Winter Break: First Generation Penn Students Returning Home
This article recounts the educational journey of Carmen Duran, an 18-year old first-generation college student at the University of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia Inquirer / January 18, 2018
This study examines how first-generation, poor, and working-class college students make meaning of and perceive diversity. The authors explore how students connect their lived experience to the conceptualization of diversity within higher education. Using the photovoice method, students collected visual data and provided narrative texts around the concept of diversity. Three themes emerged: harmony, diversity as belonging, and critical multiculturalism. This study deepens our understanding of how identity influences perceptions of diversity and the intersectionality of the first-generation identity. Intersectional theory served as a theoretical lens through which to examine perceptions of diversity within the context of complex heterogeneous identities of first-generation students.
