Rural Student Voices to Improve Educational Attainment Oriented Programs

Abstract

The Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) strives to increase college-going and completion rates for students in West Virginia (USA), a state with low educational attainment and the second most rural state in the country. The positive impact of HSTA on student academic trajectories has been documented, but student voices have not been represented. This qualitative study using Bronfenbrenner's ecological perspective explores student experiences through HSTA, with an eye toward how similar programs serving rural populations might improve while understanding student participant perspectives. Participants were 706 incoming 9th -12th graders from rural West Virginia who provided survey responses across two years. We address the organizational and individual considerations that were instrumental in creating a supportive learning environment for rural youth.

There is a great deal of literature on the role of academic mentoring and support designed to facilitate better educational outcomes for high school students. High school students are at a critical stage in their development and theoretically sound programs have the potential to help them navigate their career trajectories. However, this navigation for high school students can be complex and has been understudied in rural communities. Alliance for Excellent Education (2010), in their Current Challenges and Opportunities in Preparing Rural High School Students for Success in College and Careers report, call high schools the cornerstone of America's rural communities (p. 3). Rural high schools address critical deficits in communities where dropout rates continue to be high and college enrollment rates are low. Rural students have the advantage of community resources and networks, but often lack socioeconomic and social capital resources that might better support bachelor degree attainment (Byun, Meece, & Irvin, 2012).

West Virginia is the second most rural state in the nation, and 20 of West Virginia's 55 counties are 100% rural according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2012). West Virginia is the only state that lies entirely within the Appalachian Region. In 2000, West Virginia adults with high school diplomas were 66 percent of the state's residents over the age of 25, compared to the national average of 80 percent. Further, only 15 percent of the population over 25 years of age had received bachelor's degrees, compared to the national average of 24 percent. However, by 2009, West Virginia showed some progress, with the percentage of residents over 25 years of age with a high school diploma increasing to 83 percent and those with a bachelor's degree increasing to 17 percent, while the national average increased to 85 and 28 percent, respectively (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Despite the increase, West Virginia had the lowest percentage of bachelor degree attainment in the nation in 2009.

Residents of rural, economically challenged communities in West Virginia have restricted access to secondary-level advanced science courses vital for health sciences majors in college (McKendall, Benson, Simoyi, Chester, & Rye, 2000). If the state's under-represented students are not provided suitable training in pre-college math and science, the percentage of students completing college will remain limited, and this will continue to depress the number of health professionals in the state (Rye & Chester, 1999). Thus, outreach and engagement programs such as the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) are an essential step toward tackling persistent gaps in educational attainment. HSTA focuses on mentoring high school students and encouraging higher education faculty members and administrators, public school teachers, and community leaders to facilitate engaging and supporting high school students. According to Chester and Dooley (2011),

The major goal of HSTA is to increase the college-going rate among under-represented students in West Virginia. Additional goals are to improve science and math skill acquisition, to empower communities through leadership development for their youth, and to increase the number of health care providers as well as the number of math and science educators in West Virginia's currently underserved communities. (p. 89)

The aim is to reduce barriers associated with college attendance and graduation through providing enrichment opportunities for under-represented students to gain skills and knowledge essential for progression through high school, college, and professional school (McKendall et al., 2000).

HSTA was established in 1994 at a public, land grant mid-Atlantic University. Through the project's two main components, HSTA Club and HSTA Summer Institute, the Academy offers various activities inside and outside of the traditional classroom to provide opportunities for learning and growth. This article focuses on the HSTA Summer Institute, which takes place on a number of college campuses across the state of West Virginia. The Institute offers specifically tailored academic curricula to provide experiences, skills, and knowledge for successful transition to higher education. Students engage in activities that offer insights and experiences relevant to professional careers in the health sciences, as well as careers in mathematics and science education (Chester & Dooley, 2011). HSTA Summer Institute addresses issues related to academic preparation and orientation to navigate higher education systems (HSTA, 2011).

Students successfully completing the HSTA program qualify for full tuition and fee waivers to all state-supported colleges or universities, health professional schools, and many graduate schools. Impact on student academic trajectories as a result of HSTA participation has been documented (Chester & Dooley, 2011; McKendall et al., 2000), but student voices have not been represented. In order to explore student perceptions regarding their participation, an open-ended approach was employed. We believe it is essential to explore participation in pipeline programs from student perspectives, giving them the opportunity to voice their own assessments and identify program aspects that were instrumental to their experiences.

