college
programs is influenced by many things including the foundational development–academic,
personal, and social–of the students that attend.
Success is defined differently for most people, but in this case of rural students, students
who can pass college coursework and feel more positively inclined to continue to college degree
completion, and finally to a career, would be the optimal outcome. By this definition, not all
early college students are successful. Some may not be successful in college coursework. Some
finish the 13th year, but may not continue to completion of their college degree. Others leave the
program with more work confusion than they began the program (Cowan & Goldhaber, 2015;
Kanny, 2015).
There are far-reaching implications, both in and out of academe, for research aimed at
students who take advantage of programs offered for them to go college. This study furthers the
research that has already been conducted on the decision-making behaviors of early college
students–those students who fall at the intersection of both high school and college–and how
their decisions to enroll affects them and their families. This will provide an additional
perspective to those who work in education, both secondary and postsecondary, practitioners
who want to discover ways to help students get ahead and further support their efforts. A
significant factor for these students, and one that cannot be overlooked, is their social contextrural, economically disadvantaged-and the effects that has on their decisions to participate in

	

15

early college programs. Outside of education, state policy makers and communities who are
investing resources in programs to improve the workforce might benefit from understanding
perspectives of students who directly benefit from, and in some cases, are hindered by their
programs.
This introduction highlighted key characteristics of a specific population of students and
of state-funded programs-early college programs-geared to supporting student goals of
educational and occupational attainment. My work will support and further ongoing research of
dual enrollment programs by studying the decision-making of a particular group of students, at
the intersection of secondary and postsecondary education, to better understand the influences
that lead them to an early college program and their goal of a college degree. The literature
review in the next chapter will present information on how students develop and how they begin
to form these goals for their futures.

	

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Chapter 2: Literature Review
“Growing up, my friends and I had no clue that the world had changed. Papaw
had retired only a few years earlier, owned stock in Armco, and had a lucrative pension.
Armco Park remained the nicest, most exclusive recreation spot in town, and access to
the private park was a status symbol: It meant that your dad (or grandpa) was a man with
a respected job. It never occurred to me that Armco wouldn’t be around forever, funding
scholarships, building parks, and throwing free concerts. Still, few of my friends had
ambitions to work there…By the sixth grade, we wanted to be veterinarians or doctors or
preachers or businessmen. But not steelworkers. Even at Roosevelt Elementary – where,
thanks to Middletown geography, most people’s parents lacked a college education – no
one wanted to have a blue-collar career and its promise of a respectable middle-class life.
We never considered that we’d be lucky to land a job at Armco; we took Armco for
granted” (Vance, pp. 54-55).
The following literature review will provide history and a synthesis of the place of work
in adolescent development, occupational aspirations, and how social class affects ideas of work.
The three guiding thoughts for this review are that: adolescents begin to think about their futures,
they develop ideas about work, and they are products of their environments. By weaving these
thoughts into my review, I hope to provide a clear path that highlights the development of
adolescents and how their development informs their work images and what they believe they
want to be. To do this, I will show when and how they begin to think about their futures by
outlining the process of how adolescents develop socially. It is during their social development
that they begin to think about themselves in the future, and how work plays an important role in
the future they see. Finally, I will discuss how their social context affects what they see and
believe about the work of others and the work that may best fit them as individuals. Ultimately,
adolescents come to decisions about work in two key ways: with what they bring (their own
aptitude, attitude, and personality) and by what is around them (their social context).
Adolescent Social Development
This section will address the first of three guiding thoughts: adolescents start to think
about the future and see themselves in it. Adolescents begin to experience great change in many

	

17

ways-physical, cognitive, environmental, and social development changes. These changes have
been understood and described as difficult both for the children, as well as for the adults in their
lives (Arnett, 1999; Buchannan et al., 1990; Wigfield et al., 2006) and occur as adolescents leave
childhood and progress into adulthood.
Social development
It is within their social development where adolescents begin to contend with the idea of
work and vocation and how they will fit into that future role based on their values, goals, and
who they believe they are becoming. Erikson and Marcia are two of the significant researchers in
area of identity development. Erikson (1968) identified eight stages of psychosocial development
and that a person’s identity develops further as he or she progresses through each stage.
Erikson believed that there was a balance to each of these stages, and if a person did not
achieve this balance, they would not develop appropriately with the desired characteristics.
Examples are: nurturing that leads to trust which gives infants hope (or a lack of hope if
nurturing is not adequate), young children being able to navigate social situations gives them
purpose (or guilt and self-doubt if they cannot work with others), etc. For adolescents in the
identity vs. confusion stage, those who do not develop a sense of identity feel confused and
insecure about their future (Erikson, 1950, 1968).
Marcia (2002) refined Erikson’s work, concentrating some of it to a deeper examination
of how an adolescent begins to answer the question “who am I?” A person at this stage starts to
see himself as having a past, as living in the present, and also as having a future ahead of them.
As they begin to make this realization, Marcia offered four answers to the process: “foreclosure”
is when a person has not started to think of their identity yet; in “identity diffusion,” he or she
has begun to reflect, but may not have answers; in “moratorium,” he or she is engaged in

	

18

thinking about themselves and who they want to be; and finally, he or she has reached “identity
development,” when they have made decisions about who they are related to vocational interests,
values, political and religious views, etc.
Much of the recent work in adolescent identity development has been comparative, aimed
at discovering if and how the stages apply in different international and cultural contexts
(Crocetti, Rubini, Branje, Koot, & Meeus, 2016; Morsunbula, Crocetti, Cokc, & Meeus, 2016;
Shubach, Zimmermann, Noack, Neyer, 2016). Also, there has been recent interest in examining
intergenerational effects of the stages model on families – both the adults (parents and
grandparents), as well as the adolescents (Fivush, Bohanek, and Zaman, 2011; Merrill & Fivush,
2016; Rubin, O. & Rubin, A., 2014). This work, particularly, asserts that adolescents develop a
narrative identity, in part, based on their parents’ and grandparents’ narrative. Part of this
development, as previously noted, is how adolescents come to think about work, the future, and
themselves involved in work in the future.
Occupational Identity
In this section on occupational identity development, I will address the second of three
guiding thoughts: adolescents begin to develop ideas about work and what it means to them.
Over time, and because of the changes in industry, people began to believe that they could attain
different career goals than those they inherit or that their parents had for them. They believed
that they had a choice in what occupation to pursue. Much study was devoted to the idea of a
vocational calling or identity, the process of how that identity forms, and the difference between
that and occupational identity. Researchers and counselors are still devoting much time to how
occupational identity plays out in current contexts and what that means for adolescents and their
choices.

	

19

Occupational inheritance becomes occupational choice
Historically, people often inherited the work of their fathers or family members. There
was no formal preparation, outside of an apprenticeship from which they would learn the trade.
During the great industrialization of the nation, people moved away from inheriting the work of
their fathers, became mobile, and moved closer to where the majority of work was–in cities and
mostly factories. It was only into the twentieth century when researchers began to study the
trends in occupational changes–both the continuation of occupational inheritance in its current
form and in the idea of occupational choice (Savickas, 2007). The current concept of adolescence
and how adolescents must prepare for the world of work comes as a result of the family’s
changing role in economic production–when people stopped doing the work of their families,
they needed to look for preparation elsewhere (Stern & Eichorn, 1989).
The 1960 and 1970s were a time of much examination for social scientists interested in
trying to measure occupational inheritance and then mobility among generations to determine the
amount and type of growth among occupational choice (Bacon, 1977; Blau & Duncan, 1967;
Cutright, 1968; Dubey, 1975; Hauser, Koffel, Travis & Dickinson, 1975; Pullum, 1975). Hauser
et al. (1975) specifically addressed that while this was one of the most studied issues among
sociologists, there was not enough data to come to any definitive conclusions, but that their work
showed that while occupational structure was different (the manner of the jobs), the mobility
(movement from social class) did not change (Hauser et al., 1975).
However, it was at this time that the number of people pursuing higher education also
started to increase, as did the research in occupational choice. The pursuit of trends in
occupations and the increase in college-going can be attributed to the desire for social equality
and “efforts to understand the transformation of the labor forces in economic development”

	

20

(Hauser et al., 1975, p. 279). People began to aspire to achieve their preferences in their
occupational choices.
Occupational vs. vocational identity
As stated previously, the second half of the twentieth century proved to be a busy time
for research on occupational development and career choice. Many researchers from across
disciplines discovered ways to consider and explain career choice in individuals. Psychologists
sought to understand the person, and what the person brought to career decision-making process,
while sociologists wanted to discover how and why external variables cause certain career
decisions (Osipow, 1983).
Psychologists published subsequent studies and developed theories based on the person personality, traits, and development (like Erikson, see above). Meanwhile, social scientists began
to consider the effect of a person’s environment on career choice (Cutright, 1968; Dubey, 1975;
Savickas, 2007). Person-traits alone did not explain the myriad choices people make about
careers they pursue and which they abandon or persist. The idea that people were now making
decisions about what career or occupation to pursue changed the previously held expectation of
occupational inheritance (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Cutright, 1968; Dubey, 1975; Hauser, Koffel,
Travis & Dickinson, 1975; Pullum, 1975). But having more choice did not make the process
simpler.
Deciding on an occupation is a developmental process. People should be able to identify
and feel confident in both their aptitude of the skills required and of their own satisfaction of the
work. Both aptitude and attitude must be a fit for the person in order for the choice to be the
“right” one. Often, people feel “called” to a certain occupation. Vocational calling and

	

21

occupational are linked and are sometimes used interchangeably, however there is a difference,
albeit subtle.
Crites (1974) assessed that at that time there was great change in vocational appraisal
research because counselors had inadequate instruments. He believed that “person” and
“problem” appraisals were needed to improve assessments. A person appraisal was descriptive
and based on personality or attitude over time, and considered patterns of interests, personality,
and aptitude. The problem appraisal, on the other hand, was diagnostic. This assessed the issues
the person was having in making career decisions (Crites, 1974). He claimed, “Only infrequently
is attention or consideration given to how career choices are made: What is the process that a
client goes through to arrive at a decision?” (Crites, 1974, p. 274). He went on to describe
content and process, where the content was the outcome and the process was the vocational
decision-making (Crites, 1974). The process of arriving to an occupational choice and
developing an occupational identity became very important in the work on adolescent
development.
Occupational identity status
Occupational aspirations are formed early in the life of a child within “family social
interactions” and are “associated with the quality of interpersonal support and perceived societal
norms” (Jepsen, 2006, p. 3). These aspirations refer to the following: “goals, intentions, or
orientations; manifestations of personality traits, such as interests, values, abilities; cognitive
interactions among values and expectancies, reflections of past social experiences;
representations of the self, self-concept, or identity” (p. 3). The development of the individual
and their occupational identity is the key focus of this study.

	

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Occupational identity is a construct by which individuals see themselves as identifying
with a specific choice of occupation and work towards attaining that. Skorikov and Vondracek
(2011), in summarizing Erikson (1968), said that occupational identity “represents a core,
integrative element of identity” and also is “a major factor in the emergence of meaning and
structure in individuals’ lives” (Skorikov & Vondracek, 2011, p. 694). Throughout much of the
twentieth century, vocational researchers studied occupational identity and all agreed in its
critical role in adolescent development The two most widely used theories are Holland’s
personality-based theory and Erikson’s theory of identity.
Holland introduced his theory of vocational choice in 1959 and spent the next several
decades refining and revising it. When he first published his idea, he believed that other
researchers studying vocational choice were either too broad or too specific when explaining
their theories and he sought to find the appropriate balance.
Essentially, the present theory assumes that at the time of vocational choice the person is
the product of the interaction of his particular heredity with a variety of cultural and
personal forces including peers, parents and significant adults, his social class, American
culture, of this experience the person develops a hierarchy of habitual or preferred
methods for dealing with environmental tasks. From an ecological standpoint, these
habitual methods are associated with different kinds of physical and social environments,
and with differential patterns of abilities. The person making a vocational choice in a
sense ‘searches’ for situations which satisfy his hierarchy of adjustive orientations.
(Holland, 1959, p. 35)
Holland’s theory became widely used for its ability to determine how a person’s personality
affects the occupational choice a person makes and how their occupational identity develops.

	

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While he recognized that this identity develops during childhood, Holland did not thoroughly
work through that childhood development, as Erikson did (Skorikov & Vondracek, 2011).
Erikson’s theory of identity was able to delve deeply into the effects of the childhood
development through the lifespan and how that connected to occupational identity, which he
believed to be a core identity element (Erikson, 1968). Skorikov et al. (2011) noted, “According
to Erikson, failure to establish a sense of personal identity during adolescence leads to confusion
with regard to future adult roles and can be associated with an array of adjustment problems” (p.
695). This identity development is difficult and stressful for most, as adolescents begin their
occupational identity development (per Marcia) in foreclosure (characterized by early ideas held
prior to and without career exploration), but process through moratorium (temporary crisis
during exploration), until they reach achievement (goals and values adopted through career
exploration) (Skorikov et al., 2011).
Using Marcia and Erikson as their lens, current researchers have made observations that
are key to occupational identity: “Occupational identity is characterized by both continuity and
change…is shaped by the changing system of interpersonal relationships around which it is
constructed…individuals make a significant contribution to the construction of their occupational
identity…individual occupational identities are constrained by social-economic structures and
processes…there is considerable variation in the salience of occupational identity within the
person’s overall sense of identity” (Brown, Kirpal, & Rauner, 2007). Occupational identity,
based on the foundations of Erikson, continues to inform much research today.
Current research shows an increase of study in international (Ahn et al., 2015; Berríos–
Allison, 2005; Hirschi & Hermann; 2013; Hirschi, 2012: Shin & Kelly, 2013), gendered (Scott &
Ciani, 2008; Song et al., 2016; Taber & Blankemeyer, 2015), and racial or ethnic minority

	

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contexts (Coutinho & Blustein, 2014; Diemer & Blustein, 2007; Diemer & Blustein, 2006;
Gushue, Clarke, Pantzer, & Scanlan, 2006; Gushue, Scanlan, Pantzer, & Clark, 2006; Hammond
et al., 2010). The research focus transitioned from career decision-making (external – what
happens outside of the person and the outcomes of their decisions) to more personal/internal
value or identity statements.
Erikson said a lot about how adolescents achieve occupational identity, and how their
social context plays a role. While Erikson extensively addressed the social development of
adolescents, he did not sufficiently discuss the effects of social class, as a more macro-concept of
identity development.
Work in Social Class
This section will address the final of three guiding thoughts: adolescents are products of
their environments. Many factors impact adolescents’ identity development, as previously
mentioned, including what they bring to work decisions (their aptitude, attitude, and personality.)
The social class of their parents or family is another key factor. This begins to address the
external influences of adolescent work decisions. Researchers look to socioeconomic status as a
way to predict the trajectory of a student’s achievements. Investigation of key influences like
socioeconomic status in adolescent occupational identity development is important to my study,
as it will help address the effects of the social and cultural context and their intersection with the
individual and internal development of the adolescent.
Social class defined
The most common and basic definition of social class describes it as socially derived
division of people based on economic criteria like occupation, income, status among one’s own
and other groups. Power or prestige (or the lack thereof) is tied to social class and to certain

	

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occupations. Those with more money and power find themselves in a higher class than those
without. A person's work or occupation (or lack thereof) is a key component of the construct of
social class. Social class, and thus occupation, allows people to understand the differences and
categorize themselves and others in a way that sustains or increases their own prestige, while
also withholding the prestige of others. Thus, occupation, money, power, and prestige are all
inextricably linked to each other and to ideas of social class.
Key sociologists, Marx and Weber, each wrote extensively about the ideas of social class,
with both similarities and differences related to occupation; money and income; and power and
prestige. Researchers throughout the latter half of the twentieth studied and published
perspectives of the interactions of Marx and Weber. This brief review will summarize some of
their ideas as they relate to the key concepts above (Eidlin, 2015; Giddens, 1971; Royce, 2015).
The nature of occupation is such that those in social class need each other for the process
to function. Marx spoke of the capitalist, the person with the means of production, who needs the
worker to actually fulfill and produce the product. The workers occupied the lower end of the
social class strata, and were beholden to the capitalists, who held a majority of the money and
power. Marx believed that these power differences caused conflict and disruption among the
categories of production–the workers felt collectively taken advantage of and sought more
power, while the capitalists sought to hold on to their power and keep a sense of order by
providing opportunity for the workers to work.
Weber, on the other hand, believed in the power differences of the groups, but held that
the divisions were natural, symbiotic, and not exploitive in nature. Further, Weber discussed the
inequalities present in class and status positions and that these inequalities led to differences in
resource availability and access. Both Marx and Weber believed that those at the top of the

	

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hierarchical structure had more power and prestige, and simply by being at the top, better and
more access to resources, and through it all, status (Eidlin, 2015; Giddens, 1971; Royce, 2015).
Socioeconomic status, for one, is a common measure used to categorize people.
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status (SES) is the position a person holds within a social structure, and it
is the measure often used to measure social class. Rubin et al. (2014) noted that while social
class and SES are often used interchangeably, there are key differences–SES is a current measure
and can be changed when there is a culture that allows for movement, while social class captures
a more macro picture of a person’s background. Measuring one’s SES often includes objective
considerations of occupation, income, education levels, and lifestyle or consumption practices
(Ma, 2009; Rubin, 2012; Rubin et al., 2014). This is important when considering the desire for
social mobility, because children are typically assigned the same SES as their parents and this
has a significant impact on their educational and, thus occupational opportunities (Sirin, 2005;
White, 1982.) "The socio-economic status of a child's parents has always been one of the
strongest predictors of the child's academic achievement and educational attainment" (Reardon,
2011, p. 3). Due to changes in the accessibility of higher education to the masses in the latter part
of the last century, many students today pursue college in the hopes that they might be able to
change or move up their SES. They believe, because of what they tell us, that college is the
means to get to their end – a better or different kind of job than their parents.
Students are going to college as a necessity to get jobs, and simultaneously as a way to
get jobs that will lead to different or better life situations than their parents, or than what they
experience as children at home. Meanwhile, they must make decisions on just what kind of work
they will want to do. Their decisions come from how their occupational identity develops and

	

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embedded within that, the desire to change or achieve status. Occupations then, become a piece
of the development of the individual, or an extension of their identity, through the work that they
come to do (Chavez, 2016). Adolescents do not develop their occupational identity within and by
themselves. On the contrary, identities develop as a result of social interactions, and from an
adolescent’s place in their social context.
Adolescents have occupational aspirations that are informed by their contexts. They value
their peer relationships and come to place high value on the benefits of interactions with peers
(Johnson & Mortimer, 2011). However, there are constraining factors like young people’s
pursuit of occupations most familiar to them from their peers and school context, if not directly
from family. Family backgrounds may limit opportunity and expectations for employment, but
depending on the school and community context, so could peer influence. Factors like these,
which affect work image formation, should be considered as part of the decision-making process
of adolescents.
Images of Work
When we hear from new college students about their reasons for attending college, the
responses often start with “I want to be [insert job type–a nurse, a teacher, a business owner,
etc.]” or “I want to [insert verb–teach, lead, help others, etc.]”. “Want” signifies a desire of some
kind, and we make assumptions that these specific wants are ones that students have considered
prior to the moment of our asking. For certain populations of students, college is not an
automatic next step after high school. And, I would argue, even for those students who do have
college goals from early on, most of them make guesses based on preference, social context,
family and school support and information, about what kind of work they expect to do upon
graduating.

