Participants: Anselma Widha Prihandita & Alec Fisher
Because of the various precarities and marginalizations that many these students face, student retention often depends not only on the strength of the course’s curricula and pedagogies, but also on the support that these students can get beyond the classroom. In response, this project conducts a series of interviews with students experiencing both material precarity and marginalization. By gathering this knowledge with students, we will be able to draw a clearer picture of where student vulnerabilities exist in the learning process and develop curriculum and instructor orientation materials based on this new knowledge.
The purpose of these interviews is to draw a holistic picture of the lived experiences of vulnerable students as they engage the learning process. Do they feel intellectually safe among their classmates and welcomed into the classroom by the instructor’s teaching practices? How can the type of anti-racist learning occurring in ENGL 109/110 curriculum draw connections between students’ lived experience and how racism structures the violence of our contemporary world?