A Critical Inquiry into College: Critical Literacy in a College Readiness Program for First-Generation Students of Color

Abstract

Typical college readiness programs work to support historically underrepresented students, helping them navigate a complex system through rigorous academic preparation. However, the current college entrance and completion rates for first-generation low-income students of color are dismal despite heavy investment in college readiness programs. These results shed light on the need for new approaches in examining and conducting these programs. This qualitative study examines a critical inquiry program with aspects of college access and college readiness components, which was borne out of a community need in Philadelphia. This dissertation sheds light on what happens when practitioners work to create space for the perspectives and identities of our students of color through critical literacy.

Informed by Indigenous and participatory methodologies, this practitioner research study examines what happens when high school students work alongside one another during the COVID-19 pandemic to navigate the complexity of the college admissions process while also being afforded space to explore and demystify issues pertaining to identity, race, power, and equity. This qualitative research helps provide insight from a sociocultural literacy perspective on how a college access inquiry grounded in criticality can help students more confidently navigate this power-laden and bureaucratic process and create space for youth-led inquiries around issues of equity.

The first finding of this study highlights the importance of centering relationships in college access work for first-generation, students of color from low-income backgrounds. Although students represented different racial and cultural backgrounds, students came together as a collective around their shared identities of being students of color in order to wrestle with the dimensions of power within the admissions process and to support one another. The second finding of this study highlights the importance of creating space for students to explore and give voice to their intersectional identities (Crenshaw, 2018) within literacy activities in a critical inquiry program around college. These activities provided students opportunities to understand their personal backgrounds and determine where these various intersections were situated within larger systems of power. The third finding establishes how critical literacy became a useful tool in helping students more confidently navigate the bureaucratic literacies (Taylor, 1996) of the admissions process and how they used this knowledge to create and present virtual presentations for their community.