	

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Early college students are not different, and, in fact, have some idea of work prior to
starting dual enrollment, often up to two years before high school graduation. What do we know
about these ideas of work? This section will address how people form images and how these
images begin to inform how adolescents think about things like work. What are the contextual
influences that lead to ideas about work? To get there, first we need to understand how people
create or form images.
Forming images
What informs our images? Images are mental pictures or ideas that are emotionally and
non-rationally derived and can be confusing to developing adolescents. They are not linear, not
rational. They are not all influenced similarly by ideas, experiences, and beliefs. What affects
people’s images, their social context (external) or something more personal (internal), like their
internal values and fears? Psychologists today are still investigating “our ability to be conscious
of the world around us” (Pearson & Kosslyn, 2013, p. 1). Over time, psychology has developed
to believe that language is a social practice, with which we use models and metaphors to
understand each other.
The belief, still being examined, is that the use of models and metaphors applies to visual
imagery as well. Thus, people create images based on social practice, meaning forming personal
images based on things they see around them. These images are a visual representation of what
happens around an individual (Forrester, 2000; Horowitz, 1970; Robertson, 2003). Robertson
(2003) explains, “young children think using images more than words, but as they learn to speak
and read, their ability to think in images gradually withers” (p. 34).
Thus, language and imagery are inextricably linked, even though they occupy different
places in the brain. They work together to create what Robertson calls a “mental map” that we

	

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read when trying to understand our external environment. Yet, image formation happens within
each individual. As Forrester (2000) notes, “…the world is constituted by the images we find
within it, along with all those processes of image production, reception and recognition
understood either as sets of social practices or as internal cognitive mechanisms and procedures”
(p. 125). So, the external world informs the images we create as individuals, and our personal
images inform how we see and understand the world.
Ideas of work
How do people make sense of work? Most researchers agree that today’s definition of
work describes paid employment and social relationships as in with an employer or to
employment, rather than simply the act effort exerted to do something (Thiessen & Blasius,
2002; Orr, 1998). Further, the extant literature suggests that work is how we define the difference
of class, and based on perceived power assigned to work ideas, we would expect different
attitudes about work from people of different classes (Svallfoors, 2006). So, some work is
“better” or “more valuable” than other work, based on many value-laden factors including
financial and emotional motivators and beliefs of the individual. Do some people aspire to
different work, to feel more valuable to themselves, their families, and society? As a society, we
aspire to more–more money, more happiness, more autonomy or authority–in our work. Why is
this so?
Most adults have to earn money in some fashion to be able to meet minimal human
needs–housing, sustenance, etc. The amount of money differs depending on limitless factors–the
place people live, the number of family members to support, the entertainment people value, etc.
Children begin to learn what work is from a young age, and mostly from watching and hearing
what work looks and sounds like from adult influences (both parents and other influential adults,

	

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alike) and from influences in society outside of the home–in school and from the media, among
others. This exposure to work begins to form ideas and images, influenced also by the
personality and perspective of the individual.
Work images
How do young people derive meaning from images they have of work and how do these
inform decisions to participate or take action on something–like career-focused college program
attendance? The body of academic literature on the formation of “work images” is limited.
Studies conducted are few, and most, international.
Thiessen and Blasius (2002), for example, were interested in discovering how teenagers
form images of work. They asked the question, “How do the images young people hold about the
nature of work inform us about the social structures in which they live?” The authors made the
case that young people form foundational beliefs about work based on their parents’ work and
that social structure informs their beliefs. According to the authors and their use of Bourdieu’s
work on social structure, social class defines most occupations. Thus, by asking young people to
evaluate and explain their beliefs on work, the readers should come to understand the perceived
social structure guiding the images of work. This Canadian study included surveying 1,209 17year olds and their parents to get a sense of how they described and, based on their language,
placed value on the work of their parents. Additionally, based on the responses, the authors were
able to determine the social class of the students to infer meaning on the differences between
working class and middle class student perceptions of work.
The work of Thiessen, et al.. sheds light on many things, including “that images of work
are indeed socially distributed” (p. 74) but this message does not come from the stories and

	

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words of the surveyed students, but instead from the survey tool. If asked open-ended questions,
how might the students have responded?
Thiessen et al.. explained, “The main purpose of this paper is to explore the manner and
extent to which young people’s location in the social structure colours their images of the nature
of work” (p. 53). The proposed study will build on this foundational work to discover if the
images of work contribute to students who elect to participate in early college programs, based
on the assumption that the work they believe they want to do requires a college credential.
I come to my research believing that early college students form images (mental pictures
and beliefs) of work individually (internally), but based on the social environment (externally)
around them; and that their images influence them to feel limited or empowered to work toward
their goal. And so, work images are intensely personal, yet open to judgment by others, which
likely makes them profoundly meaningful to a developing adolescent. While no additional
research has been conducted specifically on “work images,” many researchers have studied dual
enrollment programs, of which early colleges are one type, and there is no evidence of research
combining the two ideas of work images and dual enrollment.
The Early College Research Landscape
Most empirical work on dual enrollment (and early college as one segment of it) has been
quantitative and concerned with issues of demographic participation (minority, first-generation,
etc.) and college persistence (Carey, 2015; Cowan & Goldhaber, 2015; D'Amico, Morgan,
Robertson, & Rivers, 2013; Habersham, 2013; McCormick, 2010). Interest in dual enrollment
has been great. In fact, a cursory search of dual enrollment research within the last three years
revealed publication of 269 dissertations/theses on the topic. Many, as those cited above, were

	

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quantitative in nature and focused on the programs themselves and success and persistence of the
students.
Less research, however, has focused on the perspective of the students and how they
perceive both their experience in dual enrollment programs and in their schooling leading to the
decision to participate. Fewer studies, but just as significant, have concentrated on discovering
student motivations for participating and to better understand their experiences (Hudson, 2016;
Kanny, 2015; Smith, 2015; Wallace, 2015).
My work is situated in this space and I aim to extend the knowledge of work images and
how students take action based on those images, by intersecting them with high school student
postsecondary choices, specifically dual enrollment. To do so, I used Emirbayer and Mische’s
human agency and Bronfenbrenner’s social ecology as a framework to guide questions for
students about how they come to their decisions to enroll in an early college program, a
particular type of dual enrollment offering.
Theoretical Frameworks: Human Agency and Social Ecology
Creswell (2014) explained that using theory in qualitative research serves many purposes:
it provides an “overall orienting lens for the study of questions of gender, class and race,” “they
guide researchers as to what issues are important to examine…and the people who need to be
studied,” they “indicate how the research positions himself or herself in the qualitative study and
how the final written accounts need to be written” (Creswell, 2014, p. 64). To frame my study, I
looked to the sociological perspectives of Emirbayer and Mische’s work in human agency, which
explains how people come to have decisions and act on them, and also to Bronfenbrenner’s work
in social ecology, which addresses the interaction of the various contexts that inform an

	

33

adolescent’s development, specifically, how social class affects occupational and educational
decision-making (to address what is around them.)
In the previous section, I offered a foundation for how adolescents begin to develop ideas
about work. These ideas are formed as a result of both the context of the adolescent, which I will
explain later in this section through the theory of ecological systems, and also of what
preferences and desires an adolescent has. These two work symbiotically. Beyond that, there is a
link that takes the images an adolescent has formed internally and the action they take externally
(decisions to enroll in early college, for example) based on those images. Human agency is the
fundamental link between the two.
Human agency
In their seminal work on developing and clarifying the idea of agency from a social
perspective, Emirbayer and Mische (1998) define human agency as “the temporally constructed
engagement by actors of different structural environments - the temporal-relational contexts of
action - which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and
transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical
situations” (p. 970). They believe their “central contribution is to begin to reconceptualize human
agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its
habitual aspect), but also oriented toward the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits
and future projects with the contingencies of the moment). The agentic dimension of social
action can only be captured in its full complexity, we argue, if it analytically situated within the
flow of time” (p. 963).
They made this claim to rebut previous attempts to define human agency that they
considered to be flat, or neglectful of “crucial aspects of the problem” (p. 963). Mostly that

	

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“since social actors are embedded within many such temporalities at once, they can be said to be
oriented toward the past, the future, and the present at any given moment, although they may be
primarily oriented toward one or another of these within any one emergent situation” (p. 964).
By this definition, work images can be representative of the students’ past contexts and how they
come to taking action (intentionality), but also of their future state, as they see themselves there.
Emirbayer and Mische discuss the following three “elements” of human agency:
iteration, projectivity, and practical evaluation, which “correspond to the different temporal
orientations of agency” (p. 971). The iterational element speaks to routine and habit in patterns
of thought and action, which gives “stability and order to social universes” and helps “sustain
identities, interactions, and institutions over time” (p. 971). The projective element
“encompasses the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in
which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to
actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future” (p. 971). Finally, the practical-evaluation element
allows actors to make judgments “among alternative possible trajectories of action” (p. 971). The
researchers explain that while these three elements can exist separately, they can and often do
work in tandem, with different elements dominating as necessary and that “the ways in which
people understand their own relationship to the past, future, and present make a difference to
their actions…” (p. 973).
This “chordial triad” of elements leads into an explanation of the iterational dimension of
agency, in which the “schematization of social experience” holds the “locus of agency” where
the “past, through habit and repetition, becomes a stabilizing influence that shapes the flow of
effort and allows us to sustain identities, meanings, and interactions over time” (p. 975). They
use the term “iteration” because to them, the more traditional words for agency–“routines,

	

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dispositions, preconceptions, competences, schemas, patterns, typifications, and traditions-imply
structure” rather than agency (p. 975).
Explaining this is important to their work because Emirbayer and Mische believe that
most “contemporary theories of agency” (p. 983) end the discussion at the iterational dimension.
To further it, these two:
maintain that human actors do not merely repeat past routines; they are also the inventors
of new possibilities for thought and action…We argue that an imaginative engagement of
the future is also a crucial component of the effort of human actors. As they respond to
the challenges and uncertainties of social life, actors are capable of distancing themselves
(at least in partial exploratory ways) from the schemas, habits, and traditions that
constrain social identities and institutions…The subset of words used to describe this
ability has ranged from the strongly purposive terminology of goals, plans, objectives to
the more ephemeral language of dreams, wishes, desires, anxieties, hopes, fears, and
aspirations (pps. 983-984).
It is in this dimension, that Emirbayer and Mische call the “projective dimension of human
agency,” that the work images imagined by adolescents may become linked to the decisions they
make to take action and enroll in early college. This claim is supported by the researchers’
continued explanation that:
“the formation of projects is always an interactive, culturally embedded process by which
social actors negotiate their paths toward the future, receiving their driving impetus from
the conflicts and challenges of social life. The locus of agency here lies in the
hypothesization of experience, as actors attempt to reconfigure received schemas by
generative alternative possible responses to the problematic situations they confront in

	

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their lives. Immersed in a temporal flow, they move ‘beyond themselves’ into the future
and construct changing images of where they thing they are going, where they want to
go, and how they can get there from where they are at present” (p. 984).
Emirbayer and Mische further explain the “internal structure of projectivity” by first reminding
the reader that projectivity represents the present (even while actors simultaneously inhabit all
three temporal areas), and then detailing the following concepts: anticipatory identification,
narrative construction, symbolic recomposition, hypothetical resolution, and experimental
enactment.
Anticipatory identification reminds us that people extract what they already know to start
to identify possible options for action. Narrative construction helps form these possible options
from a “causal” or “temporal sequence” (p. 989). Symbolic recomposition takes what someone
already knows, and allows them to dissect and recreate alternative scenarios in its place. Then,
“after surveying possible scenarios of action, actors face the task of proposing hypothetical
resolutions that will adequately respond to the moral, practical, and emotional concerns arising
from lived conflicts” (p. 990). Finally, experimental enactment “rests on the borderline between
imagination and action” (p. 990) where an actor tests out potential actions. They give the
example of Erikson’s (1968) “role experimentation” where people, especially adolescents, “try
out possible identities without committing themselves to the full responsibilities involved” (p.
990). Some students may view their early college participation as an experiment in college, or
trying out something they are unsure of in an environment that feels like less of a commitment
(both financial and of time.)
Only after projectivity is explained does one move into the present, or the practical
evaluation dimension. This sequence can be described as problematization, where the actor

	

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discovers something that is “unsettled” or “unresolved” and desires to resolve it. The actor then
characterizes the issue by looking backward to see if it can be resolved with a known schema or
habitual activity. After assessment, the actor deliberates on a course of action based on known
patterns or potential new possibilities. Then the actor makes a decision, defined as “the
resolution to act here and now in a particular way” (p. 999). Finally, he or she executes their
decision by acting; in this case, the action of enrolling in early college. It is vital to recognize the
complexity of humans where just as they act, they are acted upon, and as much as we create our
context, we are also created by it.
Social ecology
Many things influence adolescents to develop their identity, as previously mentioned.
The social class of their parents or family is one of them. Investigation of key influences in
adolescent development is important to my study, as it will help address the effects of the social
and cultural context and its intersection with the individual and internal development of the
adolescent.
Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) influential work on human development provides an
opportunity to asses the importance of the social context of a person on their development, in a
multi-level or layered approach. Each system, beginning with that closest to the student, and
working “out” to the systems that students may not always be aware of that are affecting them
directly. First, the microsystem is defined as “the complex of relations between the developing
person and environment in an immediate setting containing that person (e.g., home, school,
workplace, etc.)” (Bronfenbrenner, p. 514). Further, he defines a setting as “a place with
particular physical features in which the participants engage in particular activities in particular
roles (e.g., daughter, parent, teacher, employee, etc.) for particular periods of time. The factors of

	

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place, time, physical features, activity, participant, and role constitute the elements of a setting”
(p. 514). Via this perspective, the microsystem of an early college student’s home setting relating
to their parents and other influential family, and their particular school experience relating to
teachers, peers, and other influential adults, is closest to them, and thus, impactful to their
development.
Next, the mesosystem “comprises the interrelations among major settings containing the
developing person at a particular point in his or her life” (p. 515). So, how does their home
setting, for example, connect to school? This then becomes a layer outside of their microsystem,
where different microsystems come together to form the influences of a particular student. The
exosystem expands the mesosystem to specify other social structures “that do not themselves
contain the developing person but impinge upon or encompass the immediate settings in which
that person is found, and thereby influence, delimit, or even determine what goes on there” (p.
515). If a student, for example, is unaware of criteria required to participate in an early college
program, how can they be sure to be prepared to enroll? The program and its entrance
requirements exist outside of the student and his or her awareness; however, it has tremendous
impact on the student when they need it.
Bronfenbrenner continued explaining exosystems by saying that “these structures include
the major institutions of society, both deliberately structured and spontaneously evolving, as they
operate at a concrete local level” (p. 515). The macrosystem departs from the others in that it
explains systems that operate outside of the individual person and their own social contexts, “but
to general prototypes, existing in the culture or subculture, that set the pattern for the structures
and activities occurring at the concrete level” (p. 515). He continued by highlighting that “most
macrosystems are informal and implicit-carried, often unwittingly, in the minds of society’s

	

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members as ideology made manifest through custom and practice in everyday life” (p. 515). That
is to say, the people give meaning and life to the patterns of examples like “economic, social,
educational, legal, and political systems, of which micro-, meso-, and exo-systems are the
concrete manifestations” (p. 515). The people create the structures to which we then hold
ourselves.
I believe that students choose to participate in early college programs to "get ahead" or
"do better" in life. However, many things in their context – both recognized and invisible intersect to influence both the ideas and potentially the outcomes of adolescents.
Bronfenbrenner’s work in organizing the systems affecting adolescents, in this example, assists
to address and clarify those influences, and ultimately, decisions. I was interested in examining
how the work images they form and hold may influence their decisions to participate in careerfocused early college programs. In Table 3 below, I applied the systems model to this population
to help me understand what types of questions to include on an interview protocol that would
lead students to speaking about their home and school contexts. My basis for using portraiture as
a methodology was my interest in hearing the stories of the students, and of a desire to tell both
their stories individually and as a whole story. I will explain this further in the next chapter.
Table 3: Applying Bronfenbrenner’s systems to early college students (from the perspective of
the college)
System
Microsystem

Influences
Parents, peers at high school, peers at
college, teachers at high schools,
instructors at college

	
	
	
	

	

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Questions
Who helped encourage
students to participate in early
college program? How
supported in that decision are
they – by high school teachers
and/or college instructors?

Table 3: (cont’d)
	
Mesosystem

Exosystem

Parents attending early college
orientation

Do parents make decisions
about the student’s program
choice/occupational choice?
High school counselor calling the college When changes or
on behalf of student
requirements on the college
campus interfere with the
student’s high school
requirements, or interfere with
extracurricular activities in
which they want to participate.
(I.e., there is a schedule
conflict between a college
class and their after-school job
or sport?)
Parental work influences on the home
If the parents have jobs they
life
do not like, how does this
affect the home context? Does
Parental life choices
it cause stress? Does it change
how a student’s own identity
Early college program requirements
develops? If the parent/s do
(application criteria)
not work, how might this
affect the student’s identity
development and what they
want to pursue related to
schooling or occupation?
Do students have enough time
to improve GPA to participate,
if necessary?

Macrosystem

Rural, geographical context
Structural poverty
State and federal funding allowances for
early college programs
The recession?

	

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How is a student limited by
living in structural poverty?
Does living in a rural
geographical area affect the
opportunities students believe
they have?
What happens to these
students when funding is cut?

Chapter 3: Methodology
“To them [Middletown parents and grandparents], the American Dream required
forward momentum. Manual labor was honorable work, but it was their generation’s
work – we had to do something different. To move up was to move on. That required
going to college. And yet, there was no sense that failing to achieve higher education
would bring shame or any other consequences…In Middletown, 20% of the public high
school’s entering freshman class won’t make it to graduation. Most won’t graduate from
college. Virtually no one will go to college out of state. Students don’t expect much from
themselves, because the people around them don’t do very much. Many parents go along
with this phenomenon…There was, and still is, a sense that those who make it are of two
varieties. The first are lucky…The second are meritocratic” (Vance, p. 56).
Much research exists, mostly quantitative in nature, which has studied the success and
benefits of dual enrollment programs like early college. The benefit of conducting a qualitative
study like this one is to better understand how a certain population of students makes decisions to
participate in an early college program when they may not always find the same success (i.e.,
earning transferable college credit and applying it to completing a college degree more quickly).
Additionally, among the research concentrated on the occupational identity development of
adolescents, like those students who make decisions to participate in early college programs,
most studies focus on the experiences of those students who are either in secondary institutions
or postsecondary institutions, but not the students at the intersection of both institutions dually
(as described in Chapter 2).
In this chapter, I will explain the reason for selecting portraiture as the best methodology
for this study, based on the research question guiding the research. I come to this work with the
epistemological constructivist belief that in order to understand how students make decisions, I
recognize that they create the construct from which they assign meaning to their interactions with
others (Creswell, 2014). Guiding my idea was my curiosity about how the work images formed
and held by high school students from a rural, low socioeconomic background influence
decisions to enroll in career-focused early college programs.

	

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The research question that steered my study is:
How does the social context (circumstance) of students from a rural, economically
disadvantaged area influence them to make a decision and take action (agency) to enroll in an
early college program?
Portraiture as a Methodology
Portraiture as a research methodology looks to “combine systemic, empirical description
with aesthetic expression, blending art and science, humanistic sensibilities and scientific rigor”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, p.3). It consists of five essential features: context, voice,
relationship, emergent themes, and the aesthetic whole (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis). “The
drawing of the portrait [or telling of the story] is placed in social and cultural context and shared
through dialogue between the portraitist and the subject, each one negotiating the discourse and
shaping the evolving image” (p. xv). My position within the institutional context made me the
appropriate person to study these students and their motivations and then tell their stories. The
subject in the research is important, but so is the researcher. Unlike ethnographers who “listen to
a story…portraitists listen for a story” (p. 13). Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997) refer to the
work of Eudora Welty who wrote about that “subtle but crucial distinction” (p. 13). When one
listens “to” a story, he or she “waits to absorb the information and does little to give it shape and
form” while when listening “for” a story, he or she “searches for the story, seeks it out, is central
in its creation” (p. 13).
This work represents my story, as I have been long embedded in this context, as well as
the stories of the participants. A key distinction I want to make is that while the students come
from the same (rural, low-income region and post-recession Midwest) context, as I describe it in

	

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this work, they do not have the same story and are not necessarily affected by the context in the
same way. So, while I aim to tell a single story of a group of students and their experience in
early college, the story can only be complete with each of their unique stories, life experiences,
and voices woven in. Like a tapestry, the whole is better because of its parts.
I have spent the last fourteen years working with college students at an open enrollment,
postsecondary institution with a career-focused mission. Students often make claims that they
elect to come to college to get “good” jobs or “better” jobs than their parents. This institution is
housed in, and draws from, a mainly rural student base. Many students come from low-income
backgrounds, and it is common that they are first-generation college-goers. Of those whose
parents did attend college, most of the parents attended a college like this one – where the
majority of students aim to complete an associate degree.
In the last several years, state funding has increased to afford students opportunities to
begin earning college credit while students are still in high school. This particular institution
partnered with the regional educational service district to offer early college program options for
county students. Many traditional college students come to the institution in need of remediation.
The early college students are allowed to enroll in program classes and college-level general
education classes under the assumption that they meet certain academic thresholds to be able to
succeed in those classes. Not all of them do. In fact, when asked, many of the students who
participate in early college programs identify by their future careers, and not as college-students.
Portraiture is the appropriate method for this research because my experience from within the
context gives me a unique understanding of the nuance and complexity of the context of these
students and this particular program in the current political and economic landscape.

