This research study explores the ways in which articulations of belonging are expressed by a small number of second year education undergraduates in a post-1992 university in the UK. Issues of student engagement and belonging in Higher Education (HE) have been the subject of research within recent years as a way to enhance rates of student retention and success, as the Widening Participation agenda has realised a changing demographic within the traditional student body. This study focuses on the First Generation Student (FGS), as reflective of the non-traditional student, who is subject to a negative framing within the educational literary discourse. The research adopts a metaphorical lens to locate the FGS as migrant within the HE landscape and to consider HE institutional efforts to foster a sense of belonging, as a strategic tool for success, as a colonising process. Working within an ecological framing of the topic, the study focuses on the differing contexts within which the research participants operate and considers the impact these have upon student engagement with the university. As a way to foreground respectful working with research participants, a person-centred approach has been employed, using a narrative inquiry methodological framework. Voices of the participants, as narrators, are privileged within this study in order to afford them the opportunity to add to the ongoing conversation on belonging. Creative strategies, based upon photo- and metaphor-elicitation, have been employed to facilitate discussion of the abstract and intangible concept of belonging and to provide a participatory nature to this research study. Findings signal a strong resolve by these narrators to overcome obstacles in their path to success within what is often an unfamiliar terrain within HE. The potentiality of the individual is privileged, showing strengths that are brought to the world of study which are often unrecognised by university practices. The affective dimension of belonging is emphasised within the research and metaphors of belonging, articulated by the narrators, offer alternative conceptual structurings which privilege aspects to do with security and adventure. Such insights afford opportunities to view belonging from differing perspectives, to re-figure ways in which students see themselves within HE processes, and to alert staff and personnel to new ways in which they might view the non-traditional student. Aspects of valuing the diversity of students and of a person-centred approach to working are viewed as key to creating the possibilities for belonging.

This study employed narrative methods to explore how two Somali-Canadian women formed and understood their identities as first-generation university students. In conceptualizing identity, the study draws on sociological literature that frames identities as a collection of social roles that are performed. Within this framework, university student is a cultural object related to specific kinds of capital. The data are presented in narrative form, based in life history and life story approaches. Within their narratives, participants recounted the ways in which their attempts at developing a university student identity were complicated by their identities as Black, Muslim, economically marginalized individuals from refugee backgrounds. The tension at the heart of each participants’ narrative was not how to perform the university student role, but the cost of that performance on other parts of their identity. These findings reveal the narrow definition university student within the Canadian imagination and its consequence for the lives of marginalized communities.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of adult first-generation students through their college journey. With a conceptual framework based on student involvement and social and cultural capital theories that contribute to student persistence, retention, and graduation, this study was guided by three research questions: (1) What were the expectations and motivations of adult first-generation students when pursuing postsecondary studies after the age of 25? (2) What were the main challenges experienced by this population during their journey through college? and (3) What strategies did these students use to cope with those challenges? Five first-generation participants who started or resumed their college careers when they were 27, 34, 47, and 50 years old were interviewed in-depth. Results indicated that all participants had to search for their inner strength to pursue higher education studies and required the support of their family and social network to succeed. As a result of their rich lived experiences, these adult first-generation students showed how their strong social and cultural capital enabled them to juggle family and work responsibilities and overcome the challenges of their college experiences.

The diploma thesis deals with educationally disadvantaged student at public universities in Czechia. Thesis presumes the existence of educational inequality in Czech educational system and the effect of disadvantages based on attained education level of student's parents. These inequalities hadn't significantly changed even after the massification of tertiary education sector. The population of educationally disadvantaged in the thesis is equivalent to first generation student population, meaning the families with unattained tertiary education level. The main objective is to find out designs of policies targeting this group and to explore perception of the population. To achieve the goal, the thesis is using social construction of target framework. In this way, designs of applied policies are analyzed and the social construction of the target population is defined. The thesis uses qualitative research methods, using thematic document analysis of annual reports and long-term plans of all public universities and then uses the academic senate reports and semi-structured interviews with universities' representatives with selection of cases regarding the first analysis findings. The results show that educationally disadvantaged population remains undefined and there is a general lack of relevant...

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