homework2

‘‘Is that paper really due today?’’: differences in first-generation and traditional college students’ understandings of faculty expectations

Peter J. Collier Æ David L. Morgan

Received: 18 July 2004 / Accepted: 25 April 2007 / Published online: 22 May 2007 � Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Abstract Success in college is not simply a matter of students demonstrating academic ability. In addition, students must master the ‘‘college student’’ role in order to understand

instructors’ expectations and apply their academic skills effectively to those expectations.

This article uses data from focus groups to examine the fit between university faculty

members’ expectations and students’ understanding of those expectations. Parallel

discussions among groups of faculty and groups of students highlight important differences

regarding issues of time management and specific aspects of coursework. We find definite

incongruities between faculty and student perspectives and identify differences between

traditional and first-generation college students. We argue that variations in cultural

capital, based on parents’ educational experiences, correspond to important differences in

each group’s mastery of the student role and, thus, their ability to respond to faculty

expectations. The conclusion discusses the theoretical and practical implications of

considering role mastery a form of cultural capital.

Keywords College student adjustment � Cultural capital � Faculty expectations � First-generation students � Focus group methodology � Role mastery � University retention

Introduction

As a step toward understanding the divergent perspectives of faculty and students, this

article investigates each group’s perceptions of the factors involved in student success at

the university level. We propose that, in addition to academic skills, university success

requires mastery of the ‘‘college student’’ role. Mastering the college student role enables

young people to understand their instructors’ expectations and to apply their existing skills

P. J. Collier (&) � D. L. Morgan Department of Sociology, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207-0751, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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High Educ (2008) 55:425–446 DOI 10.1007/s10734-007-9065-5

to meet those expectations successfully. Thus, this article examines the fit between faculty

members’ expectations and their students’ understanding of those expectations.

We propose that an individual’s understanding of the ‘‘college student role’’ is a critical

element in explaining student success at the university. Because relatively little is known

about these kinds of ‘‘implicit expectations’’ and ‘‘tacit understandings,’’ we investigate

these issues from a qualitative perspective. By comparing separate faculty and student

focus group discussions, we highlight the similarities and differences between faculty

members’ expectations for students and students’ understanding of those expectations. In

addition, we examine whether different subgroups of students experience these issues in

different ways by comparing how first-generation students’ experiences with faculty

expectations differ from more traditional students’ experiences.

Background

First-generation student retention

Why do some students succeed in college while others do not? Specifically, why are some

types of students predictably more likely to graduate from college, while others consis-

tently pose ‘‘retention’’ problems? In particular, ‘‘first-generation college students’’ pose

notable retention concerns. These are students the USA Government’s Educational

Opportunities Program defines as those with neither parent having completed a four-year

college degree in the USA by the time that student entered college. Statistical data show

that the concerns are well-founded. First generation students are less likely to graduate than

peers who have at least one parent with a college education (National Center for Educa-

tional Statistics 2005).

Current explanations of college students’ success or failure tend to emphasize the

complex relationships between the characteristics of institutions and the characteristics of

individual students (e.g., Terenzini et al. 1996). In one of the best known general models of

student success, Tinto (1975, 1993) proposes that new students start with pre-enrollment

packages of individual attributes, previous schooling, and family support. These have a

direct effect on the students’ desire to complete a degree, which Tinto refers to as ‘‘aca-

demic integration.’’ These variables also affect the students’ desire to get a degree at a

particular institution, or what Tinto calls ‘‘social integration.’’

Researchers have used Tinto’s model to show that social integration and academic

integration are the best predictors of first-generation college student retention rates (e.g.,

Elkins et al. 2000). Even though Tinto’s work provides a general framework for under-

standing student retention (see Kraemer’s 1997 review), most subsequent research on

retention among first-generation students emphasizes the difficulties with social rather than

academic integration (e.g., Hurtado and Carter 1997). Our understanding of the impacts of

academic integration is further limited by the fact that it is almost always measured solely

by grade point averages (GPAs) (Weidman 1989), without investigating the ways that

other forms of academic integration influence grades.

Unless we assume that grades are completely determined by prior preparation and

personal skills, there must be other elements of academic integration that influence GPAs.

For example, at least one study (Bean and Metzer 1985) found that other academic vari-

ables, such as advising and study habits, directly affected GPA for ‘‘non-traditional’’

students. While adding other variables that are more closely linked to actual student–

faculty interactions may improve the explanatory capacity of quantitative models, adding

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variables does little to help us understand the broader processes involved in academic

integration. In particular, we need to investigate whether students from different back-

grounds (such as first generation and more traditional students) experience different

problems concerning academic integration. To address these questions, we turn to a the-

oretical perspective based on a revitalized version of sociological role theory, which

connects the issue of academic integration to mastery of the college student role.

Roles as resources and cultural capital

Our approach to students’ acquisition and mastery of the college student role builds on the

classic, Symbolic Interactionist version of role theory (e.g., Becker 1963; Mead 1934). In

doing so, we rely on a recent series of theoretical developments that emphasize the use of

‘‘roles as resources’’ (Baker and Faulkner 1991; Callero 1986, 1994, 2003; Collier 2000,

2001). According to this approach, roles serve as resources that individuals use to pursue their goals through interactions with others. In the case of higher education, students who

arrive at the university with a greater mastery of the college student role possess an

important resource for recognizing what their instructors expect of them and for

responding appropriately to those expectations.

Collier’s (2000, 2001) Differentiated Model of Identity Acquisition expands on the idea

of roles as resources by proposing that there are multiple, alternative conceptions for broad

societal roles, such as ‘‘college student.’’ For example, students at different schools, a

community college, a large public urban university, or an elite private university must

typically deal with different sets of expectations in order to be recognized as ‘‘successful’’

at their respective schools. Having differentiated versions of the same role allows indi-

viduals to generate more effective responses to the actual circumstances they experience as

they pursue their goals (for example, when students perform the version of the student role

required by their university or by a professor).

This revitalized version of role theory underscores the importance of role mastery: the ability to perform increasingly customized or context-specific versions of a particular role.

This form of mastery applies to both halves of the distinction that Ralph Turner (1978)

makes between ‘‘role playing’’ and ‘‘role making.’’ Role playing occurs when an

individual in a new or uncertain situation uses an existing role standard to perform a

‘‘conventional’’ version of the role in question, as when a college freshman concentrates

on meeting a professor’s standards, as a step toward learning the college student role. In

contrast, role making occurs when an individual develops her or his own ‘‘version’’ of the

role, usually as a result of a series of previous performances of that role, as when a college

student negotiates with a professor to create a ‘‘reading and conference’’ or ‘‘directed

studies course’’ as an alternative to a regularly offered class. Individuals tend to start out

with ‘‘role playing’’ (enacting a standardized version of a role), then, as their level of

expertise increases, they do more ‘‘role making’’ (developing their personal version of that

role). Because role playing and role making typically work together, individuals may

develop greater mastery through both role playing—by increasing the number of different

versions of role that they can perform—and role making—by increasing their ability to

create new but acceptable responses to role standards.

