Resilient Doctoral Students in California: A Reflective Study of the Relation between Childhood Challenges and Academic Success.

This general qualitative study examined how people with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) were able to navigate adversity and ultimately pursue doctoral programs. The research focused on the academic experiences of doctoral students who had 4 or more ACEs and explored how resiliency helped these participants navigate the educational system. The case study was conducted with 7 participants who all had 7 or more ACEs and went on to be academically successful. Findings highlighted insights into the resilient lives of these individuals. Their historical narratives generated an exploration of the nature of trauma and overcoming adversity. Based on these findings, a discussion incorporates how educators can provide proper emotional and social support systems. Limitations and future directions conclude this study. Visual inspection of a general outcome reading comprehension measure were mixed, seemingly favoring the validated intervention and not close reading. Limitations of the research and implications for use of close reading with students at risk are discussed. A recent essay published by Meg Jay entitled “The Secrets of Resilience” (2017a) talks about how successful adults overcame difficult childhoods. Jay’s article is a summary of her book Supernormal: The Untold Story of Adversity and Resilience (2017b). In both, Jay talks about the commonness of experiencing childhood trauma and still having success later in life. She states that nearly 75% of people have experienced early childhood trauma, such as trauma associated with a death or divorce, bullying, alcoholism or drug abuse in the home, mental illness in a parent or a sibling, neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, having a parent in jail, or growing up alongside domestic violence until the age of 20. Yet many people overcome trauma and achieve high levels of success as adults through resiliency. Jay’s work and the work of other prominent scholars (e.g., Shectman, DeBarger, Dornsife, Rosier, & Yarnall, 2013) expanded understanding on how people use resiliency to achieve high levels of success. This study is similar to Jay’s in that both look at how people overcome childhood trauma. It is different in that Jay studied ordinary people in a multitude of professions while this study focused on doctoral students in the field of education. So, how do youth use resiliency to navigate school and the schooling process? Shectman et al. (2013) addressed resiliency in their research, articulating how the recent movement for test score accountability has pushed aside other important human character qualities that define what it is to be successful. They declare that if young adults grow up cultivating and refining solid character skills, such as resilience, positive-mindset, and grit, they are much less likely to drop out of college and much more likely to become well-rounded, successful, and fulfilled people. Even with national attention, rarely is longitudinal research done to understand what happens to students after they leave school. The assumption is that a large number end up incarcerated (Hockenberry & Puzzanchera, 2015). The current study focused on doctoral students who faced these struggles as youth and asked them to reflect on their childhood experiences to help understand what happens with struggling youth who eventually succeed in school. Youth face many risk factors, such as the adversity factors listed by Jay (2017). Felitti et al. (1998) categorized these as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). In their study, Felitti et al. (1998) discovered that a large portion of the population had been exposed to trauma in childhood and categorized ACEs into three categories: (a) abuse (physical abuse, psychological abuse, and sexual abuse), (b) neglect (physical and emotional), and (c) household dysfunction (e.g., mental illness, incarceration of a family member, and separation or divorce). They found that these experiences were related to unhealthy outcomes later in life. People who had a history of ACEs also had effects that influenced poor social, emotional, physical, and mental health. Additionally, the Felitti et al. (1998) study further showed that, compared to people with no history of ACEs, people with ACE scores of four or higher were two times more likely to smoke and seven times more likely to be addicted to alcohol or drugs. The people with four or more ACEs were also two times more likely to have cancer, two times more likely to have heart disease, two times more likely to have liver disease, and four times more likely to have emphysema or bronchitis. The California Department of Public Health (2016) also found that youth with four or more ACEs were twice as likely to drop out of high school before finishing and four times less likely to graduate college than youth without ACEs. The findings provide a contribution to the literature in that the doctoral student population sample had four or more ACEs, yet persevered in education. Another contribution to the literature was that the sample was largely composed of students of color, some from farm-working families in Central California. The participants of the study and the ways they dealt with ACEs were both unique in that this population receives little attention in research. Educators also understand that having a positive sense-of-self is also important to academic success (Tinto 1982, 1988; Tough, 2012). Having a positive sense-of-self mitigates addictive behavior, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, and binge eating (Tough, 2012). Furthermore, Tough (2012) stated that as a result, children who grow up