What you know, who you know, where you live: understanding how habitus influences career selections among urban students

Despite increasing gains in the number of African Americans obtaining university degrees, they remain underrepresented in many career paths. This dissertation examines how low-income, urban, African American students, who attend university, discover and select careers. By examining this process, I attempt to make more explicit the reasoning behind their career choices. Using a phenomenological approach, I investigated the lived experiences of 12 students who were part of an auxiliary educational program and who were attending a large research university in their home city. Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, social capital, and practice, along with the concept of code-switching, provided the framework to examine the student's experiences and choices. Interviews were also conducted with 2 staff members from the auxiliary program and 2 staff members from the university career center. All twelve students exhibited a strong sense of self-efficacy and expressed confidence about the career choices they made. However, they appear to make career choices based on very limited and generic career exposure opportunities. Recommendations for how to expose and encourage low-income, urban, African American students towards fields in which African Americans are underrepresented include more concentrated efforts to generate alternative networking/social capital building relationships, increasing the number of career research projects students complete while in high school, and more resources and support for guidance staff/career counselors at urban high schools.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Coppola, Rachel

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Horvat, Erin McNamara, 1964-

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Davis, James Earl, 1960-
• Schifter, Catherine
• Clark, Robert W.
• Chessler, Marcy L.

• Educational leadership
• Educational administration
• Career development
• Habitus
• Urban education

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Dc Identifier Other

920555139

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/2718