	

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A second key feature of portraiture is voice and researchers should use their voice to find
the goodness in the work, both as they define it, and how the subjects define it (LawrenceLightfoot & Davis). Lawrence-Lightfoot elaborates,
The researcher who asks first ‘what is good here?’ is likely to absorb a very different
reality than the one who is on a mission to discover the sources of failure…But it is also
important to say that portraits are not designed to be documents of idealization or
celebration. In examining the dimensionality and complexity of goodness, there will, of
course be ample evidence of vulnerability and weakness. In fact, the counterpoint and
contradictions of strength and vulnerability, virtue and evil (and how people, cultures,
and organizations negotiate those extremes in an effort to establish the precarious balance
between them) are central to the expression of goodness (p. 9).
This is important to establishing and maintaining the necessary relationship between the subject
and portraitist, which starts with the selection of subjects.
Selection of Participants
To select my participants, I used purposeful sampling (Creswell, 2014) and collected data
from students that self identified based on the following criteria: current early college students,
specifically those currently taking high school and college classes simultaneously. To help me
identify the students, I worked with the early college coordinator to target current early college
students (11th–13th grades–dual enrolled students to full campus-based students taking only
college classes.)
Once the students were identified (n=approximately 150), I sent them a Google form
survey via email (Appendix A) to solicit interest. Interested students under eighteen years of age
who completed the Google Form, were also asked to provide contact information for their parent

	

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or guardian to gain consent to participate. Parents or guardians of those students were sent
consent information via email and were asked to submit a signed consent form via U.S. mail, fax,
or scanned in email (Appendix B, consent form). I responded to the first dozen students who
completed the Google form. Two did not meet the criteria (not early college students) and one
was not yet eighteen years old and did not gain parental consent. This narrowed my participant
pool to nine, which was my goal.
Data Collection
A qualitative study relies on the collection of multiple sources of data from “a variety of
lenses which allows multiple facets of the phenomenon to be revealed and understood” (Baxter,
2008, p. 544). Thus, I met with early college students to discover their sense of their own
occupational identity and how that might have influenced their decisions to participate in an
early college program. Before doing so, I observed an informational session held at a high school
explaining the early college programs to get a sense of how the program is marketed to students
and their families. In the individual interviews, I hoped to discover personal beliefs, interests,
and goals of students, along with examine the ideas of what helps form identity development –
support of family, peers, school; career exploration; and social context and how all of these led
students to decide to participate in the early college program.
Observation
Prior to beginning data collection, I attended an informational session at one participating
high school to get a better sense of how the early college program is marketed to students and
parents. My aim was to get a better sense of the student experience from the front end, or the
point of initial EMC information access of most parents and students, to start to build a holistic
account of the entire phenomenon (Creswell, 2014 & Baxter, 2008).

	

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The session I attended was at one of the high schools that is heavily invested in the early
college program and sends more students through the program than the other K12 school districts
in the county. The early college coordinator, who works closely with the early college students
by assisting them with enrollment, registrations, and advising throughout their program, gave the
presentation. This individual is employed by both the regional education service district and the
postsecondary institution at where this study takes place, which gives her the unique perspective
of being both “within” the college context, while also outside of it.
What I discovered during this observation was that parents have questions about the
program, which is still new enough to be unclear, but growing in popularity that there was a halffull auditorium of students and families. The questions parents asked were mostly logistical in
nature, and not philosophical. I got the impression that they felt it was too good to be true, even
while wanting it to be true – no cost, official college credit, the potential to earn an associate
degree a year after completing high school.
Individual interviews
Via semi-structured interviews (see Appendix C for protocol), I spoke with participants
(n = 9, see Appendix D for a chart of the participants) about personal occupational identity
development, and about the student’s awareness of the effects of his or her social context on their
decisions by asking him or her about the images they have of work in general and as work relates
to their future. After writing up my findings, to validate and triangulate data, I looped back to the
individual students to have additional conversations about findings. This is a key feature of
portraiture, where the researcher looks for emergent themes through repetitive refrains and
resonant metaphors, which become identifiable as symbols and meaning, and then confirm the
findings with the subjects, which become a part of the portrait. The participants who came back

	

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to read the findings and the narrative portrait affirmed their own stories and verified the findings
that emerged.
To turn the stories into data from which to extract my findings, I first used a web-based
transcribing service to convert my audio files into text files. Once I had the raw text files, I
reviewed them by listening to the audio files while simultaneously editing the text files for
speaker errors and major formatting errors. On the next turn, I edited the transcripts for
mechanical errors, and began to add to my field journal characteristics of each participant that
seemed significant to their story and also major ideas that seemed significant, thus initiating the
coding process. After I completed revision of the interview transcripts, I created a codebook
(Appendix E), where I grouped the participants’ responses by interview question and section, to
better see themes emerge. I confirmed these themes with information I had garnered from the
notes that I kept in my field journal during my interviews with each participant and while going
through the audio and text files of the transcripts. The code book and field journal became my
guideposts as I began to compose both the student portrait and findings sections.
After I completed reviewing the interview transcripts, organizing participant responses,
and discovering themes, I narrowed, from nine to six to four, the number of participants whose
stories ultimately are included in this research. I used the following criteria to do so. First, since
all of my participants identified by traditional gender roles, I attempted to select an even number
of males and females, to provide what I considered to be more balanced ideas. In this way, I
eliminated one female first, Natasha.
This was an easy decision for me because during my time with her and after, listening to
the audio and rereading the transcript, I got the sense that her responses to my questions were
more what she felt was what I expected to hear and perhaps less authentic ones. Her responses

	

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did not feel insincere, however they felt more surface-level responses than many of the other
participants. Also, I realized that John’s and Andrew’s stories were similar, so similar that I
found myself confusing them in my reflection, organization, and subsequent coding, leading me
to remove them both. This made the choice to remove Natasha’s story, as I mentioned above,
easier. I did not end up with an even distribution after all, but one that works best for my study
based on the participant stories and how well they fit into the larger story of the geographic
context and early college participation.
At this point, then, I wrote six brief, more streamlined vignettes attempting to connect
them into one portrait, but on the advice of my chair, I reduced the initial six to four more robust
profiles. During our conversation, I knew which two students’ stories I would exclude, Steve and
Charlotte. I ultimately chose to remove these two because they were the oldest and youngest
participants, and subsequently, the most and least confident of their goals for the program and
beyond. Steve, the oldest participant, was completing the program and going into the military. In
fact, he had already spoken with a recruiter and his plan was in motion. He had more selfefficacy about his future, and about his goal for his experience in the early college program than
the others. He was using his credit to advance into a certain job in the military and hopefully also
use his credential upon completion of his service. The one thing he was not certain of was how
long he intended to serve.
Charlotte, on the other hand, was the youngest participant, and also the least certain about
her goals and even if she wanted to continue in the early college program. (She did ultimately
return the following academic year.) Her sisters attended one of the bigger state universities and
gave her advice about how the rest of her high school career might go, and during our time
together, she was slightly uncertain of what she really wanted, other than she knew she liked

	

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being away from her high school for college classes, even though college itself intimidated her.
Once I eliminated these two students’ stories from the final product and focused my work on the
four remaining portraits, which will be presented in the next chapter, I could assess and refine
my findings for later holistic analysis.
Analysis
As a result of my interest in discovering “how” and “why” high school students make
decisions to participate in early college programs, and in light of the research question that
operates within a specific context bound by time and place (Creswell, 2014), and my theoretical
framework of human agency and social ecology which, when considered together, say that
adolescents make decisions and act on them based on their social environments (Emirbayer &
Mische, 1998; Bronfenbrenner, 1977), I made use of Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis’ approach to
producing a set of portraits, which is the product of the aesthetic whole.
They believe, “In developing the aesthetic whole we come face to face with the tensions
inherent in blending art and science, analysis and narrative, description and interpretation,
structure and texture. We are reminded of the dual motivations guiding portraiture: to inform and
inspire, to document and transform, to speak to the head and to the heart” (p. 243). The four
dimensions of the whole are: conception, taking the emergent themes and organizes individual
stories with a collective one thus developing the overarching story; structure, the layering of the
themes “that give the piece a frame, a stability, and an organization” (p. 252); form, the
movement of the story “providing complexity, subtlety, and nuance to the text” (p. 254); and
cohesion, the integrity of the story (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis).
It is critical to remember, also, that this study represents a distinct time and place as
highlighted by the current stories and lives of the students. Recognizing this, I deeply considered

	

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the idea of how we talk about something that we are in the middle of. I wondered, before
starting, how open the participants might be to answering questions about themselves – if they
are in the middle of developing their identity (which I believe they are), how responsive to my
questions could they be? And, beyond that, would their responses be meaningful in a lasting
way? I ultimately decided they would be, because of the students’ representation of their current
state as valuable to their own ongoing stories.
Confidentiality
As an ethical responsibility, research should work to ensure confidentiality. This is
especially so when working with young adults, and inquiring about personal, potentially
sensitive topics, like their home lives and peer relationships. I took this responsibility seriously,
and employed several strategies so that confidentiality will be guaranteed.
All participants were provided with and asked to sign a consent form (Appendix B) that
included an explanation of the research and their role in it as participant. For those students
under the age of eighteen, I included the requirement of parental permission. Also, I changed the
names of all participants, so no one can be identified within the research, and I took steps to lock
and protect audio and all other data files.
Limitations and Exclusions
For the purpose of this study, I limited my research to a population of students who are
from rural and economically disadvantaged geographic areas. Based on objective factors like
parental education, community poverty rates, school free/reduced lunch counts, I made
assumptions that come from anecdotal evidence that suggests that poverty forces some of these
students to come to school stressed and perhaps hungry. I excluded the potential of their home

	

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backgrounds to have affected brain development; I approached this research with the belief that
they are cognitively able to make decisions and benefit from education.
I aimed to discover what leads these students to make decisions to willingly participate in
college education while simultaneously still completing high school. Students like these typically
and eventually become the student population of open enrollment institutions, and better
understanding them may lead to better support and funding structures to aid them. To focus my
work, this research did not specifically examine differences in race, gender, middle or upper
class students, or how poverty or hunger might cognitively affect children.
Additional considerations that were not the focus of my study, although I recognize their
importance in the larger scope of early college programs and accept they may appear in the data
are: the transferability of college credits to other institutions and the influence of adolescent
employment (work not leading to career employment–i.e., after-school jobs, babysitting, etc.) on
early college participation.
Trustworthiness
There are many ways to ensure data reliability, including member checks and
triangulation of data (Creswell, 2014). “Validity is one of the strengths of qualitative research
and is based on determining whether the findings are accurate from the standpoint of the
researcher, the participant, or the readers of an account” (Creswell, p. 201). I met with the
participants and the early college coordinator after the interviews to get a sense of their beliefs of
the decisions of students, thereby assuring data triangulation and member checking (Creswell,
2014). To do this, I discussed with them the protocols, transcripts, and my initial coding/theme
building and also with the early college coordinator who works with each of the students to assist
with registration, as a liaison between the college and the high school, and as an advisor when

	

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students need assistance and thus, had insight into the responses of students. The conversation
with the early college coordinator was indeed validating. She said, “I discovered a very common
thread with the majority of students currently enrolled in the early college program. In fact there
were times in the conversation I could finish her [the researcher’s] sentences based on my
working knowledge of the student population.”
After meeting with one of the participants upon completion of writing up the portrait and
findings, she finally asked me to change her name to an alias. In our interviews, after several
requests, she insisted that she did not want to change it, that she was fine using her real first
name. Reading the portrait and findings made it feel real and she explained, “That’s my real life
right there. You got it spot on. I want to be me, but…” The reality of her life and experiences
being out for potential public consumption overwhelmed her to the point of tears. I did not
expect that. Her sentiments were shared with another participant who expressed to me that “I’m
just amazed you got that out of me. I don’t really share my feelings.” This came after her many
questions and our robust conversation about qualitative research and a shared belief that we
better understand ideas as told through stories. I was not prepared to feel anxious about meeting
with my participants again after our interviews. I expressed to the participants how I felt, and that
I felt compelled to make sure that I told their stories accurately.
Researcher Positionality and Reflexivity
One of the main lenses from which I have viewed education and its purpose is that of
poverty - both financial poverty and what I call mental poverty, or the idea of hopelessness/or a
lack of desire for personal betterment (at the most micro-level). And so, questions like "Is it
better for our society for all students/people to get the 'best' jobs possible?" and "What does
education really do for our society?" really interest me.

	

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In my work context, I often see students who come through the doors of our institution
because they feel like they have no other options (whether they cannot find a job, or someone
told them that they "have to" go to college, or frankly, to get student loans to live on) and I have
never been able to fully accept that because I value education, knowledge, and learning so
strongly. I seek to understand their values which are sometimes so opposite from mine.
Open enrollment institutions serve so many students that I feel like the experience of my
institution cannot be unique. The institution suffers from a bit of an identity crisis in that we
believe we offer quality academic experiences as do other accredited postsecondary institutions,
however, we are often considered inferior, likely because of the career and vocational focus of
the programs we offer and because of our open enrollment philosophy. Externally, we suffer
from a prestige problem, as the ideas of academic quality and career focus conflict by
conventional higher education standards.
I believe my experiential knowledge with this population of students and the program is
important to my research. For more than a decade, I have had direct contact with students like
those who make up our early college population. I am embedded in the institutional culture and
because of this, I understand the nuance of the institution and of students like my research
population better than an objective party. Instead of taking time to integrate myself into the field
of study, I come to the research fully embedded. I do recognize that in addition to the benefit of
my positionality provides to my research, I also understand that my biases play a role. Naturally,
I come to this work about these students from a deficit perspective, but choose to consciously
work toward changing my perspective to one of abundance. Instead of wondering what they are
missing, I want to examine what these students have because of their environments that they can
teach us.

	

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This was not the career I planned for myself. I moved to this small community, in a rural
county, a year into my secondary teaching career. My goal was to find a middle school English
job like the one I left behind. However, I quickly discovered that for an outsider, it was
challenging to “break into” the small, close knit school districts here. I began working at the
college, the only postsecondary institution in the county, with the intent of only staying long
enough to find a classroom of my own. But what drew me to teaching initially, the idea of
helping others discover the wonder of learning, is was kept me at this institution for this long.
Once I decided that I was staying, I wanted to know more about the intersection of
secondary and postsecondary education, specifically issues of access and college and career
readiness, because these were the things affecting the students that I saw: many were not ready
for college-level work; many did not understand how to navigate the college classroom from
logistics to behavior, they did not know how to “be” college students; many were overcoming
major hurdles in their lives, poverty, substance abuse, apathetic or absent family, etc. It was a
challenge for them to attend class sometimes. At the core of it, though, was their desire, both
pragmatic and idealistic, to do “more” and be “better” for themselves, for their families. It
seemed they had something to prove to the world. This was what I wanted to explore.
So, my idea for this particular research began for me a dozen years ago when I started to
work in student affairs at this institution, the type of which was at the time new to me. We had an
open enrollment admission policy, but we were private, fiscally conservative, and focused on
professional trades at mostly the associate degree level, with a few bachelor programs. Back
then, our student body was made up more of post-traditional students – older, with families,
often with jobs – who were trying to make a better life. The students often talked about their
goals – admirable, to be sure - but when I would try to push them about the detailed steps of

	

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getting to those goals, they would falter or stumble in their response. That was why they sought
help. They didn't know how to do the actual work of getting to the end goal. I always felt like
there was something special about the students who would seek me out for assistance with class
scheduling, major changes, or class struggles. It felt like they were the same struggles as college
students everywhere, but heightened somehow by insecurity, fear, or other generally negative
emotion.
Overwhelmingly, it felt like these students had so many obstacles to overcome just to get
to my office and I never fully understood why this resonated with me so deeply. Instinctually, I
would feel proud of them when they would leave my office whether they met their graduation
goals or not (fewer than half did). It felt like something important, I just could not articulate what
that was at the time.
Fast-forward a decade and hundreds of similar conversations with students, to my work
involving primarily faculty, but also oversight of dual enrollment partnerships. Early college
seemed to spontaneously rise to everyone's minds and lips - from my doctoral coursework, to
higher education policy conversations, national accreditation conversations, to my own employer
institution and our partnership with the county regional education service district.
I quickly came to realize that our early college students, while younger in age, share
similar goals and more importantly, similar stories as the students I spent a dozen years listening
to. My idea began to take shape, and I knew I wanted to collect their stories, as a way to honor
the students and the greater story of college and career readiness in this geographic region and
potentially others like it.

	

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Chapter 4: Student Narrative Portraits
“My mom goes, like still to this day, she goes, ‘you know, you never go to school, kid,
how do you go to college?’ And I'm like, ‘Mom, I wake up every day and I go to college.
School? Nope.’ And so I mean, she's on me about it, but she's just glad that I'm taking
that step further. And actually, because my sister...my sister wanted to go to the Air
Force, but A, she wasn't mentally fit and B, she wasn't physically fit for it. So my mom
never really counted on it. You know, she never really got her hopes up. But now that I'm
taking my steps forward and everything, it's really bringing out like, holy crap, someone
in our family is actually doing something, you know?” – Bralyn, 11th grade
The main purpose driving this research project was to better understand the motivating
factors that lead rural high school students from under-resourced areas to college earlier. To
discover these factors, I asked students questions about work, school, and their families guided
by this principal research question: How does the social context (circumstance) of students from
a rural, economically disadvantaged area influence them to make a decision and take action
(agency) to enroll in an early college program? The student narrative portraits below are
provided to tell the stories of influence of a few participants of this research.
Carlos
Carlos looks like an average kid from a rural area. Nothing really stands out about his
appearance, other than his deep dimples when he smiles, which does not happen often; this is
largely why it is memorable. He is of average height, a stocky build, and wears glasses. He has
short, wavy brown hair, and a scruffy beard. He wears a torn, camouflage-printed hooded
sweatshirt, work jeans (dirty), and work boots. Carlos is studying in industrial arts and has no
goal of college beyond completing the credential he is currently earning. Carlos gives off an
appearance of comfort and confidence.
He gave responses that he knew, on occasion, would shock. The responses themselves
did not cause shock, but some of the detail did. He realized it because he stated, “I could tell you
didn’t like when I cussed, because you kept writing things down in your notebook.”

	

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He cursed. A lot. More than what would be deemed professional or expected in a
traditional educational environment. It was not offensive, but he assumed it was and it seemed
like he was communicating in his natural style. But then, one of the first things he discussed was
the young members of his family, a topic that seemed at odds with his harsh language and
attempt to seem tougher than maybe he is.
Carlos likes kids. On many occasions he talked about his niece and nephew. Nothing was
clearer than Carlos’ love of and loyalty to family. Immediately when asked about his upbringing
two things became clear to me: he did not feel at home anywhere and his mother is the most
significant person in his life. He made many comments about his mom including, “If I didn’t
have my mom, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I would have shot myself by now” and “My
mom is my everything.” When describing his dad, however, he admitted that their personality
similarities have caused some friction over the years. He described the two of them as too alike,
too stubborn. Ultimately, he preferred to discuss the impact his mother has had on his life than
his father. However, his parents are still together and the family is a unit that has stayed together
through many life events most would consider significant.
When Carlos talked about the several generations of family that have lived and moved
across state lines together, he seemed to get simultaneously dismissive and emotional. He grew
up living with aunts, uncles, grandparents, his sister, and cousins in a building that had
previously housed a “mental institution home” until that business closed. It had “something like
nine bedrooms” so there was space for everyone. “This was [in a small town on the west side of
the state, right in town] next to the McDonald’s, but they tore that house down. The Amish
bought it. They didn't care about anything, they just zipped it right up. It was there one day gone
the next.”