The following questions guided our study: What are students' experiences in the HSTA Summer Institute? What programmatic issues must be considered while designing future pipeline projects to engage students in rural areas?

We present issues and opinions to consider during the design and execution of similar summer programs targeting rural youth. To conceptualize their experiences, we turn to developmental theory. Bronfenbrenner's (1994) ecological systems provided a framework for our examination of HSTA students' experiences. Bronfenbrenner's model provided a lens for interpretation that considers the contextual factors that shape and impact an individuals' particular experience. The five levels of the model include the individual, microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. Together, these levels take into account both direct and indirect impacts on an individual's developmental context. The fact that different levels of the ecological system are connected and interact with each other is central for any examination of human experiences.

Bronfenbrenner's (1994) microsystem encompasses direct connections of students with their peers and any social roles or interpersonal relations that students identify as directly linked to their development. At this level, the individual is often cognizant and can identify different aspects of his or her experiences as permitting or inhibiting growth. In this study, we focused on the microsystem and how different elements of that system interacted to impact student development. In addition, cultural considerations are often examined on the macrosystem level and facilitate understanding of processes that take place in the microsystem. HSTA students' rural background is an important macrosystem context because students' individual experiences may differ as a function of their background, personal beliefs, and value systems.

Method

Participants

Participants were 706 incoming 9th through 12th graders from rural Appalachia who participated in HSTA and provided survey responses across two years. Eligibility requirements for student participation in HSTA include: African-American, financially disadvantaged, or first generation college student where neither parent/guardian is a four-year college graduate. Students participating in HSTA have an interest in a health science or STEM (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics) field.

Data Analysis

Qualitative data are appropriate for situating the meanings people give events, processes, and structures of their lives (Miles & Huberman, 1994). We analyzed open-ended question responses from the HSTA Summer Institute evaluation of student experiences survey. Open-ended survey responses generate both an interesting and challenging type of text to analyze (Jackson & Trochim, 2002). They elicit a range of responses and present additional explanations that close-ended survey questions are unable to capture (Miles & Huberman, 1994). We followed the process for content analysis laid out by Hsieh and Shannon (2005). We read the open-ended survey responses thoroughly to immerse ourselves in the data. Next, we read the data to develop codes, highlighting particular words and phrases from the text that captured thoughts about the Summer Institute. We then made notes about initial analyses and subsequently labeled codes that were reflective of key thoughts. Codes were sorted into themes based on how the concepts captured by those codes were related and linked. These emergent themes were meaningful clusters within which we organized codes. Two researchers reviewed the themes independently and discrepancies were resolved through a process based in the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) approach. CQR emphasizes “consensus among judges to construct findings based on the use of words rather than numbers to reflect meaning in the data,” (Hill et al., 2005, p. 197).

Results

The findings described here are part of a larger study exploring student experiences in the HSTA program in rural Appalachia. One must be mindful while using our results as these are specific to our program and cannot be used out of context with dissimilar populations of youth. However, our findings do elaborate dynamic interrelated issues that must be considered while conceptualizing youth development programs for similar populations.

Two broad types of themes emerged: a) organizational considerations focused on infrastructure and curricular issues, and b) individual considerations focused on personal feelings, social relationships, apprehensions, and independence. Ten emergent themes are shown in Table 1 and Table 2 with associated codes and illustrative excerpts from participant responses. The data presented in these themes have been organized based on how the individuals and the environment interacted with each other in the context of the HSTA Summer Institute. While we divided the constructs of the ecological framework into themes, these themes are dynamic and interrelated; they cannot be encapsulated completely.

Table 1. Organizational Considerations.

