Abstract
A growing body of work suggests that teaching college students a contextual understanding of difference—that students’ different experiences in college are the result of participating in different contexts before college—can improve the academic performance of first-generation students (i.e., students whose parents do not have 4-year college degrees). However, only one empirical study, using an in-person panel format, has demonstrated the benefits of this intervention approach. In the present research, we conduct two studies to test the effectiveness of a new difference-education intervention administered online to individual students. In both studies, first-year students read senior students’ and recent graduates’ stories about how they adjusted to college. In the difference-education condition, stories conveyed a contextual understanding of difference. We found that the online intervention effectively taught students a contextual understanding of difference and closed the social class achievement gap by increasing first-generation students’ psychological empowerment and, thereby, end-of-second-year grades.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1068-1083 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin |
Volume | 45 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1 2019 |
Keywords
- academic achievement
- difference-education
- intervention
- social class
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
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Dive into the research topics of 'Empowerment Through Difference: An Online Difference-Education Intervention Closes the Social Class Achievement Gap'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Datasets
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Empowerment Through Difference: An Online Difference-Education Intervention Closes the Social Class Achievement Gap
Townsend, S. S. M. (Creator), Stephens, N. M. (Creator), Smallets, S. (Creator) & Hamedani, M. G. (Contributor), figshare, 2018
DOI: 10.25384/sage.c.4302059, https://figshare.com/collections/Empowerment_Through_Difference_An_Online_Difference-Education_Intervention_Closes_the_Social_Class_Achievement_Gap/4302059
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