A growing number of home-schooled students enter the nation's colleges and universities each year. Tinto (1988, 1993) presented a foundational model of how students transition from high school to college. In this model, students travel through three stages: separation, transition, and incorporation. Few studies have examined the transitional issues home-school students encounter as they begin their first year of college. This study, at a midsized public university in the Midwest, examined the transitional issues experienced by first-year college students who graduated from high school in a home-school setting. It specifically sought to determine if the issues experienced by the students were related to Tinto's theory of student departure. The study was qualitative in nature. Data were gathered through interviews with first-year students who matriculated in fall 2005 and persisted to spring 2006. The interviews were held in February and March 2006. Data was analyzed based on guidelines presented by Berkowitz (1997) and themes were discovered.The researcher concluded that there was little distinction between the transitional issues experienced by home-schooled students, and those experienced by traditionally educated students. Students experienced a wide range of transitional issues during their first year of college such as loneliness, meeting others with different values, living in the residence halls, and dealing with greater independence. The transitional issues the participants encountered during their first year of college were closely related to Tinto's (1993) theory of transition. The resources offered by the university, such as orientation, RAs, and campus programming, were influential in the home-schooled students' transition to college. / Department of Educational Studies
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/188119 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Bolle, Mary E. |
| Contributors | Wessel, Roger D. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | viii, 190 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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