Emergent Themes	Codes	Participant Examples
Accommodations	Food, lodging	I didn't like the fact that I didn't have anyone that I knew in my floor; however that was also a good thing because it forced us to meet new people. The dorms could have been a little cleaner and more comfortable.
Logistics	Transportation, program duration, schedule, organization	I also think that students could receive a better college experience if we had a longer time period here at the camp.
Time Management	Free time, sleep, relaxation	We are constantly doing something; we never get time to just relax.
Academic Activities	Classes, teachers labs, career, knowledge, skills	I liked spending time in the cadaver lab. Meeting all the new people and interacting in the labs with the professors. More outside biological oriented things and definitely more hands on chemistry type projects even if simple.
Extracurricular Activities	Non-academic activities	More fun activities like the bowling and card games we played. They kept the camp on its toes the whole time.
Staff	Mentors, camp staff	My mentor informed me a college life and my other mentor helped me with my math homework and made me like the ANOVA. It was real hard to learn but he was there step by step. I liked how our mentors related to us and talked to us like people and not just students.
Rules	Eating out/ordering food, selecting roommats, exploring campus	Loosen the rules up a little bit Hardly any co-ed at all, and the no touching rule is stupid

Table 2. Individual Considerations.

Emergent Themes	Codes	Participant Examples
Peer Relationships	Peer relationships, professional relationships, friendships	I liked the camaraderie that develops among all the studnts, mentors, and college staff. At first I hated how they sat everyone down in a big room and just made us find a seat in the crowd. I didn't know a single soul, and sitting with a bunch of strangers made me nervous. Then I made friends.
Personal Feelings	Worry, independence, treatment by others	I am 17 years old and would like a little independence and free will. We had a lot of tough times but in the end, we made it through camp and came out with so many experiences and life long memories.
Personal Development	Learning, career considerations, team work, aspirations	I learned about coping with people. I learned how much college life will be stressful and some tips on how to balance life, homework, and work out.

Organizational Considerations

Consistent with our person-environment theoretical framework, our findings addressed ecological factors that shaped student experiences at the HSTA Summer Institute. Organizational considerations were conceptualized as those contextual microsystem factors (activities, roles, rules) that interacted with individual development. They represent the complex interplay of factors such as accommodation, logistics, time management, academic and extracurricular activities, and the role of staff and rules in shaping student experiences. High school students stayed in the college residence halls during the Summer Institute as a step toward immersing them in the college experience. Students raised a number of important issues centered on transitioning from a familiar home environment to a college environment. Specifically notable issues were students' learning to acculturate into a rigorous college-like schedule and working with campus faculty. The HSTA curriculum brings together laboratory, classroom, and extracurricular enrichment activities. Some students wrote about their relationship with the mentors and staff, they addressed the care, support, and bonding among mentors-mentees, while others addressed the need to ensure that mentors were trained in dealing with teenagers and their social and emotional needs. Some students described their disappointment with enforcement of rules with statements such as, “guys should be allowed to hang with the girls.” Students also addressed issues with rules about dress codes and not being able to explore off campus.

Individual Considerations

The individual considerations represent interpersonal microsystem factors (peer relationships/professional relationships, personal hopes, and values) that contributed to student experiences at the HSTA Summer Institute. Following the ecological perspective, our findings addressed personal characteristics of students and interactions among students, their surroundings, and other individuals within the developmental context. Students wrote about their peer contexts and how creating close relationships with peers and mentors was instrumental in their assimilation process. Students were also apprehensive about making new friends and roommates and learning how to cope with the loss of familiarity. Some described valuing the fellowship and sense of belonging that developed over time following their initial apprehension. One student expressed, “I like the camaraderie that develops among the students, mentors, and the college staff.” There were also themes that addressed students grappling with a loss of mobility and freedom to exercise their identities as developing adults. One student stated, “When I'm in college, I won't have a ‘mentor’ holding my hand everywhere. So to make it more realistic, that should be eliminated a bit.” The students also addressed the value of education, planning for future employment opportunities, and skill building during the Institute as being instrumental in their college preparation process. For example, “I learn[ed] how much college life will be stressful and some tips on how to balance life, homework, and workout.”

Discussion

Youth are active agents of their development and our findings demonstrate the importance of including their insider input while designing and implementing pipeline programs. Exploration of youth from an ecological perspective is a worthwhile process to gain an understanding of how individual and organizational contexts interact and build on each other. Our results are consistent with previous work on pre-collegiate academic outreach programs that address the role of hands-on academic activities, college life awareness, and mentor relationships (Fletcher, Newell, Newton, & Anderson-Rowland, 2001; Grimard & Maddaus, 2004, Knox, Moynihan, & Markowitz, 2003). Additionally, we draw attention to the need to understand the social environment of the HSTA student. The importance of family and a strong sense of community are identified as salient norms for students from rural Appalachia (Dees, 2006).

