First Generation Student Resources

This annotated bibliography, from the Center for First-generation Student Success at National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, provides a timely and accessible resource for scholarly practitioners in multiple arenas of higher education.

From the editors:
"The bibliography is organized to introduce first-generation students in a way that speaks to their heterogeneity. One theme pertains to their intersecting identity and explores race, class, ethnicity, and refugee and immigrant status as well as the confluence of these identities. A second metatheme addresses students’ experience within higher education ranging from the classroom and pedagogy, to career readiness, to varying definitions and measures of student success. An extension of this metatheme is an emerging area of research that considers experiences of first generation students in graduate and professional programs that are at the core of diversifying the academy. A third metatheme takes up the role of parental and familial support and social and cultural capital that is bound up in one’s lived experience but also defined by the academy and disciplinary spaces in ways that can constrain first generation students’ success. The last metatheme comes back to story—and reflects on the opening quote by Toni Morrison. Who tells the story of who first generation students are? What are their narratives and counter-narratives? Which stories in mass media and pop culture reinforce narrow stereotypes, and where are the memoirs and works of fiction that paint a richer, more nuanced picture? All of this work is contained in this living document that will no doubt grow."

The complete annotated bibliography is linked above and there are several resources included within each of the themes below.