LibGuides: Teaching and Learning: Teaching First-Generation College Students

Resources for Teaching First Generation Students

“Even when presenting academic credentials and a level of academic motivation equal to that of their peers whose parents graduated from college, first-generation students are at a somewhat greater risk of being academically, socially, and economically left behind.” Pascarella, et al., 2004: 276.

Teaching First-Generation College Students

Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University

BOOKS

Creating the Path to Success in the Classroom: Teaching to Close the Graduation Gap for Minority, First-Generation, and Academically Unprepared Students by Kathleen F. Gabriel
Call Number: LC 3731 .G325 2018
"This is a book for all faculty who are concerned with promoting the persistence of all students whom they teach. Recognizing that there are no easy answers, Kathleen Gabriel offers faculty ideas that can be incorporated in, or modified to align with, faculty's existing teaching methods. She covers topics such as creating a positive and inclusive course climate, fostering a community of learners, increasing engagement and students' interactions, activating connections with culturally relevant material, reinforcing self-efficacy with growth mindset and mental toughness techniques, improving lectures by building in meaningful educational activities, designing reading and writing assignments for stimulating deep learning and critical thinking, and making grade and assessment choices that can promote learning."

The Journey Before Us: First-Generation Pathways from Middle School to College by Laura Nichols
Call Number: LC 4069.6 .N54 2020 & eBook
"...Nichols explores the different paths that students take and the factors that make a difference. The interconnected role of schools, neighborhoods, policy, employment, advocates, identity, social class, and family reveal what must change to address the “college completion crisis.” Appropriate for anyone wanting to understand their own educational journey as well as students, teachers, counselors, school administrators, scholars, and policymakers, The Journey Before Us outlines what is needed so that education can once again be a means of social mobility for those who would be the first in their families to graduate from college."

EBOOKS

33 Simple Strategies for Faculty : A Week-By-Week Resource for Teaching First-Year and First-Generation Students by Lisa M. Nunn (2018)

Call Number: eBook

"Educational sociologist Lisa M. Nunn talked with a variety of first-year college students, learning what they find baffling and frustrating about their classes, as well as what they love about their professors' teaching. Combining student perspectives with the latest research on bridging the academic achievement gap, she shows how professors can make a difference by spending as little as fifteen minutes a week helping their students acculturate to college life. Whether you are a new faculty member or a tenured professor, you are sure to find 33 Simple Strategies for Faculty to be an invaluable resource."

Teaching STEM to First Generation College Students by Gail Horowitz (2019)
Call Number: eBook

"First-generation college students are frequently low-income students and from ethnic groups underrepresented in STEM. With a little effort, you can enhance the retention of underrepresented groups in your discipline, at your institution and play a role in national efforts to enhance diversity in STEM."

Technology and Engagement: Making Technology Work for First Generation College Students by Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon & Ana M. Martínez Alemán (2018)
Call Number: eBook

"Through web technology, including social media sites, students were better able to maintain close ties with family and friends from home, as well as engage more with social and academic programs at their university. This 'ecology of transition' was important in keeping the students focused on why they were in college, and helped them become more integrated into the university setting. By showing the gains in campus capital these first-generation college students obtained through social media, the authors offer concrete suggestions for how other universities and college-retention programs can utilize the findings to increase their own retention of first-generation college students."

The First-Generation Student Experience: Implications for Campus Practice, and Strategies for Improving Persistence and Success by Jeff Davis (2017)
Call Number: eBook
"Davis should be applauded for his effort to shed light on first-generation students and their experiences in particular. He tasks the field of higher education with better accounting for first-generation students and for working to identify a universal definition for first-generation students as coming from families where neither parent holds a college degree. The book is accessible to scholars and student affairs administrators and, most importantly, to the very population I suspect Davis hopes to reach with this book, first-generation students who are navigating the often rough and chilly waters on their way to being the first in their families to earn a college degree."
The College Fear Factor by Rebecca D. Cox (2019)
Call Number: eBook

"Rebecca D. Cox draws on five years of interviews and observations at community colleges, where she shows how students and their instructors misunderstand and ultimately fail one another, despite good intentions. Eye-opening even for experienced faculty and administrators, The College Fear Factor reveals how the traditional college culture can actually pose obstacles to students success, and suggests strategies for effectively explaining academic expectations."