The differentiated model of role acquisition makes it possible to describe a more

detailed version of role mastery, based on the realization that there are multiple role

standards for the same role. When individuals successfully learn how to recognize and

respond to different standards for a role, they develop a higher level of role mastery and

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this increased expertise gives them more options for subsequent performances of that role.

For example, success in college requires that students must cope with broad variation in the

standards that different professors will use in assessing their performances. Just as in the

earlier example of different types of colleges and universities having different expectations

for their students, different professors within any one school will have different expecta-

tions. Thus, the mastery of multiple versions of a role serves as a resource enabling people

to accomplish their desired goals—perhaps getting a better grade in a course or graduating

on time.

A different aspect of role mastery, which has received more attention in the literature on

expertise, is the need to acquire both explicit and implicit knowledge. Within the field of

education, Michael Eraut has pursued this topic with regard to both teacher education as

professional development (1994) and education in general (2000). According to Eraut,

even though schools are the ‘‘archetypical context for formal learning,’’ explicitly stated

knowledge about the content of the curriculum ‘‘is only one part of the process’’

(2000:131). From this standpoint, students’ success in college depends not only upon their

explicit understanding of course content but also their implicit understanding of how to

demonstrate that knowledge in ways that will satisfy each professor’s expectations. Hence,

even when two students have an equivalent mastery of the explicit content of their course

work, the one who has a better understanding of their professors’ implicit expectations will

be more likely to succeed.

This conceptualization of role mastery, or increasing expertise as a resource, is closely related to Bourdieu’s (1973, 1977, 1984) theory of cultural capital. Cultural

capital can be defined as ‘‘proficiency in and familiarity with dominant cultural codes

and practices...’’ (Aschaffenburg and Maas 1997:573). And, according to Bourdieu, the

educational system is the primary vehicle by which the culture of the dominant class is

both transmitted and rewarded. Dumais (2002) notes that while schools require students

to have the ability to recognize, receive, and internalize the values of the dominant

culture, they do not necessarily provide students with opportunities to do so. Instead,

‘‘the acquisition of cultural capital and subsequent access to academic rewards depend

upon the cultural capital passed down by the family, which in turn, is largely dependent

on social class’’ (Dumais 2002:44).

Conceptualizing role mastery or expertise as cultural capital addresses a major issue that

has arisen in discussion of Bourdieu’s work. One major criticism of many current appli-

cations of cultural capital theory is that it is unclear how a conceptualization of cultural

capital as ‘‘upper class values’’ or ‘‘knowledge of beaux arts’’ directly translates into

social advantage in interactions (Kingston 2001:94). Lareau and Weininger (2003) have

responded to this critique by focusing on the three key elements in the reproduction of

cultural capital: (1) interactions where authorities evaluate individuals, (2) the standards

that authorities use in their evaluation, (3) differences in the cultural resources that indi-

viduals bring to their interactions with authorities. Stated in terms of mastering both

explicit and implicit aspects of the college student role, this points to the importance of: (1)

situations in which instructors evaluate student performance, (2) the assumptions and

expectations that instructors use, and (3) the resources that students have for recognizing

and responding to their instructors’ expectations.

Figure 1 presents a conceptual model that summarizes many of these ideas by distin-

guishing between learning the college student role and learning course content as two

important influences on student performance. The lower path of this model reflects a

traditional achievement model of education, where a student’s academic ability determines

the understanding of course material, which then determines academic performance. Most

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of the activities along this path consist of what Eraut (2000) would summarize as formal

learning, involving knowledge that is typically explicit and codified. The upper path in the

model expands on this traditional model by including the ‘‘Fit Between Faculty and

Student Expectations’’ as an additional influence that mediates the relationship between

students’ academic skills and their academic performances. Eraut (2000) would summarize

these activities as informal learning, emphasizing knowledge that is typically personal and

implicit. According to this model, the ability to understand the course material, as captured

by the lower path, is necessary, but, alone, it is not sufficient as the source of a student’s

performance. In addition, mastery of the college student role—in the form of under-

standing the professor’s expectations—is also necessary to demonstrate knowledge of

course materials. In particular, in a comparison between two students with an equivalent

understanding of the course material, the one who has a better understanding of the faculty

member’s expectations will perform better.

In keeping with this dual-path approach, the model also distinguishes between two

components of ‘‘Students’ Resources’’ and two aspects of ‘‘Students’ Performances.’’ In

terms of Resources, academic skills refers to prior preparation for acquiring content related knowledge, including such essentially technical skills as the ability to read college level

texts, and so on. In contrast, cultural capital refers to preexisting knowledge about interacting successfully in academic settings, including such essentially social skills as the

ability to recognize and respond to the standards faculty members use when they evaluate

assignments. Similarly, Performances are divided between actual capacity, which refers to the full set of what the student ‘‘knows and understands’’ with regard to the course

materials, and demonstrated capacity, which refers to the ability to express what the student ‘‘knows and understands.’’ Needless to say, this demonstrated capacity is what

instructors examine when assigning grades.

The model’s emphasis on the influence of cultural capital suggests the way that social

background affects the ability to perform the college student role. Eraut makes a similar

point in his discussion of how individual and social differences affect the development of

expertise, by noting: ‘‘Individuals do not enter a given setting with identical cognitive

resources,’’ and ‘‘the setting rarely treats them in a completely uniform way’’ (2000:131).

For example, a first-generation student or a student who has recently transferred from a

two-year college to a four-year university may be unprepared when the expectations for

written work go beyond good grammar to require the appropriate use of sources in

addition. Similarly, such students may encounter difficulties when their professors expect

them to demonstrate ‘‘critical thinking’’ rather than simply presenting logically consistent

arguments.

Student's Abilities

Cultural Capital

Academic Skills

Understanding of Course Material

Understanding of Professor's Expectations Student's

Performances

Demonstrated Capacity

Actual Capacity

Fig. 1 Conceptual model

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In contrast, students from a more traditional background enter the university with a level

of cultural capital that makes it easier for them to become ‘‘role experts.’’ Not only are

they more familiar with higher education from listening to family members’ academic

histories, but they also are likely to have more appropriate approaches for dealing with

teachers and other educational authorities because of parental coaching. In many ways,

their parents have been preparing these traditional students for college ever since they first

entered school. Traditional students’ advantage in mastering the college student role is,

thus, an example of how differences in cultural capital can perpetuate differences in family

educational attainment (Bourdieu 1984; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977).

