Abstract:
The significant growth in older university learners (ABS, 2012) combined with increases in the proportion of those who are the first in their family to attend university (OECD, 2013) warrants deeper exploration of how these individuals succeed within the higher education (HE) environment. Students who are the first in their family (FiF) to attend university are estimated to comprise over half of the Australian university student population (Spiegler & Bednarek, 2013) but this cohort is reported to have lower educational outcomes and higher risks of attrition (AIHW, 2014). This presentation draws upon various studies (O’Shea, 2014, 2015; O’Shea, May, Stone & Delahunty, 2015), conducted with Australian FiF university students. Using in-depth surveys and narrative biographical interviews, participants were encouraged to deeply reflect upon this HE participation. This research has informed an OLT Fellowship (O’Shea, 2015-2016) exploring approaches to retaining this student cohort as well as related publications (May, Delahunty, Stone & O’Shea, 2016; O’Shea, Stone, May & Delahunty, 2016; Stone, O’Shea et al., 2016).This presentation focuses on the narratives of the older students (those over 25 years), many of whom were caregivers, to explore the following questions: (1) What capitals did students reflect upon as assisting them in their transition to university? (2) In what ways did existing social and cultural knowledges translate into and interact with the university environment?Building upon Bourdieuian theorisations of cultural capital, the work of Yosso (2005) has been used to open up this narrative data in order to explore how this older FiF cohort drew upon established capital and knowledge reserves during their transition to university. Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework is strengths based, recognising that understandings of cultural capital should not only reflect the values of dominant groups. Instead, Yosso (2005) argues that there are alternative types of cultural knowledges valued by more marginalised and less powerful groups, which remain largely unrecognised in the education landscape. The CCW framework identifies six capitals utilised by minority university students in the US during their transition into the HE environment.Methodologically, applying Yosso’s work allowed me to think alongside these richly descriptive interviews (n= 33) to consider the cultural strengths of these participants. The presentation will draw upon a number of student vignettes (Seidman, 1991) to provide an embodied understanding of how individuals in all their incongruence and individuality, participate within the particular social world of the university. The use of vignettes enables issues or concepts to be presented in an embedded fashion rather than stripped of context or setting. These stories then deeply explore how these older participants conceptualised of themselves as ‘successful’ learners and what assisted in the enactment of this ‘success’.