	

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He described his childhood as happy, even though he went on to talk about several
traumatic events. Those statements seem contradictory, but perhaps they were not. There can be
peace and happiness in between moments of difficulty, and it seems that was how Carlos
remembered his childhood.
Many of the adults in his family did not and still do not have jobs, but instead live off
social security for various injuries or health problems. He talked often about wanting to be
independent. Carlos appeared to put up walls emotionally, and yet was very forthcoming with
details about traumatic events, although he described them in an almost clinical way. He was
witness to one of his uncles dying in his bedroom (when Carlos was preschool-aged.) He does
not recall his specific age.
I didn't understand what was going on. And so the only picture I remember is my
grandma’s backside right in my face, because that's how tall I was, and she kept kind of
shooing me back saying, “Get back, get back.” I'm like, “no what are they doing to Uncle
Rich?” And then there is a family friend who is the guy who takes the bodies away. So I
seen him and I'm like, “what's he doing here, what's he here for? Uncle Rich?” And as
they were wheeling him right past the door, my Uncle Rich's arm fell off the gurney thing
and I seen that and I'm like, “hey, where you going?” And then that was it.
Carlos remembers hearing stories about this uncle’s substance abuse problem, but does not
remember this part clearly. Then he was also witness, two years later, to another uncle’s passing
(the brother of the first, both his dad’s brothers), also to a substance abuse problem.
For much of his childhood, though, Carlos thought he played a role in this death, because
he and his uncle had been “messing around” and Carlos, obsessed with wrestling, took a chair
and swung it, hitting his uncle in the back. As a kid, he now realizes that he did not actually hit

	

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his uncle hard, but at the time, he remembers being very afraid because it was after that when his
uncle’s back was bothering him, and he was taking pain pills for it. Ultimately, his uncle
overdosed on those pills and died. Carlos carried guilt around for many years believing his
horsing around with his uncle was the cause of his uncle’s back issues and ultimate death.
It was about that time that the family began to move around every year or two – from
different towns in the state to other states, sometimes extended family moving together, and
sometimes just his nuclear family which consisted of his parents, his sister, and him. All the
moving around left him unable to get attached easily and often unwilling to try to make friends,
which he still claims he does not have to this day. “I kept in touch with some of the people, but
you know when you move, you're forgotten about so I never really tried to get friends after that.”
There is one friend in Kansas that he still keeps in touch with, and this is the only person he
could think of as a trusted peer.
For as much as he talked about his “obsession” with his mom, he realized that he and his
dad are too alike for them to always get along the same way. His dad is restless, bored, unhappy,
and never able to sit still long enough to keep a job, which accounted for all of the moving. In
spite of the moving and inability to feel like any one place is home, Carlos will be the first in his
family to graduate high school and college, with the ultimate goal of financial freedom, and with
the pride that he exudes when talking about his family’s feelings about his being in college.
"Because technically my sister graduated from high school but so far I would be the only one
that's, besides her, to finish high school and finish college."
It is easy to say that his mom was his main influence on Carlos staying in school, when
he would not be judged by most of the family for dropping out. This support from mom led
Carlos to be “obsessed with my mom and I still am.” His story of witnessing trauma and death as

	

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a small child led immediately to his strong and deep devotion to his mother. She has remained
his closest and strongest ally. She encouraged him “not to drop out of school like she did” and
for school to be his main life priority. “I wanted a job, but Ma always said no you're going to
focus all your time on high school, you're going to get done.” She even helps him with
schoolwork, even while Carlos’ dad is not pleased with all the time she spends doing so. She
works, and his dad does not, and when she had attempted to take some college classes, Carlos
explained to me that his dad did not like all the time that her work and school were taking away
from him and the family.
Carlos could not articulate what work his dad had done back when he was working, but
simply that he no longer worked. “He didn't really retire from it. He just stopped working and
said ‘I'm retired.’” When asked if it was a health issue, Carlos replied, “No, it’s more an attitude
issue.” He described an issue that occurred at his dad’s last job, where he had conflict with a
colleague and their supervisor got involved. The supervisor was going to write up Carlos’ dad,
who quit before his supervisor could do so. Carlos called his dad stubborn and admitted he got
that quality from his dad. Even though his dad resents the amount time mom spends working
both at and outside the home, his dad has not worked since the incident with his colleague many
moves and many states ago, and does not plan on working outside of the home again. As much
as his mom has been a positive influence on his persistence, his dad has been the one to guide
him to the type of work Carlos has chosen.
Both of his parents then, influenced him, even though not many others did. There were
not many people his age at home growing up, even while there were multiple generations living
at home. It was he and his sister, with whom he does not get along. After the death of his uncle,
his cousin (the uncle’s daughter), who is a few years older than Carlos, also lived with them,

	

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because Carlos’ dad promised his brother he would look after her. He kept his promise even
through some trouble she caused the family when she invited some people to the house and they
robbed the family. Carlos speculated that she played a causal role in that.
They got probably fifteen grand in guns, ten grand in silver and gold, in computers and
everything, and the worst part about it was my brother-in-law who was in the Army
stationed in Afghanistan. His guns were there, too, and he had his grandpa's Colt 22,
which is probably now worth about five grand, seven grand in rifles and including the
two grand scope on the rifle. And they took it. And the funny part about it was where the
guns were hidden. Wasn't near the safes where the coins were hidden. You had to know
where they were put to get them. And the computers were hidden under the bed under
presents and my computer was there because my parents got me one for Christmas. And
so that was the present under the bed and they took all of that stuff, but left the broken
camera and the broken laptop.
While that caused a lot of anger, resentment, and difficulty with the family, Carlos’ dad stood by
his niece. “And so the detective that was head of the case begged my dad to press charges so she
can arrest him [the known thief] and also arrest my cousin, but my dad said, ‘no I told my
brother that I would watch over her and I can't do that to her.’” That event taught Carlos a lot
about “forgiving and forgetting” when it comes to family. Family stuck together.
They moved often, at dad’s insistence, including after that event. “Because my dad can't
stand being in one spot for more than a year. Can't stand the cold, goes to heat. He can't stand the
heat, comes back to cold. Gets bored, goes somewhere else,” explained Carlos. That made
making new friends difficult. Sometimes that mattered to him, and other times it did not. But it
made school difficult both academically and socially.

	

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Carlos talked about being bullied throughout school. He was often the new kid and said
the bullying occurred “because I was ugly and fat.” At one point in late elementary school:
Somebody walked up to me and said, “Dude, somebody drew a picture of you with
bombs strapped to your chest in a gun pointed at your head and a sniper going through
your head and a knife in your chest and a grenade in your hand.” So I walked up to the air
vent thing and the picture was sitting right there taped to it. I looked at it and I'm like,
“what's going on here?” So I told the teacher and he freaked out like, “who drew this?”
And it turned out it was the kid that had walked up to me and told me that somebody
drew it.” Two months later, in gym class, the same student punched me to the ground and
stomped on me and broke loose one of my teeth. (Carlos)
Carlos does not believe the other student suffered any consequences for either event. He went on
to describe getting into trouble multiple times for offenses that he did not actually commit, but
was blamed for. He was always either in the wrong place at the wrong time, or having people
represent the truth to favor them and make Carlos look bad, while they were picking on him. It
was easy for me to see why he did not enjoy school and was ready to leave. He went on to say,
I always tried to stay home all the time. Like, if you look at my school record, I probably
missed a good half of my entire twelve years of school. You think it was for reasons like
that [getting picked on] because I didn't want to go back. OK. I got embarrassed easily.
So like something happens, and no, I don't want to go.
When he did go, he worked to stand out to combat being different; it was a “defense by offense”
method. “Freshman year, I didn't care. I had long hair. So I'd always wet it and try and scare
people, [to make them] think I was crazy. Scared 'em. And everyone seriously thought I was
crazy. So I'm just like hey I'm going to roll with it. I want to be the kid that sits in the back of the

	

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class. Don't say nothin', don't do nothin'. I'm just going to freak people out. So that's what I did. I
sat back there like this. And I closed my eyes or I played on my phone.” He realized then,
though, that he was not happy and was tired of not having friends, so that was the point when he
made an attempt to do better in school.
In addition to social difficulties, moving around so often during adolescence left Carlos
with reduced positive self-efficacy towards academics. So it was probably more profound for
him than other students that he elected to enroll in college classes while still in high school.
Ultimately, he made the decision to participate in early college at the insistence and support of
his mom, who believed that he could be successful. She spoke with him about it after reading
about the program in an email sent by the high school principal.
We went to the orientation or whatever. And this dude was talking and all of a sudden I
just hear “you'll be a fifth year senior.” And that was it. I was like “nope. I ain't doing a
fifth year of this stuff. This ain't happening. I fought to finish on time. I'm like, it ain't
happening, ma.” I got mad and she goes, “Honey it's free. You don't have to pay.” And
she's still in debt from it all, from the online stuff from her program. [Which she didn't
finish.] So she goes, “you won't be in our boat. You'll be able to, you know, get free
college. You won't have to worry about paying it all.”
He realized she was right, so he enrolled. He did not feel academically prepared for it, but the
potential cost of not being successful and having to pay for it later motivated him to try and in
addition to, “I got tired of not having friends. I got tired of nobody talking to me” so he felt that
he had nothing to lose. He said, “If you look at my grades from high school freshman year, God,
I barely passed with a D in every class. Sophomore year.” School and all of its pieces, from
social situations to academic ones, did not work for Carlos.

	

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But then it got better. “Because I stopped just you know saying I don't want to do this, I
guess.” He describes the details of getting to this particular college as a bit of serendipity. “It was
junior year. I was living in [another state] and my school had a thing like a career exploration or
whatever it's called. And uh, I was fascinated by the [industrial program] work. And somehow it
just happened to be that the representative from [this institution] was there with that program
stuff. So that's what got me wanting to come here. Then when I was going to my high school
[after moving back to this state] it just kind of fell into place.”
On more than one occasion, Carlos said that if things were different, he wished he could
do it all again and make lasting friendships. However, while his family is intensely important to
him and on the one hand he wants friends, ultimately, he just wants to make enough money to
buy land, build off the grid, and live alone.
You know I want to be able to retire at a young age, like you know forty-five, fifty [years
old] because I mean I would not dream of…I mean I want to do this before I'm even
thirty, but I know that ain't going to happen. But I got a dream I want to go to Canada, out
in middle of nowhere, build me a cabin, and live with nobody. You know, hunt bear,
wolf, elk, moose, caribou, all that, you know, at my dispense. I want to live off the grid.
Nobody around me. The only people I hear, at that, are in a plane flying over me. I don't
want to deal with people. People are stupid and annoying and it's just me, myself, and I, a
gun, the wild livin'...or fighting to survive. You know that's what I want, but I know I
won't be able to do that when I'm in my 20s, so I want to be able to retire when I still
have an okay-ish back and knees and I want to go out there and build a cabin. So that's
why I got to get money.

	

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All of the trauma of his life likely affected Carlos more than he was willing to tell, and
phrases like “I’m tired” and “I don’t trust easy” spoke clearly. Through his smiles, jokes, and
laughs – often at his own expense – is a guy who sounds the way he described his dad. As the
product of his mom’s support and attention, and his dad’s personality and tough love, Carlos is a
walking contradiction, and model of duality. He claims to be happy even through things that
would make most people unhappy. He is lonely, but has lots of family around him that he loves
and who love him. He wishes he had friends, but dreams of spending his life alone. Carlos’ story
is complicated, and yet he took the complexity that made him and has done something different
than almost all of his family did – he came to college.
Rachel
Rachel is very respectful, kind, and soft-spoken. It was important to her that she be
perceived as a hard worker, rule follower, and bright – and she is all of those things. She has
done well in school, including her college classes. Much of the pressure to do well seems to have
come from her. Rachel has a goal of a bachelor degree, which she hopes to keep working on at
this institution, after completing the early college program. She is pursuing a degree in
accounting, which is a job that seems symbolic of how she wants to live her life: governed by
rules, order, and ethics. In fact, she is so goal-orientated that they all (she and her parents)
decided she should not a hold a job – any job – until after she completes college. “My mom and
dad don't really want me to have a job right now. They really want me to focus on college and
everything, so they're fine with the fact I don't have a job. I mean, I would like to have a job, but
I understand where they're coming from.” All that so she can concentrate on school and keeping
her grades up. This kept her from many extracurricular activities, except those community
service events she participated in with her church or National Honor Society at school.

	

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Rachel came across as grateful and mature, and very much in-line with characteristics of
the oldest child in the family. “I live with my mom, dad, two brothers…Um, pretty happy home
life. You know we have our ups and downs, just like any other family, but we get along very
well and I feel like I can tell my mom anything, so peaceful, I guess.” She seems responsible and
thinks of others before herself. She spoke in generalities often, giving off the sense that she was
trying to be open, but also still keeping private things like family comfort (income), but as her
dad has not worked for several years and suffers from medical issues, having three children at
home on one salary is probably challenging. The story she told omitted that sort of commentary.
However, she was very open about her changing role in the family over the last couple of
years. After dad got injured, she took on a lot of the household responsibilities, and although she
accepted the responsibility, she acknowledged the difficulty of it.
My dad, he had to quit his job, basically, because of his migraines. He gets them every
day so he can't do any work. So within the past few years, he's had to stay home all the
time. He has his good days and his bad. All these tests…they've done MRIs and
everything, but they don't know [what causes them]. I mean, it's been hard for my...for
me with my dad home because he's supposed to be the provider, you know, and it's hard
to see him like that, in pain. So it's kind of hard for me, emotionally. I’ve done the meals;
I do all the laundry and everything. So I feel like I’ve had more…not burdens, but
responsibilities put on my shoulders. Well this was just this whole past year, I felt like
I've had to grow up really fast and it's hard. Sometimes I think his medication causes him
to be upset with me. So sometimes he doesn't think I appreciate, you know, living at
home and everything, but I do.

	

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Rachel, as one of the oldest participants, and from a household that she described as “stable” and
“peaceful” understands the nuance that while her father is suffering, which causes tension
between them, she is mature enough to recognize and not blame him explicitly or assign his
behavior or frustration on her directly. With that, though, mom is the one now financially
responsible for the family and Rachel considers their relationship to be closer. Considering what
some of the other participants have experienced, this may not seem harmful, but the recognition
of it “ending her childhood” is probably no less traumatic for her than some other thing that
causes the end of a childhood for another person.
Rachel named her mom as the person she trusts the most. She struggled to name others
besides her parents, but since her mom understands being a woman, also, Rachel feels closer to
her. When talking about trust relationships, Rachel said, “I guess I don't want to be, like sexist or
anything, but because she's female she understands more things I feel like than my dad. So I can
talk to her about school or just anything really. Whereas with my dad I will tell him some things
but some things I don't feel like I can have him understand. You know?”
Additionally, Rachel’s mom has reached professional and educational goals that match
her own. Mom went to college, earned an associate degree, and works as an administrative
assistant. She went back years later to earn a bachelor degree. "Dad would've had a few associate
degrees, but some family issues prevented him from accomplishing that. He had a few classes to
go and he would have had a few in an automotive related career. He did go to college, but he
didn't get a degree." After following up with her about her dad’s schooling, she deferred from
talking about details in the spirit of respecting his privacy and decisions, thus providing proof
that she lives by the morals and good behavior that guide her life.

	

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Within seconds of beginning to speak, Rachel talked about the importance of the church
and her faith in her life, and this became a running theme of her story, thus supporting her goal
of rules and order. Her appearance and demeanor also match this idea of remaining within
certain traditional guidelines. She is of average height, average build, has light brown hair, and
glasses. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, and carried a backpack. Nothing about her appearance
stood out, although her face is kind and her eyes are bright.
And while the importance of the church is key in her narrative, the people there are not.
She explicitly talked about not really feeling a sense of closeness with any of the parishioners, a
theme that continued when talking about her peers at school. Unlike many of the others, Rachel
enjoys the academic work of school, and while she talked of not having many friends, she spoke
very highly of her high school teachers and how they made her realize they were real people
outside of school. “I really like school. Unlike most kids, I loved high school. I hated to leave, it
was just kind of the closeness. I felt like I was really engaged with my teachers, really close. You
know, they opened up about their personal life and stuff. It wasn't just about learning. It was
about establishing a relationship with the student.”
Rachel seems to have responded favorably to her teachers, but for as positively as she
spoke of the teachers and their being open to meaningful connection with the students, this did
not translate to her peers. Rachel wondered why the people she thought were her friends in high
school do not talk to her anymore. “I don't know. I've tried to contact some of them, but they
don't want to be with me anymore, I guess. It's very painful. I'm a very emotional person and I
have a big heart so I care about my friends.” Of her three friends she considered “close,” only
one has decided to go to college. The other two did not have plans for their future the last time
Rachel spoke to them.

	

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She recognizes that perhaps being involved with other things that other students were
might have helped build her community of peers. “I mean I wasn't really in sports or anything,
and I had thought about going into sports. But I knew I wanted school to be my main focus,
grades and everything...making sure I graduate with my 4.0 GPA. Everything like that, so
maybe...but yeah, sports, I thought about it. I just thought I should keep active you know…”
What Rachel felt was lacking though, would have aligned better with her own interests and
desires:
I thought it'd be nice to have like a religious group for kids at school. We did have, like at
lunch they'd have people come in and talk about it, but it wasn't the same, like,
denomination. But just like if we had a classroom where all the students who were
religious could just talk about their feelings, because like, we had to learn about
evolution, obviously, just like any other kid. And so I thought it'd be nice to have like
other options out there than just teaching that, 'cause…and you're kind of forcing the
beliefs on the kids. So having something like that, or like a home ec class. I thought that
would have been cool. I wanted to do that, but we didn't have one. Which you thought
that would have been useful to cook. Everybody has to know how to cook.
In small, rural communities like hers, having limited options is not unique. And while her district
has the closest proximity to a major university than any other district in the county, she did not
give it much significance. Her school would occasionally go on field trips to see campus labs or
shows at the campus theater, but it seemed outside of her realm of influence of options for
interaction. Instead, sports are at the center of all extracurricular options and it feels to those on
the outside, like Rachel, that all the same smaller group of kids are involved.

	

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“Everyone knew everyone” is how Rachel described it, for better or worse. There were
about three dozen students in her graduating class, but even at that size, there was space for
archetypal high school hierarchy. “Usually the popular kids were like the jocks and stuff like that
and then you had the nerds and then kind of everybody else. So, we still had our cliques.”
Unlike some low-income communities where the population can be transient because of
finding available housing and work options, Rachel did not believe there is a lot of movement in
and out of the community, because the faces stay the same and so do the stories. Her family, for
example, has lived in the same house for Rachel’s entire life. It is that kind of stability, and her
status as the oldest child and only girl in the family, that likely provided the framework for her of
how she thinks she should and how she wants to live her life.
This can probably explain why she finds it so difficult to function with her dad’s medical
issues. She discussed how challenging it is for her to see him in pain, but as he is unable to fulfill
his role as the family provider, that is also difficult for her to watch.
Yet, she persists to have a career, to have a family, and to find a way to do these things
without moving too far from her parents or brothers. She wants to make them proud. Her mom
has taught her most about the goals she has, but she has learned from her dad, also. When asked
about what dad has taught her, she replied, “just kind of life, in general, just enjoy it but don't be
indulgent. You know, don't, obviously, don't do drugs or smoke or any of that, you know. So just
the whole ethical thing. I mean some of my other family members will contradict what he
says…He thinks I should marry a Catholic. But my aunts are kind of like, it doesn't matter if he's
Catholic, you know. So it's you know, [there’s] this battle. Like, ok, who do I listen to?”

	

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She has goals for the future and has already begun to think about how she may get there.
When addressing her five and ten year goals, she thoughtfully considered her response before
saying she would see herself,
Hopefully out of college, having all my classes done and everything and getting my first
job, maybe second. I don't know where I'll be. I would kind of like to work around where
we live, because I mean I've lived [in the same small town], so that's kind of all I know. I
would like to kind of travel maybe a little bit and see how other things are I guess. I mean
I don't want to live in another state or anything but I mean like maybe a vacation or
something, I'd like to see other places. Hopefully, I don't know, but maybe married? I
don't know about kids yet. I haven't figured that part out yet. But I mean maybe married,
I'd have my job. Hopefully the same one I've had. Not having to keep switching back and
forth to different ones.
Unlike some of her peers in the early college program, she places college attendance (beyond the
early college program) in high regard and believes that it is the main gatekeeper for people in
reaching whatever career goals they may have. She recognizes that there is an aptitude
component to career fit and says, “I feel like we're all good at different things and I have weak
points just like anybody else and I strong points just like anybody else. But like a doctor, I don't
know if I could memorize all those medical terms and everything. So that kind of pushes that out
of the picture. But like anybody can work at like fast food or anything. That's not a difficult thing
to do. So it just depends on who you are and what you're good at.” But with the recognition of
preference and aptitude, she does not address access, limitations, or other circumstances that
might affect a person’s career, but says instead,

	

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That's the main thing, just like, even if you...OK, two kids graduate from high school, one
goes off to college and one doesn't. One could become the doctor because they can go on
to college and do that. But if this guy, he didn't go to college, he can't become a doctor
because he didn't get the degree and everything to be qualified to do that. So that's really
the main thing.
This is the reason she believes that all students should take the opportunity to participate in early
college, if their school offers it. “I think everybody should have college experience before
graduating from high school, so they even consider college as an option. Because some of my
friends, they aren't going to college. But would that be different if they had a [college] class in
high school? [Some of them may be insecure about being successful.] Or they're worried about
the cost. You know, student loan payments and all that. Like if their parents didn't go to college,
like ‘why should I go to college if my parents didn't’."
The county students had an option of two different early college programs at two
different institutions and many students who selected this one did so mostly because they did not
want to or could not drive the extra thirty minutes to the other institution. In fact, Rachel
considered another institution before settling on this one. “[This institution] hasn't been the only
college that's been on my mind. I took two classes through [a regional comprehensive university
about an hour away]. But, a few years ago we had to go down by there for my cousin's wedding.
And so we were by the campus and I was just overwhelmed and I just, I don't know, I couldn't
breathe or something. I was like, I can't do this. This college is not for me.”
Her experiences in and out of school have skewed the traditional framework and order
under which she operates. In spite of that, this is the life she wants to lead, so much that she
cannot see herself moving too far away. She wants a job “down the road” that is within a thirty-

	

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minute drive of her current town – doable, but limiting in ways perhaps she has not yet realized
or allowed herself to see outside of her current lens of rules and order of what is right and what it
means to be a good person.
Taylor
Taylor is tall, lovely, fresh-faced, stylish, friendly, and cheerful. She deferred to friendly
and cheerful in her responses, even when seeming a bit uncomfortable inside or talking about a
terribly traumatic event. Taylor gives the impression of being helpful to a fault, seemingly at the
expense of her own comfort. She is a generous conversationalist, which seems to cover up a
sadness or unease. Taylor’s ultimate career goal is to be a nurse practitioner, but wants to put in
her time as a nurse before doing that. It seemed important for her that it was understood that she
did not choose to become a nurse because she knows any nurses personally, but because she has
a desire to help people and she knows that nursing is a stable and respected career. “I'm not
doing it for really anyone besides me. So no one I've known right here is a nurse or anything.”
Taylor has held a steady job since she was sixteen and places value and self-worth on being a
hard worker and a responsible employee.
Taylor‘s best friend is her mom, and she spent a lot of time talking about their close
relationship. However, she is also ready to be on her own. She came across as self-reliant and
responsible for herself and her future. She has been working since she was sixteen years old (a
couple of years ago.) “I've saved a lot. So I feel like I can move out, but I just like...my mom's
like my best friend, it's so hard. Like I've talked to people, and they're like, ‘your mom's an adult
and [she] doesn't know that she's like holding you back.’ I'm doing this secretly. It's like it's
really…I don't know. My mom's my best friend and I do everything with her and I help her out
like with [her step-granddaughter] and all this stuff. So I really don't want to leave her.”