These initial differences between traditional and non-traditional students further affect a

student’s ability to develop mastery of the college student role. In particular, the cultural

capital that traditional students possess can give them a head start in the ‘‘pattern recog-

nition’’ that allows them to identify professors’ expectations and to respond to them

effectively. For example, both traditional and first-generation students may have a general

awareness that they will have to ‘‘do the student role’’ differently in their science classes as

compared to their liberal arts classes. But any advantage traditional students have in

understanding this distinction will provide a resource for further ‘‘differentiation’’ of these

two sets of expectations, leading to more effective strategies for dealing with these dif-

ferences. In addition, traditional students will be more likely to recognize how professors’

expectations may differ from one liberal arts class to another. At the same time that

traditional students are expanding their role mastery to develop a fine-tuned understanding

of each professor’s expectations, first-generation students may still be struggling simply to

understand the university’s expectations ‘‘in general.’’

Overall, this conceptual model draws attention to the fact that success in higher

education is not solely a matter of students demonstrating their academic abilities. As

Lecouteur and Delfabbro (2001) note, however, researchers have paid relatively little

attention to students’ and teachers’ understandings of and standards for teaching and

learning, leading them to call for more ‘‘detailed discussion with those who are actively

involved in teaching and learning practices’’ (2001:233). We address this need by

presenting qualitative data that compares the perspectives of students and professors,

especially with regard to the upper path in our model, which emphasizes the more

explicit expectations associated with mastery of the college student role. In addition, we

examine differences between first-generation students and traditional students with more

educated parents, especially in terms of the ability to recognize and respond to faculty

members’ expectations, regardless of a student’s actual understanding of the course

material.

Method

Setting

Portland State University (PSU) is a 23,000-student public university, located in Portland,

Oregon, USA Portland State is an urban university that serves students from a diverse

range of family backgrounds. According to 2000 and 2001 data from Student Support

Services/Educational Opportunity Program (2000), 18 percent of PSU students are first-

generation students, and of that group, 12% qualify as both low income and first-generation

students.

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Design

This study used two layers of segmentation (Krueger and Casey 2000). The first split was

between faculty and students. For the faculty, we conducted two focus groups with

instructors who primarily taught undergraduate courses in either business or the liberal arts

and sciences. Fifteen faculty members participated in the focus groups. The decision to

limit our sample to undergraduate faculty from these two colleges was based on the

premise that these faculty members shared a common group of general academic

expectations for students, which might differ greatly from faculty in the Fine Arts or

Engineering.

The second layer of segmentation in our design separated different kinds of under-

graduate students into two sets of focus groups: first-generation students and those from

more traditional, highly educated backgrounds (students with at least one college graduate

parent). We conducted a total of eight student groups, including six groups of first-

generation students and two groups of students from more traditional backgrounds. Sixty-

three students participated in the eight focus groups. We collected more data from

non-traditional students than traditional because, as a group, non-traditional students were

quite diverse, for example, some were returning to college as older adults while others

came from immigrant backgrounds with English as a second language. As with the faculty,

the students came from either business or the liberal arts and sciences.

We developed a parallel set of interview questions for the faculty and student groups

with identical questions for all of the student groups. The goal was to hear about both the

faculty members’ and the students’ expectations of what students should be able to do in

freshman- and sophomore-level classes. Group interviews can be especially useful for

investigating taken-for-granted aspects of people’s ideas, because each participant’s

thinking is stimulated by what others in the group say (Morgan 1997, 2002). Additionally,

using parallel sets of discussion questions allowed us to compare, on the one hand, how

closely the faculty members’ expectations matched the students’ responses, and, on the

other hand, how closely the first-generation responses matched traditional students’.

The interview questions covered three basic areas. First, we asked about the basic

priorities that each group recognized, with regard to students’ schoolwork. Next, we asked

how students were supposed to know about these expectations. Finally, we asked about the

kinds of problems that students encountered through not understanding expectations and

how students should solve those problems.

Results

The conceptual model that we presented in Fig. 1 divided students’ Academic Performance

into two pathways, a lower path that emphasizes the explicit understanding of course

material and an upper path that emphasizes both the implicit and explicit understanding of

faculty expectations. It is, of course, the upper path, related to understanding faculty

expectations, that interests us, and our model points to three interrelated issues. First, how do faculty members understand and express their own expectations? Second, to what extent

do students in general understand and accept the faculty’s expectations? Finally, how do

first generation and more traditional students either overlap or differ in their ability to

recognize and respond to faculty expectations? These three issues form the outline for this

section. We begin with the broader question of how well expectations are recognized and

understood (that is, the first part of the upper path in Fig. 1). After that, we will consider the

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specific consequences of successes and failures in understanding expectations (or, the

second part of the upper path in Fig. 1).

The faculty’s expectations

Faculty were quite articulate and explicit about the issues that they encountered in dealing

with students’ ability to understand and follow their expectations. Although there were

distinct disciplinary differences among faculty members that reflected the substantive

content in the lower path of our model, almost every instructor in these focus groups shared

their frustrations with students’ difficulties in comprehending their basic expectations,

which make up the upper path of our model. This was especially true when dealing with

relatively new college students. For example, in the later section of our results, we present

two cases where students had similar difficulties in recognizing and responding

appropriately to professors’ expectations about writing assignments in two quite different

disciplinary contexts. While the details of these assignments were quite different—in a

science course and a general education course—the underlying issue was the same. Each

student was unable to recognize what constituted an appropriate reference source.

Faculty members’ concerns regarding students’ problems in meeting their expectations

fell into three broad categories: workload and priorities, the explicitness of expectations

and assignments, and issues related to communication and problem solving.

Expectations about workload and priorities

Faculty members began with very clear expectations about the amount of time students

should commit to coursework. Both faculty groups discussed the university’s published

standard that each hour of class time should be matched by two to 3 h of work outside the

classroom. Thus, these faculty members reported telling their students such things as:

‘‘You need to allow at least 2 h outside of class (to read, study and do assignments) for

every hour you spend in class... I say [for a standard four credit course] you have to have

8 h a week outside of class, or you’re not going to make it.’’

The professors also emphasized that students need to prioritize getting an education.

They had strong beliefs that students should allocate the proper amount of time to

mastering schoolwork rather than trying to fit it in around their other commitments. As one

professor noted:

We are an urban campus. We’re designed to deal with people’s life crises, but I think

the great gift you give to them is to share we’re all limited by 24 h a day, 7 days a

week. You make your priorities and I tell them all the time, I say, ‘‘I’m not in

judgment of you, it’s your choice and I’m just here to help you get a preview of what

the consequences will be from this choice.’’

