Class-Based Frameworks and Assumptions in Community College Faculty Members' Perceptions of Working-Class Students.

LATHE, TERINA ROBERSON. Class-Based Frameworks and Assumptions in Community College Faculty Members' Perceptions of Working-Class Students. (Under the direction of Dr. Sue Barcinas, Dr. Carol Kasworm, Dr. Duane Akroyd, and Dr. Lance Fusarelli). Working-class students face many challenges and obstacles in regards to cultural disconnect, identity, and relationships, as they seek to attain higher education. Much of the literature has focused upon the experiences of the working-class student, with the student as the unit of analysis. While such an approach provides an understanding of how working-class students experience higher education, other aspects of the experience should also be examined, and critiqued as influencing, creating, perpetuating, and maintaining a culture that does not acknowledge social class as a potential hegemonic variable. A majority of workingclass students attain or begin to seek higher education through the community college. Within the community college, the individuals with the most direct contact and thus influence upon the experience of a working-class student is the faculty member. In order to reframe and consequently diminish the obstacles and challenges faced by working-class students, this qualitative study, utilizing narrative inquiry and deconstruction, sought to answer two specific questions, within the arena of community colleges: 1) How do community college faculty members perceive working-class students? and 2) how are classbased frameworks and assumptions present within these perceptions? Interviews were conducted with 10 full-time community college faculty members at a large urban community college. Using a poststructuralist framework, perceptions of working-class students were first identified and organized into four major findings: social class is seen but not understood, working-class is defined by struggles, working-class students must learn college, and working-class students should transform via higher education. The extent to which these perceptions reflected class-based frameworks and assumptions was made visible, by being deconstructed against three broad theoretical frameworks: functionalism, conflict, and interactionist/interpretivist. Via this deconstruction, the following class-based assumptions were made visible in faculty members' perceptions of working-class students: the workingclass is dysfunctional, college is a means by which to challenge/change social class, and a working-class culture is (un)acknowledged and (de)valued. Recommendations following this study focus on making the issue of social class a visible and acknowledged variable in the experience of higher education, particularly as it frames an "invisible" class-based culture by which the working-class is unacknowledged and devalued. © Copyright 2014 Terina Roberson Lathe All Rights Reserved Class-Based Frameworks and Assumptions in Community College Faculty Members' Perceptions of Working-Class Students by Terina Roberson Lathe A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education Adult and Community College Education Raleigh, North Carolina 2014