Thematic Findings and Results - Flexible Learning Environments: Minoritized College Students’ Experiences in HyFlex

Thematic Findings and Results
With the study’s research questions in mind during the process of data analysis, I set out
to examine, unpack, and connect cohesive themes that emerged from participants’ narrative
accounts. After systematically combining evolving codes and latent themes, three main themes
emerged as the most viable to focus on because of the richness of the narrative accounts provided
by participants and by the relatedness of these themes to the research questions of this study. The
three themes: (a) the Indigenous experience in HyFlex, (b) motherhood in HyFlex, and (c)
disability in HyFlex. My goal was to investigate the experiences of minoritized students in
HyFlex courses using four criteria of minoritization as explained in an earlier chapter: race,
gender, language, and disability. I had expected to find themes under each of those criteria, but
as I went through the process, it became evident that although I did have data for each category,
there were some criteria that did not have sufficient data to craft and discuss a compelling and
cohesive theme. Because of the intersectional diversity of the participants, there is still
representation of the four criteria of minoritization found in the narrative accounts that support
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each of the final themes. As explained in Chapter 3, the final themes have been developed
through a detailed analysis of the phenomenological interviews. All participants have received
email drafts of their profile vignettes for member checking, and in some cases, I have contacted
participants to help clarify items that were unclear or points where they may have seemed to
contradict themselves. I have use data memos, participant drawings, and syllabi from those who
were able to provide them to assist me with triangulation.
Theme 1: The Indigenous Experience
During our interviews, the three Indigenous participants in the study explained their
ethnocultural identities in a manner that prioritized their Indigenous ancestry. “I am Lakota
Sioux” said one participant; another participant stated, “I am Navajo,” and a third participant,
Winona, explained she was Diné, rejecting the name Navajo in a gentle but firm manner that
revealed her desire to reclaim her identity. Winona explained:
Do you know? . . . Diné, in our language means people, but we would like to refer to it as
that because Navajo was a name given to us from Mexicans. So, we recently . . . you
know . . . discovered a way to finally identify our own selves as a tribe with, which is
Diné.
I found it interesting that none of these participants used the term “American” as one of
their intersectionalities even though they are Americans by birth, but I was not surprised given
the oppression Indigenous people have experienced in the United States and in the Americas.
For the Indigenous participants, being Indigenous was much more than who they were today.
Winona’s account revealed a new impetus among her people to reclaim identity, starting with
naming themselves and rejecting names imposed on them by others.
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Lyle, who did not call himself Diné but proudly stated he was Navajo, brought up a point
of concern for his people as they seek to reclaim their histories and their identities. He said:
Well . . . for me, growing up with my culture . . . I know . . . like a lot of people has been
telling me and other people my age to start learning my culture. Because mostly like . . .
nowadays . . . most of the young Native Americans don’t know how to be fluent in our
language. And there’s a lot of like . . . assumptions . . . there’s a lot of . . . we get a lot of
backlash from that, and so I guess . . . With my culture just trying to keep it going and
trying to keep it alive. From what I’ve experienced . . . My traditions are pretty well
rooted because my family is traditional. And whenever they can they try to talk to me in
Navajo like around the House.
As Indigenous youth become more Americanized, or Anglicized, fewer are learning to speak
their own language. As Indigenous languages die out, so do Indigenous cultures. Modernity in
the United States puts pressure on Indigenous youth to become acculturated enough to be able to
compete in the economy and marketplace of the dominant culture. The survival of Indigenous
culture and language depends on Indigenous youth’s ability walk in two worlds. They must
know the ways of the larger dominant culture and at the same time look toward the within to
avoid becoming completely assimilated to keep their cultural traditions and maintain some kind
of hope for the survival of their tribes.
Indigenous youth find themselves in a strange place where to be resilient means to know
the past and look optimistically, but skeptically, toward the future. They find strength in the
stories of survival passed down in their families as Josephine recounted:
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It’s terrible. When you think about it, from our perspective of like . . . resiliency, the fact
that . . . and this is also what happened to my grandmother . . . she was born in 1914, she
lived her life, and then . . . she was not sent to a boarding school like many other
Indigenous children, but she had like. . . a like education probably till sixth or seventh
grade . . . and then she was like . . . forced into . . . like . . . someone “adopted” her to like
nanny their kids. So, she was adopted into a white family to like, be a caretaker. And then
from there, she was able to attend high school and go on to . . . like. . . she was in . . . like
. . . World War II or something, as a nurse, I think is what it was . . . like she was able to
serve, and got out of South Dakota and got to . . . go to like California and like, have all
these other experiences. So, like, it’s really . . . really horrible what happened. . . and it’s
horrible that she was like, essentially, like an indentured slave. But the opportunity that
she got out of it, and to have like, all my aunts, and uncles, and my dad was not
necessarily like a bad thing. You know? Like, there was some good out of it.
Josephine’s account was an example of how Indigenous youth look within to find strength in the
stories of survival of their families and at the same time look for the silver linings in those tragic
episodes to maintain some kind of optimism that things will be alright. It is as if the lesson to be
learned from them is all these things happened to us, and we got rattled by it, but we are still
here, and we will survive and thrive.
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