According to the faculty members, students needed to recognize the amount of time their

schoolwork would require, and they needed to prioritize school above other commitments,

so that they can meet expectations. According to both first-generation and traditional

students, their time commitments inevitably reflected the amount of time that they had

available, rather than the amount of time it would take to master the course material.

In addition, the faculty members consistently told students that college level coursework

would be more demanding than what they had experienced before. Students who failed to

understand this expectation might not allocate sufficient time to master key course skills, or

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to identify and retain key areas of content. This is illustrated by one faculty member’s

comment:

One of the things that I tell them is that the work at the university is going to be

different than the work that they have probably had at the community college... You

can tell them, but they have to kind of go through the process to see just what you’re

referring to up front. Until they actually experience it, I don’t think they fully get it.

Explicitness of expectations and assignments

From the faculty’s own point of view, they had clear standards, yet they also reported that

students repeatedly expressed a desire that they be as explicit as possible. Even though

faculty could recognize that their taken-for-granted expectations were not obvious to

students, they tended to express this as part of a larger series of problems that they

summarized as ‘‘not following directions.’’ As one professor remarked: ‘‘I do have a few

who write an excellent paper but it’s not what they were assigned to write, and that’s

always difficult to grade.’’

For the faculty, the course syllabus played a major role in conveying their expectations.

In discussing how explicit the syllabus should be, several professors reported a general

tendency for syllabi to become more detailed, in order to address problems they had

experienced in past classes. In response, many of them added material based on ‘‘the

problems that we run into each term—we keep adding information to our syllabus, to try

and make it clear from the very beginning.’’ Another professor commented, ‘‘I think one

of the reasons that we’ve become so concrete and structured and put so much information,

basic information in is ... when you get comments like, ‘Um, oh did you say that was due

today?’’’

Sometimes communicating expectations clearly was not enough, however. In particular,

a continuing source of frustration for the faculty was that students did not pay attention to

specific expectations associated with their particular course. As one faculty member noted,

‘‘They can’t use rules that they have applied across all courses. They have to use the rule in

the system that I put out for them and sometimes that’s different.’’

One area to which faculty devoted considerable attention was the explicitness of their

expectations concerned written assignments. The focus groups also produced several

discussions about shared standards with regard to writing issues. These included expec-

tations that students should: have basic writing skills, such as, spelling, sentence structure,

and demonstrate a coherent use of paragraphs; know how to put a paper together on a

computer; and, be able to cite references in their papers using accepted guidelines. Yet

these expectations were not always met. As one professor commented, ‘‘I made an

assumption they knew [APA or MLA style] and most people don’t. So I use a packet

handout now.’’ Another professor echoed these same sentiments:

I spend a lot of time going over in class, ‘‘This is what I’m expecting. ‘‘ There’s a

handout detailing exactly what I’m looking for, and for the most part that’s not a

problem for students. The first time...I didn’t spend so much time in the class during

lectures saying ‘‘When you write your paper this is what you need to be looking for.

‘‘ When I first had the assignment it was very problematic, people didn’t get it, they

didn’t get the paper at all... so I have kind of changed and made the lecture more

explicit.

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Expectations related to communication and problem solving

All three sets of focus groups agreed that it was essential to improve faculty–student

communication in order to increase the likelihood of student success, but there was much

less agreement about whose responsibility it was to initiate those conversations or when

this should happen. Both traditional and first-generation students agreed that the student

should take the initiative and introduce himself to the professor to try to establish some

rapport. Both groups of students also agreed that they hoped this would make communi-

cation easier in the future.

In contrast, the professors felt that the real issue was the students’ failure to commu-

nicate about problems when they encountered them. When students did not ask about the

kinds of problems that professors suspected they were having, the professors would use

lecture time to offer tips about how to get better grades on assignments. Examples

included: following the assignment instructions, attending class for additional information

about assignments, getting help before the assignment was due instead of asking to rewrite

the assignment after poor grade, and so on.

One specific expectation that faculty members shared with regard to problem solving

was that students should take advantage of professors’ office hours to make contact and get

their questions answered. But as one professor pointed out:

I tell them, ‘‘One of the reasons I put my office hours down is because I sit in that

office waiting for you to come and talk to me. If you chose not to, that’s okay but I

am here for you... [I tell them,] this is where I am. I sit there. I can sit there correcting

your paper or I can talk to you. If you have questions about any of this, come to me.

That’s the time.’’

As this last example shows, faculty members expressed considerable frustration over the

fact that their continued efforts to communicate their expectations often failed to produce

the desired results. Thus, faculty members not only felt that they had clear expectations but

also that they worked hard to share them. Yet, at the same time they also recognized that

the things they said did not seem to mean the same things to students as they did to them.

The next section demonstrates some of the elements of this ‘‘disconnect’’ by examining

the students’ perspective on these same expectations.

Students’ general expectations

There are many ways that both traditional and first generation students shared the same

general perspective on faculty expectations. In some cases, they either discounted or

ignored the importance of the things that professors said; in other cases, they systematically

reinterpreted what their professors said and thus ‘‘misunderstood’’ the message that faculty

members were attempting to send. This section compares students’ shared understanding of

faculty members’ expectations to the actual faculty expectations, using the same topic areas

as the previous section. Then, the section following this will highlight the ways that first

generation students’ expectations were different from those of more traditional students.

Expectations about workload and priorities

Both the first-generation and traditional students felt that the actual time they had available

for schoolwork should be the determining factor for the basic priorities. Students, thus,

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based their ideas about what is an ‘‘appropriate’’ amount of work to put into a class, on the

amount of time they felt they had available, rather than on any sense of how much time

might actually needed to master the material.

You get a lot more out of it if you can do all the reading but sometimes its impossible

when you have four classes and each one has like hours of reading everyday or every

class... In some of my classes I have so much reading that I just throw other stuff out

the window.

According to both groups of students, their time commitments inevitably reflected the time

they had available, and not faculty members’ expectations that they should think in terms

of the effort needed to master the course material. In contrast to the faculty expectation that

students should ‘‘prioritize their education’’ over other commitments, students emphasized

the need to fit school work in with their outside jobs, family demands, and other aspects of

their lives.

So it might be important [for professors] to understand that there is stuff that goes on

outside the university, like family responsibilities, cultural expectations, and that can

have a real effect on how you perform in school, so take some of that into account.

