Analysis on the Experiences of Working-Class Students in Higher Education

Data Analysis Project
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Data Analysis Project
Introduction
The overarching objective of the project was to investigate the experiences of working-class students in higher education and their impact on learners’ socio-cultural identities. Moreover, the study sought to understand the implications of working-class students’ experiences of higher education on their academic progress and how these experiences are gendered and ‘raced’. The project employed a mixed method design that comprised of surveys and ethnographic semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students from working class backgrounds in their first and second years of tertiary education. The study wanted to compare the experiences of learners in diverse Higher Education Institutions (HEIs): an elite university (Southern), a post 1992 university (Northern), a civic pre-1992 university (Midland), and a collage of Further Education (Eastern). More specifically, the study sought to answer the following research questions:
1 How do the social and cultural experiences of working-class students compare across different types of HIEs?
2 What is the impact of these experiences on working-class students’ learning and academic progress?
3 What is the impact of working-class university experiences on learners’ identities and academic progress?
This data analysis report will employ reflexive thematic analysis to develop, analyze, and interpret patterns across the qualitative dataset. It will apply reflexive discussion in discussing empirical findings and answering the research questions with the aim of improving theoretical understanding of social class and learner identities within college context.
Reflexive Thematic Analysis
The project’s primary qualitative data collection methods were ethnographic semi-structured interviews (involving the systematic study of working -class students in their learning environment to understand their perspectives of the environment around them) and personal observations. While conducting qualitative research, the investigators were careful to uphold the ethical conducts related to research integrity and honesty, confidentiality and privacy, informed consent, and beneficence. For instance, all interview sessions were recorded after obtaining consent from the respondent and confidentiality as well as anonymity was maintained by use of pseudonyms. Auto-transcription software was used to transcribe all interview materials. Data coding was applied to systematically categorize semi-structured data into themes for analysis. The project chose the inductive coding approach where themes are allowed to emerge from the raw data rather than from preconceived themes. In addition to the inductive approach, the study used a latent approach to interpret raw data and theorize meanings.
These two methods were suitable because the project wanted to explore the underlying meanings expressed by working-class students in the interviews. The study used reflexive thematic analysis to analyze qualitative data. Reflexive thematic analysis is a collaborative process where the investigators change, remove, and add codes as they go through the data. Unlike other types of thematic analysis, reflexive thematic analysis is consistent with inductive coding since codes are developed at a later stage of the analysis. The investigator reflected on working-class students’ own accounts of their social, cultural, and learning experiences in HEIs as faithfully as possible while also factoring in the reflexive influence of personal interpretations. Reflective thematic analysis is based on the idea that the investigator’s position is unavoidable and a critical aspect of qualitative analysis. An experiential orientation to interpreting students’ responses was applied: the study focused on understanding how tertiary education was experienced by respondents. This reflexive approach entailed researching the meaning ascribed to tertiary education by the respondent and the meaningfulness of college to working-class students.
While students’ thoughts, experiences, and attitudes were subjectively and intersubjectively formed, the investigator yielded to the import and significance ascribed by the respondents. Instead of analyzing participants’ discourses as if they were constitutive, the researcher interpreted students’ thoughts, experiences, and attitudes as reflections of their personal states. An experiential orientation to qualitative data interpretation was suitable because the project focused on studying the subjective ‘personal states’ of working-class learners (Gu & Yu, 2021). The project prioritized learners’ own accounts of their social, cultural, learning experiences in HEIs over the socio-cultural factors influencing the meaning making. The first step in reflexive thematic analysis was familiarizing with the data by reading the entire dataset several times. After transcription of all qualitative data was complete, the researcher made preliminary notes to inform the understanding of the complete thematic framework. The researcher then worked methodically through the interview materials to identify data items that would guide the development of themes. Only those data items that were useful in answering the research questions were coded.
Reflexive thematic analysis is recursive and the researcher conducted several iterations of coding and familiarization. After the sixth iteration, the researcher combined the generalized codes according to shared meanings, which were promoted as themes. Instead of waiting for themes to emerge from the data, the investigator actively interpreted the link between various codes to develop particular themes. Each theme was evaluated in terms of its significance in answering the research questions and creating a coherent picture of the qualitative dataset. The researcher discarded themes that did not fit the research objective regardless of the number of codes that informed them. The researcher discovered three overarching themes that related to the research questions: demographic profile of HEIs and working-class students’ social and cultural experiences; institutional values of HEIs and working-class students’ learning and academic progress; and negotiating; and academic dispositions and school-to-work transition.
Findings
Demographic Profile of HEIs And Working-Class Students’ Social and Cultural Experiences
The interview findings revealed that the social and cultural experiences of working-class students in different types of HEIs were largely influenced by the demographic profile of each campus. For instance, Northern, a post-1992 university, is situated in an economically disadvantaged urban region and a majority of students work part-time, or in some few instances, full-time, during term time. Similarly, Eastern College, is situated in an economically disadvantaged area bereft of the typical attributes of a university town such as bookshops and theatres. A significant proportion of the student population in Northern and in Eastern come from working-class backgrounds or are the first people in their family to go to college. The interview findings showed that the social and cultural systems in these two universities created the conditions for stronger identification when compared to those in Southern and Midland. These positive impressions were created on the onset and persisted throughout learners’ college tenure.
Well, I think, I think, I mean one of the things that helped us was that, I think I said it before, about the social atmosphere because like there’s load of like people, there’s people like yourself who want to do exactly the same as you which makes it easier to blend in and then you can kind of help each other out, sort of thing, do you know what I mean? (CH1, working-class student, Eastern).
I went to the Open Day at T and I was given a one-to-one basically tour of the university and it just seemed better here, I mean there were certain things that didn’t impress me that much about it, but in terms of the way that the city felt and the way that the staff kind of you know they put themselves out to accommodate only me…Well like I said it was financial as well but probably just because I like it here. (AM1, working-class student, Northern).
Southern is a selective university populated by students from middle-class backgrounds: a large number of students have more knowledge of how to navigate university life and what to expect from college compared to learners in Eastern and Northern. In Southern, students live on campus in their first year and are discouraged from taking full-time or part-time jobs during term time. Learners are provided with personalized student support and provided with detailed feedback about their progress. Working-cl...