	

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Many things from her upbringing caused Taylor to have difficulty trusting people. Her
parents divorced when she was so young she does not even remember it. Actually, she claims she
does not remember many details from her childhood. She grew distant from her dad who lives
about an hour away, but her brothers still see him on occasion. “I have two older brothers. One
of them, he's 22. He moved out, but my oldest brother is 25 and he still lives with us. He doesn't
really help out around the house, so it's like me helping my mom all the time and so I've thought
about moving out. Like I can do it on my own. I am financially stable to do that.” Taylor’s mom
remarried when Taylor was in kindergarten and her new family moved around a bit in the same
small town she still calls home. Her stepdad also had children from a previous marriage, and so
their home became an inconsistent blended family.
A notable influence on Taylor was her stepsister, who Taylor only referred to as her sister
throughout the conversation. Taylor’s sister lived primarily in the Pacific Northwest, but she
would come back to the Midwest to live with Taylor, her mom, stepdad, and Taylor’s two
brothers for summers and for other extended visits. From Taylor’s explanations, her sister did not
seem to be settled anywhere. There were a dozen years separating the two girls, but Taylor spoke
highly of her and felt close to her. And so when, four years ago, her sister died of a drug
overdose in her car in a fast food restaurant’s parking lot, Taylor was stunned. She was not aware
her sister had a drug problem, and only realized after her death that the rest of the family knew
and kept it from her.
My stepsister died a couple years ago in….she died in January about four years ago. So
her daughter lives with us now…my sister was living with us at the time, it was one of
those times when she lived with us. She...so I didn't know, like when she would come to
[this state], I thought it was just like for visits and stuff. It turns out like her mom wanted

	

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her to come here because I guess she was like selling her mom's stuff for drug money. So
she died of a heroin overdose. So what happened was she went, it was like the day of, she
was kind of sick or whatever, like with the flu. It was wintertime. And so and I was like
with her in the kitchen I was kind of skeptical because she took like a cold pill or
something and she took it with like a mimosa, like orange juice and vodka, you know? So
like why is she taking medicine with alcohol? So whatever. So then she said that she was
like going to the doctor or whatever and this is like five o'clock at night. So like, you
know, maybe she's going to urgent care or whatever. I guess her mom was texting her
and telling her to go. And so normally my sister like is all done up when she leaves and
all stuff and she wasn't. She was in like yoga pants and stuff like that. So when my mom
saw her leave, like she kind of thought something. So then she ends up in [a city an hour
north of home], I guess. And she was like at this McDonald's, like in her car. And I guess
she had her head on her steering wheel and someone came up to her and was like, “Are
you OK?” And they called the ambulance and then she died in the ambulance. And so we
didn't...the cops came to our house at like 2:30 in the morning and told us…and yeah, it
was like a waiting game for a long time finding out what really happened. And then my
mom and I were cleaning out her stuff, and then in her suitcase was like a box of like
needles that diabetics would get from the store, you know. And so, I was like, “what is
this?” And well before that, like a week before, my parents got in a really big fight and
like we thought they were going to get divorced. And then she died. So ever since then,
it's like been the kind of rocky.

	

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Taylor’s sister also tragically left behind a daughter, now age eight, who lives with Taylor’s
stepdad, mom, and Taylor. The girl’s father lives out west, but does not keep full custody of his
daughter. This all seems to be a dynamic that has been significant to Taylor’s own development.
Just before her sister’s death, her stepdad planned a trip to Florida with his daughter (who
died before they could go) and his granddaughter, but not the others. Taylor remembers that “it
caused a lot of fights between my parents and one especially, [when] they were going to go to
Florida. So when my sister told me that they were going to go to Florida, she just like texted me
and was like, ‘oh, I'm going to Florida and you're not’ like kind of rubbing it in my face. And
then I told my mom and my mom goes to my stepdad. And then it starts this whole fight and
that's when that big fight happened and then it was like, oh like divorce and all this stuff and then
like she died and whatever and that like put a pause on everything and then…I don't know it's
still it kind of rocky or whatever, but…” For as mature as Taylor is, I believe she realizes that her
sister was not so and that has been something that she has had to contend with often since her
sister’s death. She does not seem to resent her sister’s life choices or death, but has certainly
been permanently affected by it.
The death and fighting have changed the family dynamic. Taylor remembers them all
going on trips and doing fun things together, like hot air balloons rides, “but the last time we did
that, my oldest brother was 18, so we haven't done anything like that in...like we haven't been
like a family in a really long time. And we stopped eating dinner at the table together, everyone
eats at different times. Everyone's older, everyone does [things] on their own.” She has also
stopped spending time with her real dad, by her choice, even though one of her brothers still sees
him. “Last time I saw him was my birthday and my birthday is in December. So I mean like we
talk, but I don't know. He just like...I've kind of lost the connection with him. And every time he

	

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comes around, like for my open house and then graduation, he just makes me feel bad sometimes
for not spending time with him. Stuff like that.” That makes for a lonely home or personal life
for Taylor, which likely affects how she comes across to people at school, too.
At about that time of her sister’s death and after, Taylor started to see a difference in how
other students at her school treated her. While she did not say it, the chronology of her story led
me to believe that this is when she began to have difficulty trusting other people. She talked
about seeing girls at other schools, much bigger and more populated than her own, in bigger
cities, with a sort of reverence and commentary that they all dress so nicely, and look so
sophisticated and are prettier than girls in smaller towns. “Everyone's got these big fancy houses
and then the wardrobe to go with it.” It was odd to hear her say that, because she is quite a lovely
girl (by society’s traditional standards of beauty). These comments made her seem insecure and
vulnerable almost.
As far as her own group of friends at her own high school, she described them as
acquaintances, but did not really feel like she had anyone close to her that she could trust besides
her mom and her boyfriend, who did not go to her high school, is a year ahead of her in school,
and is now studying at a major university in the state. Taylor was a freshmen when her sister
died and news travels quickly in a small town. “I had like, like people I could...I don't know. I
didn't really have close friends. I knew people, but I didn't really...like my lunch table was
always different, you know? I didn't really have close friends…I never really got invited to
anything. And like even now, if people invite me to a party, I won't go or something like that.
Everyone just was like, snotty and that kind of thing and I wasn't about that. I just didn't have any
close friends. And if I was close to someone, they'd be telling someone else like half [of what I
said]…so [I have] difficulty trusting people.”

	

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She talked about her mom the most, but almost as though she, Taylor, was the adult in the
relationship. Taylor called her mom her best friend several times and shared that “my mom and I
are really close. We're always together. Like at home we're always watching TV together, always
doing dinner together, like everything.” She sometimes feels a responsibility to take care of her
mom, even though she is the child, and that has become a reason that she feels the need to not
stray too far for college for the time being.
Her mom did not go to college, and has worked various jobs that Taylor can remember,
and although her mom does not hold her back or keep her from doing something else, Taylor’s
sense of duty to her mother keeps her at home, even though she has enough money and
responsibility to move out on her own. And so, her career choice of nursing makes sense. She
wants to take care of people, like she takes care of her mom. Also, while she does not remember
much of her childhood, she recalled that her sister had spoken of wanting to be a nurse, even
though she struggled in college and never finished before her death. When Taylor was asked if
she thought her sister’s goal of being a nurse had anything to do with her own decision to pursue
it, she seemed surprised, as though she had never made that connection before.
Taylor has career goals that the early college program is directly helping her achieve. By
the time the new academic year begins, she will be just two semesters away from applying to
nursing school, which she wants to pursue at the same institution. She does not really have a
desire to leave the area; she wants to stay close to her mom, even though she does not see herself
still living at home after she completes nursing school. Once she is established as a nurse, she
wants to keep going to become a nurse practitioner.
But unlike her “work” goals, her career goals are not financial ones,

	

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Everyone is always like, ‘oh like I want to do this. They make such-and-such dollars’ and
still to this day, I'm like I don't even know how much nurses make. Like when I told my
boyfriend I wanted to be a nurse practitioner, he immediately looked at the numbers and
I'm like first of all, I don't even know how much a regular nurse makes, let al.one a nurse
practitioner. I don't care. Like that doesn't...I mean I know it's good, like you get a lot of
money. But I obviously that's not why. A lot of people are drawn to the money and I'm
like, like all my life I worked minimum wage and I really don't care. And I've saved a lot
from that.
She has worked, as previously noted, since she was sixteen and has saved most of that money.
But money was the reason she gave for wanting a job at a young age. “When I was younger I
would always [say I] want to be a hair stylist. But I really didn't think about work until like right
before I turned sixteen. I'm like, I need money. So, that's when I thought of actually working
now. And I'll work anywhere. My first job was at [a local nursery]…Now I'm a CNA [certified
nurse aide]; right now I have a career. So that's really cool.” Her current job required her to have
training and it has allowed her to begin to find her place in her future field, so she places great
value on it. She was able to pay for that class using money she saved by not paying for college
tuition. “I got thirty-six college credits for free. I got my books in the fall that were close to $900.
I got that for free. And not having to pay for tuition this year, I was able to pay for tuition for my
CNA class by myself. And so, I did that instead of paying for tuition; for this and that.”
Her decision to enroll in the early college program through this institution was an easy
one for her. She had her career goal in mind when she found out the program aligned with that
goal, and she had already made the decision that she wanted to attend this institution. Both her
sister and one of her brothers had attended this institution so it was familiar to her that way, and

	

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also as part of the community. She does not remember hearing much about the program initially,
“so we went to the meeting and they're like ‘free college’ and so then my mom and me were like,
‘oh let's do it.’ I just remember going to the meeting and then just signing up for it to see what it
was like.”
Enrolling was not a big decision fraught with anxiety, and she spent no time talking about
academic struggles, so it all felt natural for her. It seems that participating felt fairly low-stakes
for Taylor, with more to gain (free college) than lose. And she could get out of going to high
school, where she did not have many friends anyway. Unlike many of the other students, who
struggled with the idea of extending their official high school graduation date, Taylor said, “I
was like, as long as I still walk. Like if I was actually graduating with the other class [instead of
still able to walk with my own class], I'd be ok, these aren't my friends, but like whatever.”
Her nonchalant attitude toward the decision to participate carried over to her first term of
classes, even while her schedule was quite full.
I came here from seven-thirty to nine-fifteen [in the morning]. I went to [high] school
from ten to one. I had like two classes. Then I went to work. And then in between that
was when I had my three online classes that I had all at once. And at first, I was like, oh
like this is just like a college class, whatever. I didn't think it would go towards my
[official college] GPA and I could've done a lot better. I mean I got As and Bs, but I'm
like, oh man I could've done better. Literally the information is right here. Why didn't I
do better?
It did not take her long to realize the stakes in the early college program were higher than she
initially considered, along with a much more demanding workload. When describing a specific
online course she took,

	

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One of them was three weeks [long]. And then it had like three or four assignments due
on the same day and they're like pages and pages and I'm like, I'm still in high school. I
would do everything in one day. One sitting. I would get everything done for the online
classes. And then like, I remember I went [out of town] twice last year. One for our state
competition for [a health science student organization] then the week after was our spring
break and my mom and I went [away] for a couple of days. I remember doing homework
both of those trips, for the online classes.
She learned quickly the amount of work it would require and she met the challenge, even while
not quite understanding the expectation in the beginning.
Well first of all, my freshman year [of high school] I didn't know what a GPA was. No
one told me that. I didn't know that it's like set your freshman year. So I had a hard time
bringing my GPA back up. I graduated like a 3.6. With all the young people, everyone is
like stressing GPAs and grades and stuff. When I was like a junior and senior like they
would be oh, do you guys want to come talk to the incoming freshmen about this stuff?
And I'm like why didn't anyone do that for us? That would have helped…And then like
everyone talks bad about [this institution] and I'm like, ‘are you kidding me?’ I have an
80 percent [in one class]. If you get below 80 percent, that's failing. Like that's an F pretty
much. I failed a class this year. [By not meeting the minimum grade requirement.]
She does not believe her early performance affected her ability to be accepted into the
nursing program next year, a full year before her peers would be ready to apply. Taylor seems
goal-oriented and intrinsically motivated, although her ultimate goals are to help others, not
herself. She has no plans for a family and she did not even mention that, even though she and her
boyfriend have been together for three years in a strong relationship that weathered his first full

	

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academic year away from home at a major university. Occasionally she wonders if his
experience there will come between them and that one moment her confidence clouds into brief
insecurity. But that soon clears, and her own goals come back into focus; aspirational goals that
focus on her career and what she will need to do to get there.
Bralyn
Bralyn’s ultimate career goal is to work for the FBI, by way of law enforcement (police
officer) and then the military. She has a deep voice, which does not match her looks. She looks
very young, and she is, at seventeen. She has long blond hair and braces. She is quite small in
stature, but again, has a deep voice that is surprising. Bralyn’s family is important to her, but
they are not without their issues.
Her parents, like her paternal grandparents, have been together since they were in middle
school. Bralyn’s father, as she explained, never had a desire to do much. He took over the family
business from his own father, because it was expected. It bothers him that Bralyn “doesn’t need
him” and she described him to be a little sexist. He wants to protect her, but in ways she feels she
does not need protecting, and only because she is a girl and not because of her age. Through that,
she is very close with her dad. She grants some exception and is a bit softer when talking about
him because “he’s had a hard life” and “bad things happen to him all the time” even though she
does not believe he deserves it.
Bralyn presented a positive outlook on life, even when she would have every reason not
to have one. She used words like “chill,” “peaceful,” etc. But the story she told made her life
sound tough. Her storyline is that she hates school, hates the people there, that it is very easy for
her academically, that she does not fit in at school, and that she is more mature than other

	

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students her age, even though she has “lots of friends.” This all makes her not want to deal with
any of it – the people or the classes.
She has very negative feelings about high school, but seems to feel very differently about
college. “Like college, like this? It's great. I actually love this. But going to school and just...I
think it's like not necessarily the kids, but like the kids. Because I'm a lot more mature than
others. And so they really get under my skin with the way that they act. Like they all act like
little fifth grade boys and girls it's just like...I've always like had older friends. So it's like school
itself, like I'm getting to a point where it's just so easy, like there's really no point in me going.
Like I can miss a week of school and not have any homework. Like, it's pointless.”
I opened this chapter with Bralyn telling part of her story. She loves college. She spoke
about the level of motivation of the other students and that while they maybe did not share her
intensity for a law enforcement career, they at least cared about the classes and were motivated
to do well. And this was not what she experienced with students at her high school, although
based on her story, she played an active role there. She has played multiple sports and has some
friends that she likes (but not lots of them), but ultimately her wish was to be homeschooled.
“I've always wanted to be homeschooled. Just because of, you know, like I can get it done WAY
faster. And you know, not have to deal with stupid people.” It was not a possibility for several
reasons including her mother’s work schedule and her father’s lack of patience and education.
“But my dad dropped out when he was in eighth grade. I mean he's smart as crap. But he uh, he
has to go constantly. So there's no way that he would be able to, you know...And then my mom,
she works at [a hospital] in the ER. So I mean she's busy all the time. You know working twelvehour shifts. So there's really no opening for me to get homeschooled.”

	

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Bralyn talked about the tricky relationship she has with her parents. The previous
summer, she moved out of their home and into the home of her aunt and uncle, because of
ongoing issues with her sister, who struggles with long-term mental-health issues. “Bralyn has
two sisters: her older sister, who Bralyn describes as a pathological liar, physically and
emotionally abusive, and angry, all of which was “really hard on our parents” and her younger
sister. Her younger sister has some “cognitive impairment” and it “takes her a long time to
process things.” She idolizes their oldest sister and that bothers Bralyn, because of their older
sister’s violent tendencies. Bralyn would try to stop her sister’s outbursts and call out her lies, but
would end up in the middle of drama that she really did not want to be a part of. At one point, her
older sister even threatened to kill Bralyn. So she left. Her aunt and uncle took her in, and she
stopped speaking with her sister. That was the point when Bralyn began to experience a
“normal” and “happy” life.
Bralyn attributed the beginning of her sister’s troubles to a boyfriend who her sister met
in middle school. The relationship was an intense one and lasted several years and through the
sister being sent to live with family in another state for a time. Bralyn did not say specifically,
but led me to believe her sister was sent away so the couple could be separated. Upon her return,
the relationship continued. In fact, Bralyn discovered not too much later that she would be an
aunt. During this, the sisters were not speaking and Bralyn was still away from home.
Bralyn said that their mother is sad about it all, but does not feel like there was anything
she could do. The boyfriend did not step up to the responsibility of being a father. According to
Bralyn, “he left her when she was seven months pregnant. He was there when she had the baby,
which was a plus. We were like, fine, whatever. But he's only...she's almost five weeks old, six
weeks old. And he's only seen her three times. And so he's always like out doing better things,

	

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which is partying every night.” That is the behavior that influenced her sister when the two first
got together.
Well she used be a good kid. I mean she...having her baby has helped her out a lot. But
like she, started drinking at like a really young age. She would miss curfew. She would
not come home. I mean they [the parents] were upset. They tried, you know, like
grounding her, but when they're all at work, you know, she gets home from school and
she just leaves. So it's like they couldn't really do much. And so when they got that break,
my Uncle Tim, he's a U.S. Marshal and he goes, ‘dude, send her down here.’ And so she
went to South Carolina for about a year and it was great. She probably would have had
one of the best lives ever. You know, they got a lot of money. You know, that she was
able to go do a lot things and just out of, you know, this area and separated from that boy,
so. Then she came back, and got back with him.
The pregnancy seemed to calm the sister’s anger and issues, and according to Bralyn, gave her
sister something positive to focus her energies on. For her part, Bralyn has forgiven much of the
past drama with her sister, so she could provide a good example to her new niece. She was in the
delivery room when her sister gave birth (mere weeks before our interview) and that she
financially supports her niece by purchasing needs like formula, diapers, and clothing to make
sure she is cared for.
Part of her motivation is to remove herself from the troubles of her sisters and family.
“The farther I can go in life, the farther I can get away from her and that life.” And yet, she and
her sister have come to a truce of sorts. Bralyn helps out with her new niece so that the baby can
“understand a loving environment” and because all kids need a ‘crazy aunt.’ Her sister lost her
job after having the baby and for Bralyn that means pitching in. “You know, she's not on cash

	

