Written by Paul Dean, Professor in OWU's Department of Sociology & Anthropology
August 2024
We know that many working-class first-generation (WCFG) students face financial challenges, but what we often don't realize is that they also face significant cultural challenges that affect their academic performance. Research on class cultures show how WCFG and middle-class continuing-generation (MCCG) students are socialized to speak differently, develop different levels of comfort with authority figures, vary in their exposure to the unwritten rules of college, have different values, and more. Because higher education is dominated by middle-class culture, students raised in MCCG families have an advantage and WCFG students often experience a cultural mismatch. As a WCFG college grad, I know this from experience. While WCFG students are a diverse group, the tips below leverage research on class-based cultures to better support our students:
ResearchWe faculty want all students to ask for help when they need it, but the reality is that MCCG and WCFG students have been socialized differently in seeking help. For example, one study found that both "like middle class students, first-generation students believed that . . . they would have to be more responsible for themselves. However, unlike middle class students who interpreted that responsibility as reaching out to seek help, first-generation students interpreted the responsibility as being on their own to succeed." When facing difficulty, WCFG students have been socialized to buckle down and try harder, and often believe they are burdening others or revealing weakness when asking for help.
You can start to normalize asking for help from Day 1 by explicitly talking about the role of seeking help in the learning process. On the first day of my Intro-level classes, I use a variety of polling questions to engage students about how they learn, how they study, what they are passionate about, and what they're afraid of. For example, I ask them this polling question, then I facilitate a discussion of why and how they have asked for help, what the results were, how some groups of students are more likely than others to ask for help, and why students that seek help will get further ahead because of it.
Another way to normalize asking for help is to explain the role of failure in education. We can talk about our own failures as students and professionals, and how we and others have dealt with imposter syndrome.
A wealth of research shows that WCFG students are much less likely to feel a sense of belonging in college. Research shows this lack of belonging is associated with lower academic engagement, lower persistence to degree, and poorer mental health.
Studies show that students will experience an increased sense of belonging when they have "greater access to people with whom they share common backgrounds and experiences, learning that is relevant to their communities, service projects that allow them to give back to their communities, … and validation of their backgrounds and identities."
Accordingly, instructors can help foster this sense of belonging by acknowledging the different experiences that students have, showing compassion and empathy when students are facing difficulty, conducting in-class writing activities about students' values, and designing assignments and activities that help students connect academic content to their communities and lived experiences.
ResearchLike their peers in the middle-class, WCFG students want relationships with faculty. But WCFG students are more likely to be intimidated by professors, and less likely to initiate or have interactions with their professors. As researchers have documented, many FGWC students "feared being found out to be incompetent" reflecting an "insecure" self-image as a college student.
To help students overcome their fears, you could design an assignment that requires them to meet with you and provide resources on how to approach a meeting with a faculty member. If you have some flexibility in your course schedule, consider canceling 1 class session to free up time for student conferences. For something less time-intensive, assign an early-semester substantive project that is a small percentage of the course grade. Then require all students who score below a certain point to meet with you.
ResearchHaving been socialized into group-orientated and interdependent norms in working-class culture, WCFG students demonstrate higher prosocial behavior. Compared with MCCG students that are more socialized into individualistic culture, WCFG students tend to have a more difficult time learning in lecture-based classes. Lecture-based classes advantage students who have been socialized into a more individualistic orientation and have developed stronger habits of sitting for long periods with focused attention and effective note-taking skills.
Learning communities have been shown to support a variety of marginalized students, including WCFG students. This can begin on the first day of class using social icebreakers, or you can try any of these concrete activities and prompts throughout the semester. While students sometimes complain about team-based work, we know that structured group work has positive impacts and that employers consistently rank teamwork as a top skill they seek in graduates.
WCFG students are most often viewed through a deficit lens. Deficit thinking narrowly points to the things that students lack that prevent them from succeeding academically, often holding them responsible for not knowing the middle-class norms underpinning college life.
To address this, instructors might personally reflect on:
To adopt a strengths-based perspective, consider the following research findings: WCFG students tend to:
Of course, WCFG students come from many different backgrounds, and are not a homogenous group. For example, racial differences among WCFG students have important effects on students' sense of belonging and classroom dynamics. But the cultural differences above are commonly found across many other forms of social identity.
Furthermore, research demonstrates that the tips above are documented to help all students, not only WCFG students.