Explicitness of expectations and assignments

Both sets of students agreed that they wished professors would be more explicit—despite

faculty perceptions that they already went to a great deal of effort to be unequivocal about

their expectations. The syllabus was one area where these disagreements were most clearly

visible, as summarized in this student’s comment:

Here you are handed a sometimes 2, 3 page ‘‘thing’’ and its got all this information

on it and, at times, teachers don’t go over it, they just hand it to a bunch of students

on the assumption that they know what it is.

The same general pattern was apparent with regard to expectations about writing assign-

ments. Both types of students agreed that they did not receive enough detailed information

how to write, including in the university’s freshman level general education courses, where

this kind of instruction supposedly occurred. Notably, students described these classes as

including many writing assignments but little actual instruction about writing. Students,

thus, expressed their own frustrations about the factors that affected the evaluations they

received on specific assignments, including the format for papers: ‘‘Some teachers don’t

say and they just assume that you know, and you find out after you type it, ‘No, what are

you thinking?’’’

Expectations related to communication and problem solving

In contrast to the faculty’s view of communication as centered on problem solving,

students tended to discuss their communication with faculty largely in terms of relationship

building. Both traditional and first-generation students agreed that the student should take

the initiative and introduce himself to the professor and try to establish some rapport. Both

groups expressed the hope that this would make communication easier in the future, which

was reflected in students’ advice about how to use office hours.

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You should schedule an office hour visit with a professor to get acquainted with the

professor, that would speed up a lot, that would help you to understand, and see the

differences in professors and professors’ expectations. That would be GOLD if you

went to office hours just to say ‘‘Hi.’’

In contrast, other students who used office hours in ways that were closer to faculty

members’ expectations learned the advantage of this approach.

If I actually take the time and say, ‘‘I don’t get it, explain this to me,’’ they’ll

normally sit down and explain it, but it’s more of a personal responsibility. If you sit

in the back and you don’t ask questions, and you just let the term go by without ever

addressing this problem, then you are going to be finding yourself not a happy person

when your grades come.

Despite faculty members’ self-proclaimed efforts to be as unambiguous as possible about

their expectations, it is clear that students, in general, often had difficulty interpreting those

expectations. These problems were even more severe for first-generation students than for

traditional students, as the next section demonstrates.

First generation students’ expectations

The previous section demonstrated the problems that students overall had in understanding

faculty expectations. In addition, there were aspects of the college experience that tradi-

tional students took for granted that were distinctly more problematic for first generation

students.

Thus, the discussions in the first generation student focus groups were filled with tales of

their frustrations in trying to deal with faculty members’ implicit expectations in each of

the basic areas we have been describing.

Expectations about workload and priorities

Although both sets of students complained about the level of work expected, first gener-

ation students reported markedly more problems related to time management and placing

priority on the time they devoted to their classes. Faculty members also reported that this

prioritization was one of the expectations that was hardest for first-generation students to

accept. Indeed, several first-generation students volunteered that they were advised to be

more realistic about time commitments, but they still tended to overcommit. As a result,

faculty reported that first-generation students were especially likely to have time man-

agement problems, and this group of students confirmed that they had received advising,

specifically about time management issues. In contrast, this issue did not come up in the

traditional students’ conversations.

First-generation students carried this topic a step further by complaining that their

additional commitments created more problems with time management and also made it

more difficult to solve these problems. In addition, the first-generation students noted that

they had fewer outside resources to help them deal with these demands.

I think it’s important for professors to know, especially for first-generation students,

there is a lot of stuff that goes on outside the university that does not go on with

students that have parents with Master’s and PhD.’s, even Bachelor’s degrees. [They]

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don’t have a lot of resources, they don’t have a lot of people they can ask questions

from outside the university.

Explicitness of expectations and assignments

Although both sets of students wanted faculty to be plainer about their expectations in

general, and assignments in particular, first generation students’ wanted even more detail

than their more traditional counterparts. As one first-generation student put it:

Some teachers expect you to read every word in the book and to be able to pick out

all the important information yourself, and some are only expecting you to skim

through some of the books and aren’t going to ask any specific dates, or specific

information. And if you don’t know which to plan for, you can’t manage your time as

well.

First generation students desire for greater clarity was especially apparent in their

discussions of the class syllabus. Some of this preference for precision is due to the fact

that these students are less familiar with the concept of a syllabus or the purposeit serves:

I had no clue what the syllabus was or the importance of the syllabus. I remember

just seeing a bunch of writing, a bunch of words, a bunch of recommendations and

expectations, but it didn’t register to me what it was, what the importance was.

In terms of format, first-generations students said things like, ‘‘I expect the syllabus to be

very detailed,’’ while traditional students preferred a syllabus that was ‘‘short, concise,

simple...not something that when you want to refer to a syllabus you have to read a

paragraph and figure out where everything is.’’ Thus, one first-generation student noted ‘‘If

it’s not one that’s detailed, then chances are it goes into the trash or I never look at it

again.’’ Specific areas where first-generation students asked for more detail included: how

to take notes, descriptions of assignments, and specifics about tests. For example, one

student queried: ‘‘if it is an essay exam, does the professor want names and dates or just

key ideas’’? They also wanted information about the costs of books and the value of class

participation. First-generation students offered some suggestions to faculty about how to

make the syllabus more ‘‘user-friendly,’’ such as ‘‘printing the syllabus on colored paper’’

to keep it from getting mixed up with other papers. They recommended visual techniques

to emphasize key sections of the syllabus, using ‘‘bullets, bold face, or some other font to

show what’s really important, to outline certain things, because sometimes they’ll give you

so much information I don’t know what’s pertinent or not.’’

A related issue concerned the extent to which students used the syllabus versus personal

observation as a source of information about the faculty member’s expectations. Faculty

members reported that they routinely communicated a fundamental expectation that stu-

dents should learn about coursework both from reading the syllabus and from listening to

the professor’s explanation of the syllabus during class. Yet, analysis of data from the two

sets of student focus groups revealed consistent differences between traditional and first-

generation students in terms of what they used as the primary source of class related

information. Traditional students seemed either to focus on the syllabus or to see the

information from the professor and the syllabus as interchangeable. In contrast, first-

generation students tended to rely almost exclusively on information they acquired from

hearing, observing, and interpreting the actions of professors—especially their initial

explanations of the course syllabus.

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I just try to listen for what they say. I try to listen for those key words ‘‘This is what I

want from you.’’ Or, ‘‘This is what I’m going to want from you.’’ And after that I

just start taking notes.