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assistance, she's not on anything, so I tend to help her out a little bit. I mean I have...I work, so
sometimes I help her get some things for the baby or get some things for her, or like you know,
her house or something. But I mean we also have our parents too, that help her. I push it because,
I mean, I don't want [her baby] to remember the bad things about her mom. I want her to
remember the good things about her.”
Bralyn feels as though she was on the bad end of her sister’s temper and episodes more
than anyone and for an extended period of time, and moving out of their parents’ home and away
from her sister gave her a new life. It frustrated her that her sister was “awful” to their
grandparents, who tried to be supportive of her, just like they have been with Bralyn. “I can go to
them for anything at all. And they will sit down and talk to you about everything, you know?
And they won't say a word about it. They just keep literally everything to themselves. And that's
like, they've helped me stay...pretty much stay sane over the years.” She is grateful to them, and
it frustrates her that sister has treated their grandparents poorly. “The sad part about it is like one
day she'll treat them fantastic and the next day she'll treat them like nobody. So it's like dude they
literally...like they give...she used to live with them, too. And so like they've tried helping out.
They literally have given her everything and she just keeps treating them like crap.”
All the difficulties with her sister aside, she found happiness in a home that felt to Bralyn
to be a more storybook “supportive” home. And even though now her sister has moved on into
her own place, Bralyn enjoys being with her aunt, uncle, and cousins so much that she has no
desire to move back home, even though her mom asks about it. “I would, I absolutely would, just
on my parents', you know, side of it, but I am extremely happy with where I am. Like the family
that [aunt and uncle] they have, is like the family that I've always wanted.” She is still close with

	

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her parents, though. “I'm over there every day. Call them. See what's on for dinner. See if I want
that instead.”
Bralyn has grappled with anger issues of her own, partly blaming her sister for her own
issues, because she had no outlet anywhere but school to release the anger her sister caused her.
And part of why she hates school so much is that it seems to be the scene of many of her angry
outbursts.
Ninth grade was my last straw. This girl started crap with me and I again had never said a
word about anything. And she just thought it would be funny to pick a fight with me. And
after, you know, I got suspended for fighting, it hit me. Like you know, I'm done. I want
to go to do great things. But it's kind of hard with a freakin' mile long record, you know?
So it just like...I always had the mindset well, if I show them they can't mess with me
anymore, then they won't mess with me anymore. So then I'd always use violence as the
answer. So I would always, you know, take the consequence. Still to this day, I'd rather
be suspended than be in class. It's just so much better. I get things done and I'm out, you
know? So it's like especially during those hard times. And I think they kind of used that
as a way out too, because when they suspend you, you go in your own little room you
know you're on your own. And so then you'd like make me relax and just be by myself,
you know? So it would calm me down a lot. It's crazy how dramatically I've changed
over the years.
The suspensions began in elementary school. “I honestly wouldn't know what to do without
sports, because like I used to get in a lot of trouble when I was younger. I never took people's
crap. So I was always fighting and I guess my attitude was on a little down low. So I mean like,
if people said something to me, you know, like I was right on them. I had a very bad temper. So I

	

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was always in and out of class. It got to the point where I wasn't allowed to go back to those
classes.” She credits sports (soccer, specifically) and her coach for helping her finally learn not
to necessarily let go of the anger, but to redirect it.
He's helped me a lot. He's had probably all my cousins. He's had my siblings. I've had
him since sixth grade. So I mean he knows a lot about me and a lot about my family and
he's always there if I need him. And he always strives to have me do better. And he
pushes me. Because I don't really have that, like I push myself. Like I said I use the
negativity to push myself. So like when I have him, especially out on the field, you know
like he pushes me and he's not doing it you know to be mean. He's doing it because he
knows what I can accomplish.
While recognizing that she wants something different in her life, she talked about enjoying the
family’s lifestyle. None of them read for fun. In fact, when asked, Bralyn chuckled at the idea of
anyone reading without a purpose, like school. “I've never really had to be encouraged to do
good in school, because I've always been good in school. But like, in school obviously they
encourage you to read all the time, I just choose not to.”
As a family, they enjoy the outdoors and having space. The neighbors are not close,
which suits Bralyn fine because, “I like to be separated from others.” Before moving to the
country many years ago, Bralyn recalls the benefits of living near everything, but ultimately, she
prefers the country. “I mean I liked it because everything was there. So that was a plus. But I was
just like, you couldn't really, if you wanted to have a small, little, party and stuff, you know you
couldn't. People complained. So it just like you really gotta be courteous of others and really
watch what you do. Where in the country, you can party all day long and no one says anything.
And especially with us like being like so outdoorsy, like we're all hunters. So like in town we

	

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can't really do that. There's kids running around, we can't ride our dirt bikes and so...” Bralyn
hunts with her dad, she rides dirt bikes with him, and enjoys parties that they have on their
property. Of course, that lifestyle has not always been kind to her father, as was previously
noted.
She spoke in detail of her father’s set up, wrongful arrest, and jail time. She explained
how a friend of her father’s ratted people out, including him, while trying to plead his own drug
offense. Complicating this experience is knowing many of the law enforcement officers in the
area (including the former sheriff who was a family friend). Bralyn talked a lot about her dad and
his life-long troubles, including his incarceration, the trial of which began when Bralyn was in
middle school. The trial lasted almost two years, until the time when he actually served his
sentence. When asked if he changed his lifestyle after his time in jail, Bralyn hinted that he did
not, but that he trusts people less now. During this time, Bralyn struggled in school, but never
academically. While she never connected the issues with her dad with her own issues at school,
she admitted that for a long time she had difficulty managing her anger and knew that if she want
to work in law enforcement, which was her ultimate goal, she would have to learn to control her
anger.
She has a clear plan for her future, and talks about it confidently, beginning with staying
at this institution after the completion of the early college program to finish her bachelor degree
in criminal justice. In five years, she says, “I'll probably be coming out of the Air Force and
going into the police academy.” And then ten years from now, “I'll probably be pushing to be
enrolled in the FBI. You got to be at least 23, but they like experience, so I mean, with
experience in the military and the experience being an officer and everything, I'll be pushing to
try to be there.” She believes she wants a family, but “I want to wait until I'm settled and to

	

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where I'm happy with where I am because of the job. I'm going to be moving all the time.
Especially being an FBI agent. You know it's going to be really hard, because we travel a lot. So
I just want to wait until I'm settled down and you know, not just physically fit, but mentally fit
too.”
Bralyn has known since elementary school that she wanted to work in law enforcement,
and her uncle has helped her find her way. “[My uncle] like I said before, is a U.S. Marshal, but
he's also teamed up with the FBI, too. He works through both of them. And he's also been in the
military, which a lot of my family has been in the military, also. So they helped me out with that
decision, too. And I kind of go to him because he's been through it. He's been through all of it.
He's helped me with my recruiter. You know I mean to help [me with] those decisions,
everything seems very clear to me.” My sense, beyond what she verbally articulated during her
interview, was that her career decision was more about her need for her to find control and order
in her life, which she did not have much of yet in life. Law enforcement represents the ultimate
opportunity to follow rules, and require others to do the same. By enrolling in the early college
program, she was controlling something in her life, and more significantly, it was something that
no one else in her family had done. It can represent the first step of forging her own distinct path.
Bralyn gives credit to her uncle and two teachers for influencing and then supporting her
career decisions, including the early college program. “This is kind of a pretrial for me. Like I
said, freshman year, [I realized] you know, in order to be an FBI agent you gotta at least have
your bachelor's degree. But I want to shoot for my master's just so then I can do anything. So
then when you guys came to the school and talked to us about it, I was like "oh yeah and you
know, it might be pretty cool, you know? They offer criminal justice; that's what I'm going for."
So I came here and it's a hundred times better than high school. So I mean I love it and I'm

	

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looking forward to next year.” This would be a big accomplishment for her dad’s family,
especially, since “I think only like two of my dad's seven siblings graduated [high school]. My
dad and, I think, his three brothers...they all dropped out. Even my grandpa, they all dropped out
when they were in eighth grade. And they all went into flooring. My uncle was in the Marines,
my other uncle went to the Army or the Navy, one of them. My aunt went to the Army.”
Bralyn sees herself in her dad and speaks tenderly of him, even when they do not always
agree. “Dad kind of keeps to himself. I mean, he's outgoing and stuff, you know? He is pretty
much like me, but a dude. So like when he, like I said before, he's always on the go. So if he gets
out of work early, he ain't sitting around. He doesn't get home until ten at night, because he
bought a house. So he's working on the house and he just likes to keep going. So he doesn't sit
down.” He takes care of his family, despite his own failings. Unlike her dad, school has been
easy for Bralyn, and taking an opportunity to do something else was appealing to her. “Well like
I've said before, I'm always really good in school, grade-wise. So I mean I've never had a
problem either catching up or falling behind. So I knew...and I like a challenge. I like to be
challenged. So I thought of it as a challenge and I wanted to try it out.”
Bralyn’s decision to not repeat her family’s choices and lifestyle, but to do more, to do
better, and to help others in the same turbulent circumstances, belies her young age and her own
previous troubles. She is determined. She is motivated. She is persistent. There is a good chance
she will reach her goals, but she will be beating the odds to do so.
As we see, not all the participants in the study have had the same experience and because
of this, they cannot be combined into a single narrative. Additionally, while the introductory
description of the population assigns them to a single context of post-recession America and
rural America in a direct way, and while these are connected, they are also unique. The recent

	

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recession affected more than just rural areas in the American Midwest. Moreover, rural
Americans are not the only ones to experience issues of job insecurity, lower rates educational
achievement, and fewer economic and cultural opportunities. These students are affected by both
of these major contextual characteristics; which can be considered together, but also must be
considered separately. Presenting them separately reminds us that each stands alone, however, it
is also important to find cohesion among the stories. The next chapter will connect the pieces of
the students’ portraits that are similar and can be discussed more broadly than one individual
portrait to unify this research.

	

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Chapter 5: Analysis, Discussion, and Implications
“[This is] a great opportunity. A lot of people think it's dumb, in a way, but I just laugh at
them. So they're like, ‘dude, why not wait until you graduate?’ Why? Three years free,
you know? Why not jump on it? Like I told one of my friends. We were talking about it
and she goes, ‘Oh, are you really going to do that fifth year?’ And I goes, ‘Heck yeah.
Because I'll already have my associate's degree by the time you're even trying to pick out
a college.’ And she just started laughing. And I was like, ‘And I'll be saving like fifty
grand. So have fun pulling that out of your pocket.’ And so I mean it's like a huge
advantage.” – Bralyn
The previous chapter offered student narrative portraits as the springboard from which I
have examined my idea that student work images influence participation in early college
programs. This chapter will begin by addressing the findings that came from reflecting on the
participants’ stories, which are important to those students specifically and their larger story of
early college enrollment. I will then provide the foundation for analysis of the influences that led
the students to early college enrollment by explaining them in a model, followed by a discussion
of how those ideas interact. Finally, I will offer some recommendations and implications for
further research, centered on the work of this study and how furthering the knowledge of early
college enrollment can help postsecondary institutions support other students like these
participants.
Below, I will restate the problem to resituate the students’ stories and then I will follow
with a discussion of the findings I discovered in the data. Next, I will discuss what the findings
may tell us about work images, especially those of this group of early college students. I will
provide an analysis and discussion of the opportunities of rural early college students and finally,
will conclude with implications for future research.
The problem that I have examined in this study is how early college students form work
images and how those images influence students in making decisions to participate in an optional

	

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dual enrollment opportunity. First, just like other high school students, students from a rural,
economically disadvantaged geographic region want to get what they consider to be good jobs
and live well. To get good jobs, they believe they need to go to college.
They take presented opportunities to complete college sooner and reduce cost by
participating in a career-focused early college program. However, based on their home and
school environments, they do not always identify as college-goers, but instead by their future
jobs (as represented by their life goals), so college can, at times, seem like an unlikely fit. Yet,
this is the option they choose. Students have beliefs about work, which they connect to their life
goals, and these work images influence their decision-making in early college program
participation, as the vehicle to achieve their goals.
As a reminder, images are emotionally and non-rationally derived. Research has shown
that mental pictures and language are inextricably linked (Robertson, 2003; Forrester, 2000; &
Horowitz, 1970). We know that people form images based on what they see and hear around
them. Thus, the external world informs the images individuals create, and then those personal
images inform how people see and understand the world. Work is a major part of peoples’ lives
and represents paid effort and social relationships with an employer or to employment. Most
people define class, and thus perceived power, on work. Thus, our work images are intensely
personal, yet open to judgment by others, which makes them profoundly meaningful to
developing adolescents, as will be explained below.
Beliefs about work
The participants in this study have clear images of work. Work, to them, represents any
of the following ideas, which I will describe in more detail below: comfort, freedom, less stress,
control, dignity, respect (of others), self-respect, accomplishment, independence, self-

	

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sufficiency. Work allows: a person to not live on the verge of things falling apart; a person to set
an example for others; and a person to honor another person (by fulfilling their wishes for you).
The participants recognize major differences in types of work. During our conversations,
I asked students about if or how they viewed differences between job and career. Most responded
that career was more permanent and required some level of preparation, like college. Charlotte,
for example, placed value on career by saying, “A career is something that you want to do, that
you look forward to every day, that you take pride in, that's something you worked for. I feel like
work is just something like a temporary job, kind of thing until you get to your career.” Her
value-laden statement emphasizing “career” simultaneously devalued “job”. Likewise, Steve
believes in the permanence of work saying that once someone is prepared for a career, he or she
does not lose that preparation. “Work is where you get all your money. Career is long term.
Because work can always go away, but careers can't,” explained Steve. Ultimately, all of the
participants have goals and believe they are in their early college program because they are
working toward a career.
A career is more than what others directly around the participants might have, but
represent what those people want for them. Bralyn talked about her coworkers at a fast-food
restaurant she works at in the evenings and weekends. “Well during work, I mean, everyone
really supports my decisions because they're not going nowhere with their lives, you know? So
to have somebody like me work there, you know, they really you know it's a huge impact on
them to do better. And so I mean they always give me what they can [hours or schedule], which
is always good.” Bralyn, like many others, talked about her career goals with pride. That pride
also comes with the belief that ideally things will be easier down the road.

	

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The participants experienced lots of hardships in their childhoods, many of which will be
explained below. They believe that hardships are easier to handle when there is steady and stable
income making life easier. John said of middle school, “I think that's when I started to become
more independent and didn't want to be a burden on my family [in the future].” And so, work
represents control and freedom and is valued. According to Charlotte, “A career is something
that you want to do, that you look forward to every day, that you take pride in, that's something
you worked for.”
Ultimately, to this group of people, work is egocentric, something for them and their
own. Most did not talk about the greater good, or work as selfless and giving. Work instead is
about receiving something (money – representing comfort, stress reduction, a safety net.) They
talked about themselves and their families, but most did not mention making a larger
contribution to community or society. I attribute this to the participants coming from rural,
under-resourced communities, and needing, developmentally, to find a foundation for themselves
prior to thinking beyond.
Taylor alone spoke of wanting to be a nurse to help people. My sense of Taylor’s desire
to be a nurse, while she explains in an altruistic way, feels like a way to heal herself and her
family in the wake of her sister’s death, and even as a way to honor her late sister, who also
spoke of wanting to be a nurse, but never fulfilled that goal. As Maslow (1943) discusses, they
must have basic needs met prior to reaching a place of self-actualization and considering the
greater needs of society or community. Many of their parents did not attend or complete college,
and so the parents’ own foundations are likely not yet stable, which likely affected their
children’s ideas of the purpose of work, as did the circumstances in their lives that I will interpret
below.

	

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Influences
During my conversations with the participants, I discovered many things that likely
influenced their beliefs about work, as discussed above, and definitely shaped their home and
school social contexts and thus the circumstances from which they make decisions: impactful
family dynamics, normalized traumatic events, and personality mismatches for traditional high
school.
Impactful family dynamics
Research on urban areas often shows us the archetype of the single mother and largely
absent father (Dlugonski, Martin, Mailey, & Pineda, 2016; Adair & Dahlberg, 2003). The
participants of this study offered a slightly different scenario, of a largely physically present
father, but perhaps absent as a strong role model. There, but not there for them. Mom, for this
group of teens is the central authority in responsibility and therefore worthy of the most respect
and gratitude.
Most of the participants named mom as their “best friend,” “biggest supporter,” and “my
everything”. Carlos, for example, during his story about finding his uncle dead in his childhood
bedroom, said that at that time he was frequently sleeping in his mother’s room with her (he
recalled being about six years old) was “obsessed with my mom and I still am.” His story of
witnessing trauma and death as a small child led immediately to his strong and deep devotion to
his mother. She has remained his closest and strongest ally. She encouraged him “not to drop out
of school like she did” and for school to be his main life priority. “I wanted a job, but Ma always
said no you're going to focus all your time on high school, you're going to get done.” She even
helps him with schoolwork, even while Carlos’ dad is not pleased with all the time she spends
doing so. She works, and his dad does not, and when she had attempted to take some college

	

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classes, Carlos explained to me that his dad did not like all the time that her work and school
were taking away from him and the family.
Many others also described mom as the central figure of their lives. Taylor called her
mom her best friend and shared that “My mom and I are really close. We're always together.
Like at home we're always watching TV together, always doing dinner together, like
everything.” Taylor shared that before her sister’s death, her mom and stepdad were arguing a lot
and she worried that they would divorce. For a while after the death, the fighting intensified but
the divorce did not materialize and they remain married. Taylor talked often about not being able
to leave her mom, even though she is financially capable and believes she is emotionally
prepared to do, because she feels her mom needs her.
Rachel, as well, named her mom as the person she trusts the most. She struggled to name
others besides her parents, but since her mom understands being a woman, also, Rachel feels
closer to her. When talking about trust relationships, Rachel said, “I guess I don't want to be, like
sexist or anything, but because she's female she understands more things I feel like than my dad.
So I can talk to her about school or just anything really. Whereas with my dad I will tell him
some things but some things I don't feel like I can have him understand. You know?”
Additionally, Rachel’s mom has reached professional and academic goals that match her
own. Mom went to college, earned an associate degree, and then later a bachelor degree and now
works as an administrative assistant. Her dad began college, but did not complete. "Dad would've
had a few associate degrees, but some family issues prevented him from accomplishing that. He
had a few classes to go and he would have had a few in an automotive related career. He did go
to college, but he didn't get a degree." For this group of people, mom has certainly played a

	

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strong role in encouraging and supporting career and college decisions, and thus, holds the place
as central influencer.
On the other hand, many of these students have been lifelong witnesses to paternal
suffering. They shared stories of their dads as restless; injured or with other health issues; and
who are un- or under-employed. This suffering certainly has been impactful to the students’
images of their futures. They view work as something to be valued, and by which to earn respect
and live comfortably, and yet, many of them have fathers who do not or cannot work and
expressed that they either want to be different or do what they can to support the family.
Carlos could not articulate what work his dad had done back when he was working, but
simply that he no longer worked. “He didn't really retire from it. He just stopped working and
said ‘I'm retired.’” When asked if it was a health issue, Carlos replied, “No, it’s more an attitude
issue.” Carlos called his dad stubborn and admitted he got that quality from his dad. Even though
his dad resents the amount time mom spends working both at and outside the home, his dad has
not worked since the incident with his colleague many moves and many states ago, and does not
plan on working outside of the home again.
Rachel’s dad, though, worked for as long as she remembered until the last couple of years
when his health began to suffer. She told the story of how he had to quit work because of terrible
migraines. There is a lot of uncertainty about the cause, which probably affects the family’s
insecurity and anxiety about his long term health. Rachel said, “He has his good days and his
bad. All these tests…they've done MRIs and everything, but they don't know [what causes
them].” So, in addition to the physical pain and suffering, there is a level of mental or emotional
suffering not only from dad, but also from Rachel and her brothers, and mom, too. For Rachel’s
part, it has been difficult. “I mean, it's been hard for my...for me with my dad home because he's

	

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supposed to be the provider, you know, and it's hard to see him like that, in pain. So it's kind of
hard for me, emotionally.” It has led to more pressure to grow up and take more adult
responsibility at home. “I’ve done the meals; I do all the laundry and everything. So I feel like
I’ve had more…not burdens, but responsibilities put on my shoulders. Well this was just this
whole past year, I felt like I've had to grow up really fast and it's hard.” Without having held a
job outside of the home, the perspective of the additional responsibility at home has added to her
stress and tilted her viewpoint.
Rachel, as one of the oldest participants, and from a household that she described as
“stable” and “peaceful” understood that while her father was suffering, she knew not take his
frustration with her personally. With that, though, mom is the one now financially responsible
for the family and Rachel considers their relationship to be closer. As someone who intentionally
lives by traditional rules, her mom’s central role as the provider for the home has further skewed
Rachel’s perspective.
Bralyn’s father, for his part, works. As previously discussed, he followed in his own
father’s footsteps working in the construction trades. So, although he did not complete high
school, he supports his family. He is not without his struggles, however. Bralyn noted that while
they tried, her parents could not help her sister through the troubles caused by her mental illness.
They sent her to live with family out of state, but she returned home to her same patterns as
before. According to Bralyn, it bothers her parents that she, Bralyn, still has not moved back
home even though her sister is moved out on her own with her new baby, but Bralyn is happy in
a stable home and is not motivated to change that.
She talked about enjoying the family’s lifestyle. As a family, they enjoy the outdoors.
Bralyn hunts with her dad, she rides dirt bikes with him, and enjoys parties that they have on