In student responses that centered on individual considerations, they addressed their identity as rural youth and developing ways of interacting with others. On closer examination, this sense of community appears connected to many students' notions of building relationships during the HSTA program. Students may feel out of place once they join HSTA and arrive on campus for a weeklong camp, and their desire to be a part of this new community is expressed in the relationships they attempt to build with peers and with program staff. The role of the sense of school community and belonging to this community has been investigated before (Osterman, 2000). Even though the focus of previous work has been primarily on school settings, the HSTA context is an educational setting in which this sense of community should be applied. In their responses, students shared the importance of connecting with peers, both developing new friendships and maintaining old ones. Peer connections, while cultivated at the individual level, are also fostered within an organizational structure.

Nichols and White (2001) addressed positive influences of peer groups on student development, motivation, and academic achievement. There is also extensive work on student career aspirations as a result of pre-collegiate program participation and developing deep peer relationships during these programs (Grimard & Maddaus, 2004; Knox et al., 2003). Consistent with this literature, HSTA student responses in our study described emotional and social engagement with peers as imperative to their immersion in the program. Themes about emotional engagement addressed issues such as personal autonomy and desire for self-improvement, which helped facilitate the development of certain coping mechanisms. Students elaborated on skills needed to deal with pressures of transitioning from rural home environments to college life and maintaining work-life balance.

According to Arnold and Armstrong (2012), “The experiences of students in their immediate settings can deepen or diminish their academic preparation, academic habits, motivation, self-efficacy, aspiration, and college knowledge or cause these to stagnate” (p. 31). The HSTA summer institute's organizational setting is a part of the microsystem that helps create a supportive learning environment. The role of the setting in which the person engages in activities and interpersonal roles is important to Bronfenbrenner's (1994) conceptualization of the microsystem. On an organizational level, when asked about their experiences in the HSTA Summer Institute, students addressed issues surrounding their immediate physical context. They talked about their experiences with accommodations, logistics, time management, and rules and regulations.

Middleton, Dupuis, and Tang (2013) draw on motivational theories (e.g., achievement goal theory) in their work to address the role of classroom environment in maintaining a motivational climate. Numerous factors such as the types of educational tasks, levels of independence, and receiving acknowledgment for their work contribute to creating a person's perception of a motivational environment. HSTA students addressed the classroom environment, curricular activities, and extracurricular activities as being instrumental in keeping them engaged and motivated. They enjoyed the anatomy and cadaver lab in addition to learning how to deal with chemicals and micropipettes. Students were excited about spending time with their teachers and experiencing different science related career fields, but found sitting through lectures boring.

The acknowledgement and facilitation of the process of adjustment for students from rural communities appears vital for their positive experiences. Some students expressed concern when they shared a room with people they were not familiar with. For some students, only after feeling secure and a part of the new HSTA community could they further focus and engage in academic activities. Even though there is some level of discomfort associated with new environments and new experiences for all, this discomfort may be more severe for students from rural backgrounds who have a very strong sense of community. This provides evidence of how factors on the macrosystem level in the Bronfenbrenner (1994) ecological model closely interact with specific events on the individual level. Student individual experiences are shaped by the cultural values that they identify with and educational programs should be cognizant of these influences.

HSTA targets some of “the nation's most economically and educationally challenged communities” (Chester & Dooley, 2011, p. 87). Implementing successful programs such as the HSTA Summer Institute is a step toward improving learning outcomes in health sciences and in mathematics and science education for rural youth. We hope to stimulate a broader conversation on policy and practice issues in rural education ecologies focused on improving conditions for learning science for underrepresented students and improving college completion.

Limitations & Future Research

This examination of student perspectives on the HSTA experience is limited in that we utilized open ended survey responses and were unable to follow-up with individual respondents to pursue a deeper understanding of their responses. While many HSTA participants provided extended responses, it also was common for responses to be brief and we likely would have acquired richer data had interviews and observations been feasible. We also limited our focus in this article to the HSTA Summer Institute and will explore the HSTA Club experience in work going forward. We are currently collecting data from HSTA program completers who are now in college degree programs regarding which aspects of HSTA were most influential and supportive of their continuing development. This ongoing work has great potential to expand our understanding of which elements were not only salient for HSTA participants, but also were perceived to be impactful on their life course following completion of the HSTA program.