"Is that Paper Really Due Today? ": Differences in First-Generation and Traditional College Students' Understandings of Faculty Expectations

"Success in college is not simply a matter of students demonstrating academic ability. In addition, students must master the “college student” role in order to understand instructors’ expectations and apply their academic skills effectively to those expectations. This article uses data from focus groups to examine the fit between university faculty members’ expectations and students’ understanding of those expectations. Parallel discussions among groups of faculty and groups of students highlight important differences regarding issues of time management and specific aspects of coursework. We find definite incongruities between faculty and student perspectives and identify differences between traditional and first-generation college students. We argue that variations in cultural capital, based on parents’ educational experiences, correspond to important differences in each group’s mastery of the student role and, thus, their ability to respond to faculty expectations. The conclusion discusses the theoretical and practical implications of considering role mastery a form of cultural capital."

Faculty and first-generation college students: Bridging the classroom gap together
"Drawing on her thirteen years of experience as director of Indiana University Bloomington’s Groups Program, which serves first-generation and low-income students, the author details the challenges facing fi rst-generation college students (FGS). She argues for the need for sourcebooks such as this one to educate higher-education personnel about the academic, cultural, and social experiences of FGS. Educating college and university personnel is the first step toward improving FGS’ college success, retention, and graduation rates."

Critical compassionate pedagogy and the teacher's role in first-generation student success
"Informed by Rosenberg’s (2003) concept of nonviolent communication, the author’s pedagogical perspective encourages educators to criticize institutional and classroom practices that ideologically place underserved students at disadvantaged positions. At the same time, this perspective urges teachers to be self-reflective of their actions through compassion as a daily commitment. The author suggests that this pedagogical approach helps teachers better counter institutional barriers and oppressive pedagogical practices that inhibit first-generation college students’ success."

First-Generation College Students: How to Recognize Them and Be Their Ally and Advocate
"The article presents author's views regarding teaching first-generation college students. Topics include developing better study habits in students and educating them about the resources; advocating students about graduate, scholarships, and internships program; and teaching students about how to navigate the college system."

Understanding the first-generation student experience in higher education through a relational dialectic perspectives

"The authors use relational dialectics theory to argue that first-generation college students (FGS) often struggle with a give-and-take tension between getting involved in campus life and losing their familial and working-class identity. They suggest that because FGS straddle two different cultures of academia and home, institutions must address these tensions to improve the students' retention and graduate rates."

First-generation students' academic engagement and retention

"This study investigates differences in academic engagement and retention between first-generation and non-first-generation undergraduate students."

Think of First-Generation Students as Pioneers, Not Problems

Chronicle Of Higher Education 59.12 (2012): A37-A38

First-Generation Students, Social Class, and Literacy

"The author works as an academic adviser and adjunct instructor at a small, public, four-year university that provides the usual spread of bachelor's degree programs, as well as several master's degrees. He has done similar work at a private liberal arts college and at a branch campus of a large state school. He brings to this work not only a PhD in American studies but also experience teaching English in a Colombian high school for two years and teaching English as a second language in a language institute in Bogota, Colombia, for a year. At each of the U.S. institutions at which he has worked, administrators and faculty alike have worried about and studied first-generation college students, looking at specific academic and social challenges these students face and how best to ensure student success. In this article, the author looks at this concern about first-generation students from the perspective he has gained from working at a smaller, regional university and from teaching cross-culturally. Although faculty members and administrators invoke first-generation status to explain many of the academic problems they perceive, his experience suggests that social class and local social environment, particularly their respective effects on literacy, are just as crucial indicators of success. Class, in fact, may act as a multiplier to first-generation status."

Students Whose Parents Did Not Got to College: Post-secondary Access, Persistence, and Attainment
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

First Generation Students
by Todd Hibbs // TedxTalks // 5.10.16 // 14 min.

What I Have Learned as a First-Generation College Student
by Lyric Swinton // TedxTalks // 12.5.18 // 5 min.

How Faculty Mentors Can Help First Generation Students Succeed
by NewsHour Productions // 5.15.18 // 5 min.