	

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their property. Of course, that lifestyle has not always been kind to her father, as was previously
noted. When asked if he changed his lifestyle after his time in jail, Bralyn hinted that he did not,
but that he trusts people less now.
Many of these students’ ideas of work arguably come from gratitude to mom for being
supportive and strong and wanting to give back, and also in response to the dynamic of dad who
is contributing “less” or may not be the role model that mom is. In addition to the impact of their
parents on their lives, the participants experienced some traumatic events that surely played a
role in their development. It is difficult to watch the people you love suffer – mentally or
physically – and because of that, these teens have experienced much suffering themselves.
Normalized traumatic events
Most of the participants experienced something in their childhoods that would be
considered traumatic and memorable, with the possibility of long-term impact. These events
include adoption, family moves, multiple deaths, and parental incarceration. Events like these
can teach a person strength of character. Many of the participants talked about these moments
like they were just part of life and while describing them, they made it seem that they simply
moved on from these events because hard things happen.
Steve, for example, told the story of his adoption as a child. “I was adopted in 2005 with
five others when I was five or six. We're all from three different families. ‘A’ and ‘T’ are family.
Me, ‘S’ and ‘G’ are one family. And ‘I’ and ‘R’ are biological to my parents. It was a closed case
[adoption], I’m not sure why. I was born in Kentucky, and then we moved here [after the
adoption].” All of the children have been heavily active in the family’s small business, where
they have worked alongside their parents. When asked for more details about the circumstances
around the adoption and living in a large family, Steve had a very easy-going attitude about it all,

	

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although he did not often talk about his many siblings. He talked about not having many friends
or people he could trust.
This is a common theme with Carlos, as well. There were not many people his age at
home growing up, even while there were multiple generations living at home. It was he and his
sister, who he does not get along with. They moved often, at dad’s insistence. “Because my dad
can't stand being in one spot for more than a year. Can't stand the cold, goes to heat. He can't
stand the heat, comes back to cold. Gets bored, goes somewhere else,” explained Carlos. That
made making new friends difficult. Sometimes that mattered to him, and other times it did not.
These contradictory statements seemed to apply other things, as well, like his uncles’ deaths.
One of Carlos’ uncles died in his childhood bedroom, and the other a couple of years later. He
talked of being close with his uncles, and his whole family. At the same time, he spoke
pragmatically about their deaths, and their struggle with drugs.
Drugs took the sister of Taylor, also. Although at the time, she did not know her sister
had a drug problem. That was kept from her. She spoke at length and in great detail about the
experience, which had a lasting impact on Taylor and the whole family. In fact, there has been
tension since then, which began before the death, “and well before that, like a week before, my
parents got in a really big fight and like we thought they were going to get divorced. And then
she died. So ever since then, it's like been the kind of rocky.” Without fully realizing it, this
event has caused people in her community to treat Taylor differently, leading to a seeming
sadness or loneliness covered up by her smile and cheerful words.
After her interview, Bralyn talked a lot about her dad and his life-long troubles, including
his incarceration, the trial of which began when Bralyn was in middle school. The trial lasted
almost two years, until the time when he actually served his sentence. During this time, Bralyn

	

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struggled in school, but never academically. While she never connected the issues with her dad
with her own issues at school, she admitted that for a long time she had difficulty managing her
anger and knew that if she want to work in law enforcement, which was her ultimate goal, she
would have to learn to control her anger.
Bralyn has two sisters: her older sister, who Bralyn describes as a “pathological liar,”
which was “really hard on our parents” and her younger sister. Her younger sister has some
“cognitive impairment” and it “takes her a long time to process things.” She idolizes their oldest
sister and that bothers Bralyn, because of their older sister’s violent tendencies. At one point, her
sister threatened to kill her, and that was the point when Bralyn moved out of their parents’ home
and in with her aunt and uncle, where she has experienced a “normal” and “happy” life.
Part of her motivation is to remove herself from the troubles of her sisters and family.
“The farther I can go in life, the farther I can get away from her and that life.” And yet, she and
her sister have come to a truce of sorts. Bralyn helps out with her new niece so that the baby can
“understand a loving environment” and because all kids need a ‘crazy aunt’. Her sister lost her
job after having the baby and for Bralyn, that means pitching in. “You know, she's not on cash
assistance, she's not on anything, so I tend to help her out a little bit. I mean I have...I work, so
sometimes I help her get some things for the baby or get some things for her, or like you know,
her house or something. But I mean we also have our parents too, that help her. I push it because,
I mean, I don't want [her baby] to remember the bad things about her mom. I want her to
remember the good things about her.”
These young adults have found ways, through trauma and adversity, to move forward and
to have goals, goals beyond survival. In their experience, not everyone gets to survive. Their

	

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ability to persevere in spite of some events is admirable. But it is not without some difficulties,
mostly with their peer groups.
Personality mismatches for traditional high school
All of the participants talked in some way about not fitting in at their high school. The
struggle to be “normal” in a traditional social environment could be attributed to what they
experienced in their home environments, and some made that connection. Carlos talked about
being bullied throughout school. He was often the new kid and said the bullying occurred
“because I was ugly and fat.” At one point in late elementary school:
Somebody walked up to me and said, 'Dude, somebody drew a picture of you with bombs
strapped to your chest in a gun pointed at your head and a sniper going through your head
and a knife in your chest and a grenade in your hand.' So I walked up to the air vent thing
and the picture was sitting right there taped to it. I looked at it and I'm like, ‘what's going
on here?’ So I told the teacher and he freaked out like, ‘who drew this?’ And it turned out
it was the kid that had walked up to me and told me that somebody drew it.” Two months
later, in gym class, the same student punched me to the ground and stomped on me and
broke loose one of my teeth. (Carlos)
Carlos does not believe the other student suffered any consequences for either event. He went on
to describe getting into trouble multiple times for offenses that he did not actually commit, but
was blamed for. He was always either in the wrong place at the wrong time, or having people
represent the truth to favor them and make Carlos look bad, while they were picking on him. It
was easy for me to see why he did not enjoy school and was ready to leave. He went on to say,
I always tried to stay home all the time. Like, if you look at my school record, I probably
missed a good half of my entire twelve years of school. You think it was for reasons like

	

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that [getting picked on] because I didn't want to go back. OK. I got embarrassed easily.
So like something happens, and no, I don't want to go.
I believe experiences like those he described probably interfered with Carlos’ identity
development, related to confidence, efficacy, and thus, future ability to work with others. He
intentionally selected a solitary job (in an industrial trade).
Charlotte also described regular bullying by another girl in middle school, but in her case,
she talked more about how she has matured and better manages it now that the girl moved back
to the district after being away for a few years.
I take her with a grain of salt now and I got bigger and better things do… she has two
older siblings and two younger siblings. Her [older siblings went away to college], but
they both live at home now. And her mom's a bartender. Her parents are divorced. Her
dad's always away working. So I think it [the bullying] just kind of...made her happy and
made her…I look back and I feel bad for her. (Charlotte)
Charlotte learning to find peace through being bullied was similar to Bralyn working through her
anger issues, in the name of moving beyond her family struggles to her future career goals.
Working towards a goal allows the students to work through their loneliness. Taylor named her
mom as her best friend, and said that she did not have many friends at school. Rachel, too,
wondered why the people she thought were her friends in high school do not talk to her anymore.
“I don't know. I've tried to contact some of them, but they don't want to be with me anymore, I
guess. It's very painful. I'm a very emotional person and I have a big heart so I care about my
friends.” This has affected her mostly positive memories of high school.
The early college program has afforded the students an opportunity to get out of the
school environment that they did not like and yet remain in a productive environment where they

	

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are still “moving forward” or “getting better”. They view college as a necessity, but also as a
way to bypass high school, which they see as a win-win. I wonder how they thought they might
fit in at college when they did not fit it in high school. Did they pick this program to escape high
school? To prove they are not losers? Is there pride in taking college classes, while others, who
seemingly have more going for them, did not?
Why this vehicle?
The quick and easy answers the participants had about why they chose to participate in
the early college program was to save time in getting employable by starting college sooner, thus
saving money that their parents did not have to spend on college. Also it was more convenient
than the other early college program option, which would have caused them to have to find
transportation into the next county where the nearest community college is. Most of the students
did not have the extra time between school and jobs, did not have reliable transportation (many
of them drove to campus with friends from high school), or they were not comfortable driving so
far away. For many it was double the distance to the other institution.
Students from under-resourced communities have fewer choices than students from larger
or better-resourced ones. These students made the choice to take advantage of a program that
was made available to them. Many of the students noted that education is something that cannot
be taken away from a person, regardless of circumstance. So, the bigger reason was that this
early college program would help lead them to permanently “better” work than not going to
college would. They chose this early college program as a way to build a safety net, ultimately
through a career, to ease suffering, and to feel more in control by being able to support
themselves and others as needed without the stress of going without or losing home, personal
property, or people. This program allows them to perhaps prevent the suffering they witnessed

	

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and experienced with their influential loved ones, who they rely on for support, strength, and
survival.
By building their own safety net, these students do not have to rely on others, thus
removing burden, and can feel pride in their self-sufficiency, which also makes their loved ones
proud, too, potentially helping to ease their suffering. And so, participation in this program could
be seen as way of breaking a cycle of suffering. For many, participation is proof to others that
they are more than the expectations society may have of them, expectations earned based on
family, school, and their life context.
I recognize the tension between career/job and the students’ dream or desire to do
“more”. There is the idealism of working toward their dreams/aspirations, which intersects, with
the pragmatism of their desire to save time and money, and subsequently make money that the
family does not have now. For these students, the early college program, specifically, is the
vehicle by which they actively work toward their dreams, but their enrollment means more to
them than the classroom learning and credits earned. It also represents an actualization of their
desire to become financially stable.
These findings lead me to some broader themes that will guide the following analysis and
include: a sense of urgency to progress and a loyalty and obedience to family. These themes
arose from the student stories, but can be more generally applied to the larger ideas around dual
enrollment and ideas of work.
Sense of urgency to progress
Perhaps my most profound discovery has been the prevailing sense of urgency at all
levels of decision-making in the push for dual enrollment. From policy-makers and the
government, to school districts, to the families, and finally to the students themselves, everyone

	

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seems to be in a hurry to achieve the goal, the next phase. Policymakers and government want
more students to be college ready and also prepared to work (“Policy Matters,” 2017). The issue
of dual enrollment has appeared on the AASCU’s annual list of higher education state policy
issues for the last several years. Instead of slowing or falling off the list as budgets shrink across
states, dual enrollment has become a priority as states attempt to quickly build their workforce
being affected by retiring baby boomers, the changing workplace, and technology growth. By
pushing college credit earning to high school students, states can fill their workforce gaps sooner.
School districts have similar goals – to build a strong workforce for their communities and also for their students to complete and find success. They take funds made available to them
to give their students more options when they cannot provide those opportunities within the
districts. This is especially true of more rural, under-resourced districts in the county of study.
Often, this early college program is one of the few alternatives that students can participate in,
outside of the standard, required curriculum and participation has grown quickly in the last few
years, as previously indicated by the level of national and state attention it has garnered.
Families encourage their children to take the opportunities so they can more quickly
reach goals. Generally, as I discovered with this population of students, mom is the biggest
supporter and encourager for students to enroll in early college. They want their children to have
better opportunities than they have had. Often, these families are the ones who have been caught
in the changes and reduction of industrial, factory jobs. They were the workers whose parents
made a good living and were able to raise them on the salary from the readily available factory
jobs, jobs that were no longer there when they wanted to follow in their parents’ footsteps. These
students were in elementary school when the recession peaked. Now, these parents are

	

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supporting and encouraging their own children to take opportunities to get good jobs by doing
what they need to, to get working sooner.
Family first
Parents are central to the stories of the participants of this study. It became clear from the
first interview that family comes first for these teens. However, I began to wonder why these
students did not defy their parents, who overwhelmingly seemed to encourage their child to
participate in early college. Based on Erickson (1968), typical development for students of this
age is to rebel against their parents (developmentally, if not actually) and look to others for
guidance, peers and other adults included through “role experimentation”. What makes these
students so obedient and mindful of their parents’ wishes?
Often, if life is very challenging and one does not know what to count on or trust (steady
income, health, etc.), your people are there to be kept close. If everything else is bad, then you
can have something good, by having a close, connected relationship with your family. Likely,
these students were reminded that parents (most often moms) sacrifice to be able to provide more
for their children. This is not a unique message and these students show gratitude by remaining
loyal. I am left to wonder, though, will they wake up one day and feel regret or disappointment
that they did not forge their own path?
Additionally, these students overwhelmingly feel supported by their families, including
extended families when necessary, as in the case of Bralyn. However, their families, while
offering emotional or general support, do not often have any information beyond a willingness to
encourage their students to “keep going” or “work hard”. They do not always know, like other
first-generation, at-risk students from less resourced areas, how to navigate the bureaucracy of
the academy, not limited to using the very specific language used by colleges and universities.

	

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Postsecondary education uses its own language – transcript, credit, FAFSA, syllabus, learning
management system, registration portal, etc. – and we often make assumptions that students and
families know what these are without actually providing definitions for them. Arguably, some
eventually catch on. But why should we put that extra learning curve, hurdle, or test before a
student when we could prevent it? There are many barriers, like this one, that students have to
navigate, whether the students are aware of these barriers or not.
Analysis
My broad interest in studying early college students was to find what influenced their
decisions to come to college early. I asked the questions I did to get at the students’ connections
of work images and their decision to participate. Also, I hoped that I would get a sense of their
potential lack of awareness of circumstances that may be affecting their goals and decisions,
based on their social context at home and school and how that interacted with their upbringing
and now with their identity development.
The participant group, by nature of the methodology, is small and thus the emergent
findings are not generalizable. However, I created a four-quadrant model to use as a visual
guidepost to explain more broadly ideas of student choice and barriers and how those relate to
whether the students perceive or understand those choices or barriers or not. Following that, I
will discuss several points to help situate the participants’ influences on their choices within the
larger conversation of opportunity and achievement.

	

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Four-quadrant model of agency and circumstance
The model itself consists of two axes. The vertical axis represents a student’s awareness,
with the top as what they perceive, and the bottom as what is invisible to them. The horizontal
Figure 1: Four-quadrant model of agency
and circumstance
Perceived

axis represents opportunities, with the right
representing options and the left representing
barriers (or lack of choice.) Specifically, there
are two options: 1. An opportunity that exists to

Option

Barrier

select/take action on or 2. An opportunity that
exists to NOT select/NOT take action on. There
are also two types of barriers: 1. An opportunity
that does not exist at all or 2. An opportunity
that exists, but not for a particular person.
Invisible

I chose those specific words to describe

my model because my study is concerned with student decision-making and this is a way I can
express choices they have in school and in life, and ones they do not, perhaps based on their
community, school, or home environments. Additionally, I wanted a way to explain how and
when students recognize choices and barriers, or how and when something affects them when
they have a gap in awareness, which can be equally important to reaching (or not) their goals.
Quadrant 1, the option-perceived quadrant, is when students recognize what opportunities
they have, like their participation in the early college program. This is significant, because while
there are many unknowns for the students, because of their home and life context, their desire for
change propels them to make the choice to participate. This quadrant can be impacted by a
student’s microsystem, as defined by Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1977), because they learn about

	

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options available to them from the people closest to them through their close contact and
interaction. Also, though, when there are gaps in awareness of those close people, as well, the
students’ own gaps are that much more pronounced. The participants of this particular study
would all fit into quadrant 1, the option-perceived category, since they took the opportunity and
enrolled in the early college program. I would like to further examine the usefulness and function
of the model on other students however, in future research, as a way to organize points of
intersection between agency and circumstance.
In quadrant 2, the option-invisible quadrant, a student may hypothetically have other
opportunities that they do not know about, and since they would not know about those
opportunities, it would be unlikely that they would use their choice option. Perhaps they were
struggling with a traumatic event during the enrollment period for participation in the program,
and they are not at school long enough to realize they are eligible. They would not realize their
choice. On the other hand, for students from under-resourced communities, there are often
barriers in place that they are not aware of which come out in the form of opportunity gaps,
represented in quadrant 3, the barrier-invisible quadrant, and also affected by the student’s
macrosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1977). Finally, quadrant 4, the barrier-perceived quadrant,
represents when students are aware of what limitations or barriers exist for them. Typically, these
students assign these as personal limitations, such as family or personal circumstance, instead of
societal or geographic ones, i.e., macrosystem ones. These, like the gaps in quadrant 3, make a
bigger impact on the students’ choice than they realize.
Opportunity gaps (as inputs)
Opportunity gaps can be defined as “inputs – the unequal or inequitable distribution of
resources and opportunities – while achievement gap refers to outputs – the unequal or

	

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inequitable distribution of educational results and benefits” (“Hidden Curriculum,” 2014) and
can further be explained by the macrosystem example of which I gave earlier: the rural
geography, the under-resourced communities, etc. Many things contribute to opportunity gaps
and have probably affected the participants in this research. For example, among the thousands
of students who could potentially participate in early college programs (based on district
enrollment and academic performance), only a couple hundred are involved. Affecting these
numbers are likely parents who have not themselves gone to college, so have difficulty thinking
about how they would support their own children through it, or who do not value college in
general. This can be also described as a student’s exosystem, or the effect of the parent choices
on those of the participant (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1977).
In July 2009, most of these students were in elementary school, the unemployment rate
hit a high of 16.9% for the county, compared to its current rate of 4%. (Labor Force Statistics,
Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics). This not only affected the students’
families directly, it affected the school districts, because families moved away to find work.
Fewer students means less funding. So, because of the economic disadvantages of rural, and
under-funded districts, students likely have fewer and less diverse programs offered to them than
students at larger districts. Couple that with the lack of availability of diverse or cultural
community opportunities, from where students might benefit on their own if they did not have
them at school, and these students suffer (“Hidden Curriculum,” 2014).
Achievement gaps (as outputs)
Due, in part, to their fewer opportunities, students from rural and less-resourced
communities perform at lower levels. These gaps in achievement are typically measured in
standardized tests, but there are other ways to see this in action. College enrollment and

	

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completion are a way, and so are others, measured much earlier than that including absenteeism
and discipline (“Hidden Curriculum,” 2014). When applied to the stories of the participants of
this research directly, this becomes clear. Students from families who are moving so much that
the children have difficulty making friends because “I’m not in any place long enough” certainly
have difficulty building a strong attendance record. Similar to attendance, grades are affected by
moving. How does a student build a strong academic record when they are moving from state to
state, district to district every year or two?
Regarding the discipline metric, students who are witnessing the deaths of family
members or feel forced to move out of their parents’ home because of extreme negative behavior
of a sibling that interferes with their own safety, are bound to struggle with their own feelings of
anger and grief. What vehicles would these students have to rehabilitate safely and positively?
Probably few, if any. And so, they react at school. Like Bralyn, for example, who shared with me
that she started getting regularly suspended for fighting in elementary school, episodes like these
begin to affect what these students can contribute to a strong academic body of work that might
serve as the foundation for their postsecondary or life goals.
Tradeoffs
I initially began to consider the idea of choice when reading Schwarz’s The Paradox of
Choice and while he focused on consumerism, I believe there is a connection that could be
applied to my interests with early college students and how their circumstances led them to
college when it did. In the book, Schwarz discussed in a section about “The Psychology of
Trade-offs,” that “the options we consider usually suffer from comparison with other options”
(Schwarz, p. 131). So, to these students, going to college and working toward even an abstract
goal of work they value is better than the alternative, which may just be what they are

	

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accustomed to seeing at home or high school. This alternative can be represented by under- or
unemployment, dissatisfaction in life because of employment status, stress about finances,
physical or mental injury, etc. Early college students may see these barriers around them,
impacting their family and fellow students, yet they choose another path.
By deciding to enroll in early college, the students make the choice partially to remove
themselves from high school environments, where their life experiences may have already
influenced. By taking themselves out of that situation, they feel they can put themselves in a
better one. However, when they are in college classes for half the day or more, they are missing
even more opportunities at the high school, ones that might have improved their feelings and
sense of belonging there and given them another chance to connect with someone or something
there. So they further isolate themselves; thus proving their beliefs that they do not fit in. It’s a
tradeoff, and something that needs to be considered when attempting to assist students in making
the best decisions about early college participation.
Discussion
Why is it so important to tell this story? The participants of this research are the children
of people industrialization and the economic downturn left behind. The work that was easy to
find, but hard to do, is gone. And along the way, society began to devalue that work. So even if
the work was there, who would have wanted it? It was work for the under-educated, overlabored, suffering, and restless masses. They want better for themselves and their families,
because they have not had it easy, and neither have their parents. They have a voice and they
want to use it. With the rapidly changing nature of the workplace, these were the people industry
left behind, often with nothing to take the place of the huge employers who left their towns
empty behind them.

