Title: Adjusting to college
Description: Community colleges have increasingly provided basic skills instruction through developmental education programs for students who are not academically prepared for college. Research indicates that these programs are often unsuccessful because developmental students experience challenges in areas other than academic skills (non-cognitive variables). However, there is a lack of understanding about the ways in which developmental students experience non-cognitive variables. The goal of this qualitative study was to provide descriptions of the meaning and importance of seven non-cognitive variables to developmental writing students at a particular site for a deeper understanding of their experiences. My research questions were as follows: How do 20 beginning developmental writing students describe their understanding of three situational non-cognitive factors (finances, college surroundings, study management) in their educational experiences? How do 20 beginning developmental writing students describe their understanding of four socioaffective non-cognitive factors (views of self, views of education, motivation, and interpersonal relationships) in their educational experiences?

The site of this study was a community college that is part of the City University of New York system. Methods included interviews with 4 faculty members and observations of 6 sections of a beginning developmental writing course for context. I conducted interviews with 20 students who were enrolled in this course to generate the bulk of data. I coded data deductively based on developmental education research and conducted open coding. Participants' descriptions often focused on the desire for financial security, complications in study management, self-direction, and views of family, peers, and teachers. Findings from this study indicated the following: (1) participants sought college degrees for financial security; (2) participants lacked background knowledge to understand the availability, purposes, and usefulness of support services; (3) participants associated positive educational experiences with "caring teachers" based on their own definitions of care; (4) participants who discussed having or being a role model described self-directed and self-motivated approaches to education, while participants who lacked these relationships described an external locus of control; (5) participants described their college attendance as helping to distance them from problematic peers in their pre-college world which may complicate their ability to develop supportive peer networks in college.
Subjects: Developmental studies programs, Case studies, Community college students
Places: United States