Pedagogical Interventions in the First-Year Writing Classroom for First-Generation College Students

This chapter discusses ways of engaging first-generation college students in the first-year writing classroom. Many interventions exist for helping first-generation college students adjust to and thrive in academic life, such as TRIO programs. This chapter focuses on how instructors in writing classrooms can create pedagogical interventions to encourage and engage these students in academic discourse. To better understand how the pedagogical interventions were received, the author studied contemporary research on multiple ways of engaging first-generation college students in the first-year writing classroom. Along with this research, the author also collected data from students that identified what activities and assignments most engaged them and what they learned from those assignments. From this data and outside research, the author determined three main pedagogical interventions to help first-generation college students succeed, such as peer review groups, creating empathetic spaces, and assigning empathetic writing genres.

Working in the Margins: A Study of University Professionals Serving Marginalized Student Populations

The purpose of this research is to gain some understandings of how university professionals who work with marginalized student populations perceive their professional work as situated within a university context. The professionals in this study work in federal TRIO programs that serve first-generation, low-income students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy. We hope this research furthers understanding of TRIO programs and their impact on underrepresented students. Specifically, we discuss TRIO professionals’ perspectives on how their institutional context affects their ability to serve students. We focus on the ways institutional participants understand and value these programs, as well as on the ways that institutions could be more supportive of TRIO programs.

Helping the Progress of Disadvantaged Students in Higher Education: The Federal Student Support Services Program

Student Support Services (SSS) is one of the largest federal TRIO programs designed to help disadvantaged students stay in and complete college. Through a longitudinal study of participants and comparable non participants, we examined the impact of SSS on retention. Data were collected through student questionnaires, institutional and program data, and students’ postsecondary transcripts. We found that SSS had a positive impact for all three measures of retention that were used, but the impact varied depending on which services students used and how much they participated. The results confirm that retention programs should address both academic and social integration on campus.