	

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Society has overlooked people from rural, economically disadvantaged areas for many
years. So like the large group of people in situations similar to this who changed the political
climate overnight last year, the participants and their families have every right to feel angry. Yet,
they do not feel that way. They do not fit in to what we know about that larger group of people,
working class Americans who value their independence, although the participants also value
their independence. They, like the larger group, do not feel entitlement, they want to work and
they value hard work. However, these particular people are not diminishing or questioning the
value of college, they are seeking it as the vehicle to move up. As long as they have the chance,
though, they will exercise their individualism. They will find what benefits them, and they will
take options they have to get there. None of the participants spoke directly of politics or the
recession. But indirectly, they talked about the felt effects when talking about suffering, drug
deaths, underemployment, and incarceration. This is their context.
The desire for upward social mobility is great. Instead of being angry, they take action in
their way by choosing a different path than their parents or grandparents before them. Through
this, they send a message that they believe they have more capacity and ability, and expect to
receive more at the end. What they believe they will receive – freedom, control, and comfort –
ultimately leads to more choice. More choice in the types of jobs they find, homes in good areas,
and even in their health.
Ultimately, these students have a desire for a sense of belonging. They aspire to belong to
a different group, that of educated professionals, than what they currently see around them. By
belonging to this group, with all its benefits (financial freedom and control over decisions), these
people will be able to put aside some of the suffering, and be better equipped to live a better life
for themselves and their families. Some students believe this program is the only option for them

	

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to earn a postsecondary credential and meet their goals of control and comfort. Whether because
of time or money or eligibility or admission, they feel like this was their only chance. Of the
small group of students I met, there is a spectrum of influence and intensely personal reasons, but
all of them expressed, albeit uniquely, a desire for more. A desire to push past the bounds of
their current lives, and experience something more and new.
These students are still finding their way, still developing their identity. They prove this
by how they speak in contradictions, as though they have not quite figured it out yet. Take
Bralyn, for example. She often used words like “chill” and “relaxed” to describe her life, and
then told stories about moving out of her parents’ home and her dad’s incarceration.
Additionally, Carlos talked about wanting to be alone for the rest of his life, and yet when asked
about other opportunities he would have liked, he responded that he would have liked the ability
to more easily make friends. They, like all adolescents, rely on others (at school, at college) for
information and assistance, and hold an assumption that those people know the best way, without
being able to evaluate if they actually do. These students have concrete goals, with abstract ideas
of how to reach them.
Many students who have traditional views of a college experience, on the other hand,
may list future job or career somewhere in their list of purposes going to college, but it seems
that for many of those students, that represents the abstract idea, one to be considered later. For
the students like the ones in this study, however, for whom a traditional college path-where a
student tries to get into the best institution possible, maybe research-based and with the benefits
of institutional prestige–is NOT the plan, a career is a much more concrete and necessary plan,
not just an abstract idea. For many of these students, the pathway to the career is the goal and
the institutional opportunities matter to them less than the promise of meeting their goal at the

	

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end. Like other students, the experience may be important, but it is not the most important. This
clear goal of getting to a career can make things more difficult for some students, because it
keeps them from focusing on the journey, which is where the learning and changing happens.
The popular media and many Americans are now questioning the value of a college
education, not because of the education itself, but because of the debt and money concern. Will
college get students the job they want with the salary they want? Or can they find that good job
without college? In this rural area, this early college program might feel like the easy way to get
them to the goal of a good job. This is a pathway that is set up for them, by people who “know”
what they’re doing. So even if the students don’t exactly know how to navigate it themselves,
they trust that someone does. But without college, there is no longer a clear path to get them to a
good-paying job where they can be self-reliant.
I began my research by asking the question: How does the social context (circumstance)
of students from a rural, economically disadvantaged area influence them to make a decision and
take action (agency) to enroll in an early college program? These students, as I learned, want
what others want: a comfortable life. But also, they have a desire to ease the suffering that they
witnessed in their families, their most important influence.
These students take their circumstances, which they could not control or change as a
young child, and make an intentional decision as they mature from adolescence to adulthood to
change those circumstances moving forward, toward a different way of life, not only to help
themselves, but also to help their families. By making decisions that will allow them to remove
additional burden from their families, they help themselves, but again, also their families. It is an
intensely personal decision, but becomes a collective achievement and a decision to benefit
many. Their agency becomes a change, a break in a cycle of suffering, and a purpose for pride

	

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and recognition. But making this decision is a tradeoff. By striking out on their own path, these
students are forced to confront that their support system cannot fulfill the supporting role. They
must try to seek assistance elsewhere or risk failure. This is where institutions can step in.
Recommendations
There are many ways to assist early college students who choose the path to career via an
early college program including avoiding assumptions about: support off campus, academic
language use, and access to tools required to succeed in the twentieth-century classroom. We can
better use the support they do have, and provide mentoring to fill in the gaps left beyond that.
First, understanding the experiences that the students come to college with can help
postsecondary institutions learn how to better bridge the gaps and remove barriers. Through the
survival of trauma, these students have learned how to be resilient, and that should be
recognized. Through their difficulties, these students still value hard work and relationships. By
including their families in the decision-making, or understanding that these students will likely
prefer to consult with key family members for assistance, early college programs can support
transitions.
Often, it is helpful to have conversations with the students, but then also have the
conversations with the parents – this is by design and by choice of the student. Also, by speaking
with the parents directly and avoiding the jargon of higher education terms, the parents learn how
to better support their students through advice from a college official. They want to support, but
cannot always help students navigate the bureaucracy or unwritten rules of the academy. The
families cannot often relate to terms like credits, transcripts, or syllabus. They may have vague
notions, but typically, by explaining these terms in advance, using common language, without
prompting from the family member, the level of understanding and comfort increases. Parents

	

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may become more comfortable by knowing how they can best help their child through something
they do not fully understand. Generally, these people are going to be champions of their children,
and because of the close relationships, they have great influence on them. Ultimately, the
students will benefit, with their family becoming part of the process.
Additionally, as families sometimes see early college programs as “low stakes” options, it
behooves everyone to understand the implications of poor grades on an official college
transcript, whether the student attempts the credit during or after high school. Official credit will
follow them, and it is the responsibility of the early college officials that they are aware of this.
This can come into play when students might belatedly realize that there will be online
components in their college class, since most make use of a web-based learning management
system during the semester to support what happens beyond the classroom walls. Some families
from lower-income and lower-resourced areas do not always have access to reliable technology
or reliable wireless access, which hinders a student’s ability to participate fully in the class. On
the other hand, a student may have the technology available, but the family may have difficulty
with access to reliable transportation to get their student to college classes when necessary. All of
these barriers should be assessed prior to the student’s attendance into the program.
By working with students earlier, some of these barriers can be removed before they
become permanent ones. By beginning to speak with students earlier, in middle school, for
example, we give them time to process and prevent the consequences of poor high school GPA
even in the first two years, which may lead them to be ineligible to participate in an early college
program. Also, working with students earlier may help mitigate some of the sense of urgency felt
by the families and schools, so that feeling may be transferred less to the students. Ideally, this
can help encourage strong occupational identity by giving students other adults besides family

	

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members to look to as professional examples, and to start to gain self-efficacy in believing that if
they want to go to college, they have an option to do so.
Implications for future research
There are many additional opportunities to increase the breadth and depth of further
research based on the questions still left with this study. The participants all volunteered their
time and stories to this work. Are the stories this group of students shared with me, similar to
other stories that the other early college students would have? What about other students in other
rural, low income geographic regions? Would we find similar influences and motivating factors
with students in other places? I would also like to further examine the usefulness and function of
the model on other students in future research, as a way to organize points of intersection
between agency and circumstance using a different protocol which would focus on scenarios of
fictitious students and ask participants relate to them, instead of asking them directly about
perceived opportunities or barriers.
Additionally, what would be the long-term impact on this same group? What would they
say about their choice to enroll down several years in the future? I would find value in following
up with this group of students several years out from this point to see how many of them reached
their goals and what effect, if any, do they feel their decision to participate in an early college
program have on how well they met those goals. Also, I would like to start asking questions
about work images and college sooner, in middle school, as students are beginning to develop
occupational identity. Having perspectives prior to program participation and then after program
participation would give a more complete picture of the effect of work images on choice and
ultimately, on goals.

	

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One additional idea came from the conversation with the early college coordinator who
works closely with the students in the program, and it is worthy of examination:
There is one additional observation I have noticed over the last three years regarding
students in the fifth year of high school. We have a small percentage who leave home,
work more, and become disconnected from the wrap-around support services provided by
the early college program. The challenge of retaining these students is difficult. They
have not earned their high school diploma yet and need to remain engaged with their
education. Does independence or a little more in their paycheck begin to influence the
sense of the better life they were previously in search of? (L. Michaels, personal
communication, 2017, name change for confidentiality).
Getting a taste of the life they seek may be tempting them away from their long term goal, which
may tell a story of the benefits of instant gratification of having some resources where they
previously had very little.
Many of the questions about this particular group of students I have are around some of
the indirect, yet important findings. Why are these dads struggling? I wonder if it has something
to do with what I could liken to an identity crisis. Many of them cannot support their families
like their fathers and their fathers’ fathers could for generations by using physical strength and
labor. Industry has changed and I feel that maybe they have not yet caught up with the changes.
How have their struggles impacted their children? There is more here that this study did not
capture. However, it does connect to an idea that some students seem to come to the early
college program with “stunted” occupational identity development. They did not process through
all of the phases that “normal” development would expect. I believe it is likely because of their

	

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home environments and the trauma they experienced, but I would be curious to know the level of
the effect on them and their academic pursuits.
Finally, we don’t know how the sense of urgency that permeates every level of decisionmaking affects students. Everyone around them tells them that saving time and getting to their
goal of a good job is good, but is it? How does rushing through high school and college affect
these students? It may be worth learning about the potential implications for these students and if
they struggle later on in their educational journey or in their careers by feeling rushed through
the end of their adolescence.

	

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Epilogue
“[This program] it’s going to help you in the long run and like, it may not feel good right
now, but it will definitely feel good in the future. Because like, that's the thing I always
think about. What will happen next? You know, like I always think about the future,
because like how would I pay for college? Where am I going to get that money to go to
college, you know? And if I wait, like if I'm in that mood to do something, I have to do it
now.…that's another reason why I did this program. Because if I were to wait for college,
it's not gonna happen. Like it just won't. I'd find better things to do than go to college. So
I mean it's really...you really gotta think about it. And if you're really passionate about
doing what you want to do, get started on it.” – Bralyn
All of the participants returned to the institution for the next academic year, with the
exception of one, who graduated at the end of the last academic year and got a job over the
summer. A handful of the students finished the early college program and enrolled as official
college students to continue to pursue their career goals. I caught up with several of them when
they came to meet me to read my initial portraits and findings to ensure my work was true and
that I captured their essence in a satisfactory way.
After a long conversation about the effects that upbringing can have on us, both
positively and negatively, one of the participants expressed her concerns about her boyfriend’s
family not liking her, not understanding her, or perhaps judging her. At first I did not understand
the connection, but then she began to explain that her boyfriend is in the third generation of his
family to attend what is arguably the best academic institution in the state. While she is the first
person on her side that will finish college, it will not be one at the same level as her boyfriend’s.
Often, she says she is proud of our institution, but when talking of her boyfriend and his family,
her confidence falters a bit. She understands the issue of prestige, even though she is unable to
articulate it. She feels unworthy and that affects her confidence when she is around her
boyfriend’s family.

	

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Our conversation about prestige began earlier she voiced her concerns after we discussed
my findings. On several occasions during that conversation, she was on the verge of tears. She
talked about how her mom made the decision to break with her family’s generations of drinking
and that instead of being happy for her, they ostracized her and told her she was trying to be
better than them, which lead to permanently damaged relationships. She taught her daughter, an
early college student, that trying to make changes is hard, but it is worth the struggle. And it is, at
all levels, and in all ways. It is the best way to help a person become who they want to be.

	

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APPENDICES

	

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APPENDIX A: Participation Request

Hello! My name is Voula Erfourth and I work for [this postsecondary institution]. I am
also a PhD student at Michigan State University and for my dissertation, I am studying students
like YOU. I am interested in how students make college and career decisions, and I want to hear
from you in how you made the decision to participate in the early college program.
If you are interested in helping me with my dissertation research, please click on the link below,
provide the requested information, and I will follow up with you. Your participation is voluntary
and you will be compensated for your time. Participation will include one or two individual
interviews with me, and potentially a group interview (of 6-9 students) sometime during April
and May.
Thank you in advance for helping me out and letting me get to know you better by
sharing your story with me! And if you have ANY questions, please email or call me at
voula.erfourth@xxxxx.edu or xxx-xxx-xxxx.

https://[remainder of address here]

Voula

	

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APPENDIX B: Early College Students Research Consent Form
You are being asked to take part in a research study of how college students make college and
career decisions. I am asking you to take part because you signed up for this study via the
Google form provided by the campus Early College Coordinator. Please read this form carefully
and ask any questions you may have before agreeing to take part in the study.
What the study is about: The purpose of this study is to learn how students who come from
rural backgrounds make college and career decisions.
What you will be asked you to do: If you agree to be in this study, I will conduct an interview
(group and individual) with you. The interview will include questions about your background,
family, previous school experiences, and ideas of work. With your permission, I would also like
to audio-record the interview. The individual interview will last 45-60 minutes and the group
interview will last 60-90 minutes.
Risks and benefits: I do not anticipate any risks to you participating in this study other than
those encountered in day-to-day life.
There are no benefits to you. I hope to learn more about students and what leads them to
decisions about college and career.
Compensation: You will be provided refreshments and a $10 gift card for your participation.
Your answers will be confidential. Your confidentiality will be protected to the maximum
extent allowable by law. The records of this study will be kept private. In any sort of report made
public will not include any information that will make it possible to identify you. The data
collected for this research study will be protected on a password-protected computer for a
minimum of three years after the close of the project. Only the appointed researchers and the
Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) will have access to the research data. I will audiorecord the interview, and will keep the audio recording in a password protected electronic file.
Taking part is voluntary: Taking part in this study is completely voluntary. You may skip any
questions that you do not want to answer. If you decide not to take part or to skip some of the
questions, it will not affect your current or future relationship with Baker College. If you decide
to take part, you are free to withdraw at any time.
If you have questions: If you have concerns or questions about this study, such as scientific
issues, how to do any part of it, or to report an injury, please contact the researcher at Voula
Erfourth, 1020 S Washington St, Owosso, MI 48867; or skoutela@msu.edu; or 989-729-3406.
If you have any questions or concerns about your role and rights as a research participant, would
like to obtain information or offer input, or would like to register a complaint about this research
study, you may contact, anonymously if you wish, the Michigan State University Human
Research Protection Program at 517-355-2180, FAX 517-432-4503, or e-mail irb@msu.edu, or
regular mail at: 207 Olds Hall, MSU, East Lansing, MI 48824.

	

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You will be given a copy of this form to keep for your records.
Statement of Consent: I have read the above information, and have received answers to any
questions I asked. I consent to take part in the study.
Participant Signature ___________________________________ Date ___________________

Participant Name (printed) ______________________________________________________

Parent/Guardian Signature__________________________________ Date ________________
(Required if participant is under 18 years of age)

In addition to agreeing to participate, I also consent to having the interview audiorecorded.

Participant Signature ___________________________________ Date ___________________

Parent/Guardian Signature__________________________________ Date ________________
(Required if participant is under 18 years of age)

Signature of person obtaining consent ________________________ Date __________________

Printed name of person obtaining consent ______________________ Date _________________

This consent form will be kept by the researcher for at least three years beyond the end of the
study.

	

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APPENDIX C: Interview Protocol
Research question: How does the social context (circumstance) of students from a rural,
economically disadvantaged area influence them to make a decision and take action (agency) to
enroll in an early college program?
Interview Protocol
“Welcome and thank you for your time and willingness to participate in this interview. The study
has two main purposes: first, to understand the reasons why high school students choose to
participate in early college programs and second, what and how early college students think
about work. The interview will last for approximately 45-60 minutes from the start until the end
and all the information will be confidential. I will not use real names in the report. If you want to
mention something ‘off the record’ please let me know during the interview. Your participation
in this study is completely free and voluntary and you may choose not to answer any question
you do not want to answer. As the email stated, our time together will be recorded. You have the
right to request that we stop recording at any time. I’m going to begin recording now. Is that
alright?
Do you have any questions before we begin?”
Background questions - Circumstance questions
“I’m going to ask you some questions about your home life and family before you started taking
college classes.”
1. Tell me about your home life growing up. Who lives with you? Do you get along? Are
you happy?
2. Are there books in your house? If so, what kinds?
3. Are you encouraged to read?
4. Do your parents read? If so, what kinds of things do they read?
5. What do you like best about where you've grown up/your community? Least?
6. If you could have had other opportunities (school or otherwise) growing up than you have
had, what would they be? What would that look like?
7. What do you do for fun with your family? What is least fun? What's your favorite thing
to do with your family? Least?
8. Are your parents/adults home with you all the time you are at home? Do they work at
night or during the day?

“This next set of questions is about the people and support you have around you.”
Trust
1. Which adults do you trust and why?
2. Which peers do you trust and why?
	

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3. Are there other people you trust?
4. What is your relationship like with them?
Advice
5.
6.
7.
8.
Support
9.

Who gives you advice?
Whose advice do you value most and why?
Whose advice do you value least and why?
What kind of school and work/career advice do they give you?
What adults or peers do you get the most support from?
a. How do you feel supported by them?

Identity
10. How or where do you see yourself one year from now?
a. Five years from now?
b. Ten years from now?
11. What do you think you need to do to reach those goals?

Career questions
“This next set of questions is about your career decisions.”
1.
2.
3.
4.

When did you start thinking about work?
What does work mean to you? What does career mean to you?
Do you think you can be anything you want to be (work-related)? Why or why not?
What do your parents/family do for work? Do they talk about work at home? What do
they say about work?
5. When did you start thinking about what you want to be as an adult? When did you
become aware that you would need to go to college to do that?
6. Who or what has influenced you most in your career decision?
7. How have you explored careers?

College questions
“The last set of questions is about your decisions to come to college.”
1.
2.
3.
4.

When did you start thinking about going to college?
Did your parents go to college? When?
What did your parents say to you about college? What about other important adults?
Where did you hear about this EMC program? What made you decide to participate?
Who has supported your decision and how?
5. How did the idea of extending your official high school graduation date make you feel?
6. What do you think made you ready to do college and high school at the same time?
	

132

7. What led you to you pick this college?
8. Are you satisfied with your college choice? Why or why not?
9. What advice do you have for other high school students considering participating in an
early college program?

	

133

APPENDIX D: Participant Chart

	

Name

HS
Grade

Type of
HS
(compare
d to other
schools in
county)

Motto – “I want
to be” statement

Career goal

College goal

Significant life event

Carlos

13

Small,
rural

I want to be
alone

Welder

Death of many close
family members, one
while he watched

Rachel

13

Small,
rural

I want to be a
good person

Accountant

EMC,
certificate
only, already
completed
Bachelor
degree at
current college

John

11

Taylor

13

Bachelor
degree at
current college

Sister drug overdose,
death

Natasha

12

Andrew

12

Charlotte

11

Midsized
rural
Midsized,
rural
Large,
In city
Large,
In city
Small,
rural

Bullied

Steve

12

Midsized,
rural

I want to be a
hard worker

Auto
mechanic

Bralyn

11

Midsized,
rural

I want to be
free from
drama

FBI agent

Finish
bachelor
degree at
current college
Finish
associate
degree at
current college
Finish
associate
degree at
current college
and enlist

Dad’s medical issues,
unable to work

Engineer
I want to be
counted on

I want to be
like my dad
I want to be
independent

Nurse
Medical
Examiner
Engineer
Nurse

134

Adopted along with
five other children
Father prison, sister
mental health issues,
moved away from
home

APPENDIX E: Code Book
Participant
Carlos
Details
RQ1
How does the
social context
(circumstance) of
students from a
rural, economically
disadvantaged area
influence them to
make a decision
and take action
(agency) to enroll
in an early college
program?

Theme

Background,
Trust, Advice,
Support,
Identity
Mom, central figure x
Dad suffering

Career
decisions

College
decisions

	

Rachel Taylor Charlotte Steve Bralyn

x

Difficulty trusting
others
x
Dad un- and under- x
Career
v Work,
employed
permanent v
temporary
x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x
x

x

x

x

x

x
x

Money as freedom

x

Family support to
attend college

x

x

x

x

Desire for increase
economic and social
capital
x

x

x

x

Ease of suffering

x

x

135

x

x

x

x

x

x

REFERENCES

	

136

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