ABSTRACT
My inquiry involves developing a collective case study of six women academics that have experience being first-generation college students from working class or poor backgrounds. My primary mode of inquiry involved conducting individual, semistructured feminist interviews. I developed an interview guide that helped move the interview conversation through a three-part series of open ended questions (Seidman, 1998). In brief I was interested in exploring the women’s narratives that described their formative background experiences, their journeys into and through higher education, and their sense of self in relationship to these events and life choices. In the course of analysis, I considered their narratives from a perspective that took into consideration issues of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. I should give you a brief sampling snapshot: three women are White, one woman is Jewish, and two women are Hispanic. One woman identified herself as lesbian. Two women considered their socioeconomic status growing up as one of “poverty.” The remaining four described their families as working class. All have earned their doctorate and hold faculty positions in research universities. Data collection involved observation, document review, and in-depth individual
interviews. I interviewed each woman three times; each of the three interviews lasted approximately 2-3 hours. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were coded, chunked, and analyzed with the idea that themes would eventually emerge across their stories. Thank goodness; that’s precisely what happened! My write-up and consequent interpretations were largely guided by these collective themes.
