Finding their way: navigating social class barriers to higher education

The use of at-risk or disadvantaged terminology often preempts the opportunity for students to freely interpret or make meaning of their class context. Lost in the discourse surrounding students deemed at risk are the underlying stories of students’ unique and individual experience in school. These stories provide rich data and a history of successes and failure, more specifically the context from which students navigate meaning making, identity construction, and perceive future education opportunities. In this sense, stories are both the description of a student's pathway over barriers and a heuristic for future action. This study developed a conceptual framework of social class, moving away from categories instead to capture the organic or lived experience of class as a culture of class. Second, this study developed a theoretical framework that emerged from critical ethnography to engage stories as a reflection on past journeys to “tease-out” resilient behaviors and strategies. This is the beginning of at promise, recognition of the good, and the demise of at risk, a focus on the bad.