This difference in perspective carried over into first-generation and more traditional stu-

dents’ attempts to understand how their professor would deal with grading issues—a topic

that the students tended to discuss in terms of the ‘‘strictness’’ of their professors. Here is

one first-generation student’s approach:

I look for how the professor is dressed, the first thing...Like, if he’s got a tie and some

slacks on, or I have professors who wear a t-shirt and jeans, and they’re usually the

loose ones

In contrast, two traditional students remarked:

What I look for in the syllabus is the strictness or the laxness of the instructor,

whether they are very strict about their due dates, their guidelines.

Whether they can say it’s okay if you’re not here on certain days because attendance

is optional, that’s lax on their part. And it gives you a lot of discretion as far as how

you want to be involved in the class.

One final area where first-generation students had a different perspective regarding

accuracy and detail was in terms of written assignments. In particular, first-generation

students expressed a great deal of frustration over the more mechanical aspects of their

written work. While first-generation students spent a considerable amount of time

discussing their confusion about the importance of issues such spelling, grammar, and

how to format papers, this topic was almost absent from the traditional students’ focus

groups. First-generation students felt that they could not do their best work unless their

professors were specific about how work should be done, including ‘‘the formats for

the papers, knowing whether they like it to be double spaced or single spaced, that

kind of thing.’’ Another first-generation student summarized the overall problem as

follows:

It seems like a lot of people had more of an understanding of what was expected in

college than I did. When I came in I didn’t know [about] MLA, APA writing styles...

I just didn’t know anything about it.

Expectations related to communication and problem solving

First-generation students also reported a unique concern about student–teacher contacts,

noting that how a professor spoke to the class during lecture directly influenced how

willing they were to approach the professor with a question. Two specific aspects of this

barrier were mentioned. The first involved professors’ overuse of discipline specific jargon.

As one first-generation student put it, ‘‘I have had some professors that act like you’re their

colleagues, and they just talk to you using all this jargon ... assuming you already know it.’’

The second concern had to do with the level of vocabulary the professor used in lecturing:

‘‘I find that some instructors are more knowledgeable, and they tend to do more talking and

they’re going over everyone’s head. And even when you ask that question, they tend not to

rephrase it ... to where we can understand it, or else they add on more words to it but you

still haven’t helped me understand it.’’

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For many first-generation students, problems at level of vocabulary and style of

speaking were just the most obvious indicators of how different college was for them. It is

worth noting that some faculty members were aware of this difference, and one professor

particularly noted that for first generation students:

... my expectations are almost cryptic in the beginning, it feels like, until they have

some experience, it’s like I’m speaking another language... I’m saying one thing but

I’m pretty sure they’re hearing it differently, at least it feels that way.

That professor’s awareness does not compare, however, with the confusion, and even fear,

that first-generation students routinely expressed.

I’m 25 years old and I’m married, and in other realms, I’m completely self-confident,

but in this realm, it is completely new to me and my entire family and what I’ve

known and the jobs that I’ve had... It’s college.

Coming to school was out of my comfort zone, and talking to anybody my whole first

year was out of the question... It was so scary. I’d heard from my whole family, when

you go to college it’s a whole different class of people, and I had a whole intimi-

dation thing, and I didn’t talk to any of the professors.

Understandably, these communication barriers carried over into the direct contact that first-

generation students had with faculty members:

I didn’t understand what office hours were all about... I mean, the office hours are

there on the syllabus, ‘‘Ok, what’s that got to do with anything?’’ What am I

supposed to do with ‘‘office hours?’’ I didn’t know that a teacher was available at a

certain time for me to come and talk to if I had a problem. I didn’t know that as a

freshman or a sophomore, even though it is right there on the damn syllabus, I didn’t

know it.

As this section has shown, first generation students’ difficulties in understanding profes-

sors’ expectations were more extensive than the problems encountered by more traditional

students. It is important to remember, however, that this is only the first half of the upper

path in our model. We conclude our results by examining the consequences of this

difference in ability to understand faculty members’ expectations.

Impacts on students’ performances

This final section examines the all-too-predictable outcomes of students’ failures to

understand the expectations of their professors. In doing so, we pay particular attention to

the unique problems that first-generation students had. One area where first-generation

students were especially likely to encounter problems was through broad failures to

understand faculty’s expectations about the basic features of student performance. The

following examples, especially, demonstrate how problems with the students’ final grades

originated in a failure to pay sufficient attention to material that was explicitly contained in

the course syllabus.

The teacher seemed at the beginning of the class, she seemed really lax... And so at

the end of the term, I came out with a really bad grade, and I didn’t feel that my work

was, I didn’t feel that I deserved the grade that I got. She gave me a D, a C maybe,

but honestly I felt I would have deserved a B for the quality work that I did. I did

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miss about 5 classes every term, so that is pretty bad, but basically that’s why she

gave me a D because of each term I missed 5 days, because I pushed the limit I

guess, and when I went and talked to her about it, she said, ‘‘Your work is real good

but you missed this many days, and that counts against your grade.’’

The assignments were very simple, two simple papers, two books, one book was the

main book, but if you wanted additional data, you can use the next book, one was

‘‘book X’’ and the other was ‘‘Book Y’’ and I was supposed to use ‘‘Book Y’’ for

my paper. But instead, I went to the Internet and gathered all this information, and

wrote my paper—more like free writing, and it didn’t work, I got an ‘‘F’’ for the first

paper... One big problem I had at that time was I was never able to face an instructor.

I was never able to come to see her after the class, or actually go to the office to meet

with the instructor, I was afraid, I don’t know why. It was silly, but I was afraid, new

to the authority, she was always dressed in suit, and dressed nice. The fact is, I never

came to see her... Then my second paper, the last one, I followed directions, how-

ever, I didn’t ‘‘meet the expectations of the class,’’ so I was given a ‘‘D’’ for that

paper. It was just a week ago when I came to see the teacher after two quarters, I

came to meet with the instructor, the teacher, to find out why was I given such a low

grade for the papers. I asked her if she singled me out because I was the only

Mexican in the class, and she said, ‘‘No, I did not single you out, you simply did not

follow the instructions, you simply did not meet the expectations of the class.’’ But

then it was too late.

Beyond these broader problems with expectations, first-generation students were also more

likely to run into difficulty with specific assignments. In some cases, as in the first example

below, the misunderstanding is so basic that it might apply to any course. In contrast, the

second example illustrates the kind of discipline-specific expectations that students must

master in their coursework.

The assignment we had said, ‘‘write about some field experience’’ and I literally

wrote the two page thing out. It said ‘‘write’’ and I took it literally and wrote it out,

and then I got a note back that said ‘‘see me.’’ It was in red and everything, and I

went and she was like ‘‘you were supposed to type this up.’’ But the instructions

were to ‘‘write.’’ I wasn’t sure what she wanted.

I am taking biology... I do not have experience in writing, and the main thing is that

they require writing for research papers, and I’m expecting doing a lot of work trying

to figure out how to do that. I did two papers already and... He said, ‘‘You have to go

back and do it again, this is not scientific writing’’... I thought it was scientific

because it was from a biology textbook, and I did study at [community college], and

he said ‘‘No, this is not scientific writing.’’ So it is really hard to see what they want

because they already see it, they already know it, they see what I don’t.

As this student’s last remark makes clear, even when the problem is due to the specific

expectations that go with assignments in a particular discipline, the student’s interpretation

is that this is just one instance of a more general problem. The same principle is apparent in

two additional examples, the first from another science course and the second dealing with

essay tests:

I transferred from [community college, and chemistry is taught in a different way

here [at the university]. And what I noticed the first time I went to the class, the

teacher was nice, and I said I like this class. So I followed every single step, I tried to

figure out what she wanted me to learn. I didn’t know the tests were done on the basis

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of mathematical skills, because my experience is half and half—multiple choice and

mathematical skills—so when I did the first quiz I almost failed because I didn’t

understand the way she put the questions. The way she taught the class was different

than what I saw on the test. We went like that the whole term. I thought I worked

hard, and even though the exams were fair, I did not pass, and it was difficult for me

to understand why.

If you don’t know what kind of style the professor is looking for, that can be really

difficult. You don’t know what they’re looking for, how they’re going to grade it,

because essays are totally open ended, and you might have totally different things

that you thought were important that you put in there. And they didn’t say, ‘‘I wanted

dates, I wanted names, I wanted books that you read this in,’’ and if you don’t know

that ahead of time, that can be a real setback.

Taken together, the various sections of these results have demonstrated the importance of

understanding professors’ expectations for students’ academic success at college. As our

‘‘Two Path’’ model of student success argues, developing expertise in and mastering the

college student role can be every bit as important as learning the substantive content in

coursework. It is also clear that different students enter the university with very different

levels of mastery for the student role. In particular, we have shown, in some detail, the

difficulties that first generation students experience as they try simultaneously to master the

content of their courses while also learning how to perform the basic college student role.

Discussion and conclusions

Higher education is a critical pathway to achieving occupational success and social status

in all industrialized countries. Over the past 30 years in the USA, the value of a college

degree has increased dramatically, while, at the same time, the earnings gap between those

who hold bachelor’s degrees and those who do not has continued to widen (U.S.

Department of Education 1998). Therefore understanding all of the factors that may affect

postsecondary student retention and success become crucial. In this article we have

examined a previously under-explored area: how differences in the fit between university

faculty members’ expectations and their students’ understanding of those expectations can

result in differential student academic outcomes. This problem disproportionately affects

first-generation students, whose lack of cultural capital and background information about

higher education may limit their awareness of how to ‘‘do the college student role.’’

While we certainly acknowledge that non-academic factors, such as, social integration,

level of financial support, and campus climate are also important in explaining student

retention, our primary emphasis here is on those elements that affect student performance

in the classroom. The conceptual model in Fig. 1 organizes these factors into two distinct,

yet complementary paths, that contribute to student academic success. The lower path

reflects a traditional achievement model of education, where a student’s academic ability

determines their understanding of course material, which then determines academic per-

formance. On this path, the information that is essential for student success is tied to formal

learning and consists of knowledge that is typically explicit and codified as part of the

instructional process. The upper path of our model captures the ability to perform the

student role, as represented by the ability to recognize and respond to faculty members’

expectations. On this upper path, the critical information is tied to informal learning and is

typically more implicit than explicit. According to this ‘‘Two Path Model,’’ the ability to

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understand the course material, as captured by the lower path, is a necessary but not

sufficient source of students’ performance. The mastery of the college student role—in the

form of understanding the professor’s expectations—is also necessary in order to

demonstrate knowledge of course materials.

The upper path is where problems can arise that have nothing to do with the substantive

content of a course—problems that still have negative academic consequences for students.

For example, if students do not understand professors’ expectations about how many hours

a week they should study, then students may not allocate sufficient time to master key

course skills or to identify and retain key content areas. Further, even when students do

spent an appropriate amount of time learning key course-related skills and content, their

grades may still suffer if they do not understand the kind of performance that the professor

expects. For example, students may be confused or uncertain about the type of content that

will be covered on a test or about the proper sources to use for a paper, and so on.

We, thus, agree with Eraut and associates (2000), that expertise in the form of role

mastery involves a combination of both explicit and implicit knowledge. Course content

related knowledge represents the explicit knowledge element that impacts student

academic success. However, it is the implicit knowledge relating to ‘‘how to enact the

college student role successfully’’ that produces systematic differences in academic suc-

cess between traditional and first-generation students. This implicit aspect of role mastery

matches what Polanyi (1966) described as ‘tacit knowledge’’—a process wherein a person

searches out ‘‘clues’’ from proximal information to make sense of a larger body of

information that is otherwise not immediately accessible. Possessing tacit knowledge, in

the form of role mastery, means that students from a more educated background have more

of the ‘‘pattern recognition’’ skills required to understand the university’s expectations for

students and to recognize effective, role-based problem-solving strategies for meeting

those expectations. Consequently, traditional students need less information to ‘‘locate’’

any course within the larger universe of possible courses, and this, in turn, gives them

confidence that they know ‘‘what this professor wants’’ and ‘‘what it will take to succeed

in this course.’’

The importance of this emphasis on role mastery and tacit knowledge is not limited to

the individual or social psychological level. In particular, the upper path in our model is an

important location where family-based differences in cultural capital can have an impact

on academic outcomes for students from different backgrounds. We, thus, argue that it is

easier for traditional students entering the university to become ‘‘role experts,’’ due to their

greater familiarity with higher education based on their family’s past experiences within

that institution. In contrast, first-generation students typically possess relatively lower

levels of college student expertise, in that, they cannot rely on parental advice to help them

identify and resolve role-based problems or to help them understand the university’s

expectations. They come to the university with less understanding of student roles and less

capacity to build their existing knowledge into genuine expertise. Differences in both

explicit knowledge about course content and implicit knowledge about the college student

role can contribute to a process of ‘‘reproduction’’ (Bourdieu 1973), where those who

come from an advantaged background maintain that advantage into the next generation.

Before placing too much faith in these results, however, it is important to note that this

study does have several limitations, especially with regard to selection of the research

participants and the effect of the setting. First, this study involved the use of a small, non-

representative sample. While this is adequate for generating hypotheses, care should be

taken in generalizing the findings of this research to a larger population. In addition, both

the traditional and first-generation students in this study had already completed at least one

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year at the university, and could thus be seen as the ‘‘success cases’’ of their respective

groups. While we found clear differences between traditional and first-generation students

in their discussions of time management and coursework issues, these data do not allow us

to say anything about students who dropped out of the university in this study.

With regard to the research setting, Portland State University is an urban, primarily

non-residential public university with a diverse student population. Hence, it may be that

one or both groups of students in this study (traditional and first-generation) may share

specific background characteristics not found among students at other schools. Also,

specific aspects of the PSU educational experiences—such as a unique, yearlong Freshman

Inquiry Program—may affect students in systematic ways that make it harder to compare

their experiences to students from other schools.

Looking beyond those limitations, this research has implications for the development of

theory, future research, and practice. From a theoretical point of view, these results have

both micro- and macro-level implications. At the more micro-level, this research dem-

onstrates the value of the ‘‘revitalized’’ version of role theory, with its emphasis on roles as

resources that individuals use to achieve desired ends. In particular, we have demonstrated

how a higher level of role mastery or expertise can serve as a resource that increases the

odds of successful social interactions because the individual has a better chance of

employing the version of the role that is most appropriate for a given situation. For the

specific case of college students, this role mastery takes the form of an enhanced ability to

recognize and meet their professors’ expectations (shown in the upper path in our model),

regardless of their substantive mastery of the specific material in a course (the lower path in

our model).

At a more macro-level, the theoretical implications of this research point to role mastery

as an especially valuable component of Bourdieu’s cultural capital. From this perspective,

family background provides some individuals with a higher level of role mastery, thus

giving children of the dominant class a set of advantages that contribute to the reproduction

of the existing social order. Note that emphasis on ‘‘role mastery,’’ as form of cultural

capital, goes well beyond models that conceptualize cultural capital as ‘‘high culture’’ or

‘‘beaux arts.’’ In the specific case of the college student role, we propose that students who

come from a more educated background will already have a greater mastery of the student

role when they first arrive at college, as compared to students who are the first member of

their family to attend college. Ultimately, the cumulative effect of this greater ability to

recognize and respond appropriately to professors’ expectations leads to higher rates of

graduation and better jobs.

With regard to the implications of the current work for future research, we already know

that students from educationally advantaged backgrounds have higher retention rates than

first-generation students, so the key task is to reinforce the current conclusion that a portion

of this success is linked to role mastery. In particular, it is important to demonstrate that the

differences that we have attributed to role mastery are not just differences in either

intellectual capacity or effort. One strategy for investigating this set of issues is to develop

a measure of role mastery and then to show that it captures differences between first-

generation and more traditional students and that these differences predict student success

and retention, beyond prior GPA and other indicators of intellectual ability or effort. We

are already collecting survey data to test that hypothesis. In particular, that study inves-

tigates whether there are differences in the understanding of the professor’s expectations

that are apparent during the early weeks of a course and that are predictive of the final

grade in that class.

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Another prediction from the current research is that the same factors that give traditional

students an advantage can also help first-generation students succeed. We have argued that

students from a more highly educated background not only have a better ability to

understand different professors’ expectations but also a better ability to adjust their own

behaviors to accommodate those differences. This suggests that those first-generation

students who also possess this ability should be more likely to succeed rather than drop out.

This points to an overall line of research that compares more and less successful students

within historically low-retention groups (such as first-generation students) in order to

examine the extent to which mastery of the student role affects that success. In particular,

do those who stay in school show a better ability to recognize and respond to professors’

expectations in comparison to those who show persistent problems understanding

professors’ expectations?

From a research point of view, it would also be important to investigate the generality of

these arguments by replicating this line of research at different kinds of universities. The

question here is whether the degree to which students recognize and respond to faculty

expectations is influenced by institutional characteristics, such as, public or private schools,

urban or rural locations, average student age, the nature of the student orientation program,

and so on. According to our differentiated version of role mastery, greater expertise with

the student role will be valuable in all these settings, but the nature and content of the

expertise could vary considerably between one setting and another.

One final research option would move beyond the current emphasis on beginning

students to consider the development of other forms of expertise among more advanced

students. In particular, as students select majors and move into specialized course work,

they will need to become proficient in dealing with the specific ‘‘disciplinary culture’’ in

their areas of concentration. This also points to the further transition that occurs between

undergraduate and graduate work. It would thus be interesting to compare the kind of role

learning that occurs at the beginning of undergraduate and graduate studies, including the

role that prior ‘‘cultural capital’’ plays in facilitating that transition.

Turning to practical implications, this research can inform discussions about the

importance and content of college orientation programs. Our findings emphasize the

potential importance of creating orientation programs that are designed around the needs of

first-generation students. The goal of these programs would be to impact the upper path in

our conceptual model by giving students the skills to recognize and respond to professors’

expectations. Thus, specialized orientation programs for students from non-traditional

backgrounds could emphasize a basic understanding of the different kinds of faculty

expectations they will encounter. In addition, a truly effective orientation program might

need to provide resources that extend beyond the beginning of the school year. For

example, coaching materials might be available through online technology, to assist

first-generation students who do not grasp the extent of their problems in meeting faculty

expectations until crises start occurring.

In addition, orientation programs and other strategies that emphasize role mastery as a

strategy for improving first-generation student retention rates may require a two-pronged

strategy of ‘‘targeting’’ and ‘‘tailoring.’’ Targeting identifies those who need to receive

assistance with a particular issue—in this case, the importance of understanding faculty

expectations. While first-generation students are not the only ones who would benefit

academically from a better understanding of faculty expectations, the current results

indicate that these students are more likely to require help in this area. In contrast to

targeting, tailoring consists of adjusting a message or strategy so that it more closely ‘‘fits’’

the group in question. In this case, orientation and coaching programs for first-generation

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students need to be designed to be maximally useful for this group of students. Specific

strategies might involve the creation of non-threatening environments by employing

already-successful first-generation students as peer mentors for new students.

Ultimately, the underlying issue for both the theoretical and the practical implications of

this research is the possibility that first-generation students suffer from a ‘‘cumulative

disadvantage.’’ Our findings clearly imply that even among students with similar academic

abilities in similar learning environments, those who come from less educationally

advantaged backgrounds may not perform as well as those who come from more educated

families. This suggests that role mastery, as a form of cultural capital, is an essential

component in the social reproduction of the gap between educational ‘‘haves’’ and ‘‘have

nots.’’ If higher education is to continue to be the prime vehicle for constructing a

meritocratic society, then universities and colleges must ensure that the path to success

depends on students’ academic abilities, rather than on their abilities to understand what

professors expect of them.

References

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