Amy E. Stich

University of Georgia | UGA · Institute of Higher Education

Within the broader context of the global knowledge economy, wherein the "college-for-all" discourse grows more and more pervasive and systems of higher education become increasingly stratified by social class, important and timely questions emerge regarding the future social location and mobility of the working classes. Though the working classes l...

In this article, we examine the manifestation and consequences of shadow capital within two public, urban, nonselective, college preparatory–designated high schools serving exclusively nondominant students. Informed by three years of ethnographic data, we argue that the transference of a historically elite college preparatory education from dominan...

At present, U.S. postsecondary sorting is best evidenced by an increasingly stratified system of higher education. However, very little attention is paid to even deeper levels of stratification within colleges and universities where academic tracking and its consequences are manifest. Given this significant lack of attention to deepening levels of...

Although tracking is typically the subject of secondary education, this embedded case study brings attention to the comparable mechanisms at work within postsecondary institutions that produce serious consequences for racially minoritized students admitted into the “low” track. By engaging Victor Ray’s newly conceptualized theory of racialized orga...

In this article, we provide a critical reflexive tool developed to interrogate hierarchical research team structures. As members of a qualitative research team working on a large-scale federally funded project, we aim to provide guidance for scholars interested in working against established hierarchies toward more democratic team practices. Our ap...

An important part of STEM education is students’ acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for career success, all of which emerge from a combination of classroom and co-curricular activities. Work-related experiential activities (WREAs) offer the opportunity for students to engage in experiential activities before degree completion, a...

Leveraging the state’s dual enrollment program, Georgia policymakers introduced a novel postsecondary pathway called “Option B” that allows students to bypass many traditional high school graduation requirements by completing sub-baccalaureate credentials for career and technical education instead. Given the distinctiveness of this policy, high sch...

Despite a robust body of literature about the choice of students’ first postsecondary institution, we have little insight regarding transfer from four-year colleges and universities across socioeconomic groups. In this study, we argue that when entry to selective colleges reaches a heightened level of competitiveness, transfer may be employed by st...

This qualitative case study provides an analysis of the structuring of middle-class aspirations at one rural university in the United States. Using a Bourdieusian framework offered by Zipin and colleagues (2015), findings suggest that although student participants in our study are similarly positioned relative to social class background, those from...

The need for qualitative research that facilitates understanding of the social world is imperative as people around the globe encounter political, economic, environmental, health, and social crises. Higher education presses for preparing scholars to be creative, collaborative, and productive to examine these problems. In increasingly repressive con...

This article demonstrates how network analysis of qualitative content can be used to build on traditional research approaches to confirm and expand prior findings and to point to fruitful directions for future research. Drawing on mixed methods research on policies and practices that improve access to study abroad at U.S. higher education instituti...

The purpose of this study was to explore how postsecondary institutions with high and low study abroad participation rates communicate with students about study abroad opportunities. We were especially interested in identifying institutional policies and practices that focused on inequalities in access to study abroad. We addressed this purpose usi...

Background/Context Calls to increase participation in and access to STEM education have been loud and frequent. These democratizing efforts have targeted the aspirations and expectations of non-dominant students attending U.S. secondary schools, promising pathways to college and opportunities for social mobility, yet the results have been mixed. Wh...

Faculty (N = 205) at regional public universities (RPUs) in the United States were surveyed for self-reports of their primary academic identity (teacher, researcher) and qualitative descriptions of struggles related to their academic identity. Well-being and job satisfaction were examined as outcome measures of identity struggles. Participants were...

Faculty (N = 156) at regional public universities (RPUs) in the United States were surveyed for self-reports of their primary academic identity (teacher, researcher) along with alignment of that identity with perceived departmental expectations and how their time is spent. Well-being and job satisfaction were examined as outcome measures of identit...

Similar to other online courses, massive open online courses (MOOCs) often rely on learner–learner interaction as a mechanism to promote learning. However, little is known at present about learner–learner interaction in these nascent informal learning environments. While some studies have explored MOOC participant perceptions of learner–learner int...

Book Review

The purpose of this article is to bring attention to the illustrative power and capacity of qualitative longitudinal research within the context of the urban educational “reform churn.” In this article, we draw upon longitudinal ethnographic data collected over 3 years in four low-performing, urban secondary schools in Buffalo, New York, to illumin...

MOOCs have been advanced as a mechanism for increasing access to higher education for underserved populations. However, we still know little about the socio-demographics of MOOC participants in general and even less about underserved MOOC participants in particular. In order to broaden our understanding of MOOC participants, including those who sta...

While much has been written in the field of educational technology regarding educational excellence and efficiency, less attention has been paid to issues of equity. Along these lines, the field of educational technology often does not address key equity problems such as academic achievement and attainment gaps, and inequality of educational access...

In this article, we present findings from a three-year comparative longitudinal and ethnographic study of how schools in two cities, Buffalo and Denver, have taken up STEM education reform, including the idea of “inclusive STEM-focused schools,” to address weaknesses in urban high schools with majority low-income and minority students. Although int...

In response to numerous calls for more rigorous STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education to improve US competitiveness and the job prospects of next-generation workers, especially those from low-income and minority groups, a growing number of schools emphasizing STEM have been established in the US over the past decade. Ho...

In this paper, we critically analyze institutional mission statements as discursive texts replete with symbolic meaning, as we believe these texts reveal a great deal about the ways in which higher education remains increasingly stratified. We argue that beneath the generalized rhetoric of institutional mission statements, lie powerful messages see...

In this paper, the authors argue that despite a resurgence of elite studies, the majority of existing scholarship works to reify and legitimize social inequality through its language and method. In particular, the authors utilize Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of relational thinking to review and critique contemporary research on elite education and the...

Though researcher dilemmas are not new to the pages of Qualitative Inquiry, we argue that the current contemporary context has both altered and intensified issues associated with conducting qualitative research within sites most affected by more recent social, political, and economic shift. Navigating such sites as researchers poses new questions a...

Although methodological discussions abound in qualitative research, little time is devoted to access, arguably one of the most important methodological components of social research. Access has often been treated as a side issue by scholarly sources, receiving only cursory attention, generally in a way that reduces it to a mere strategy and severs...

In response to both problematic and extant gaps in Bachelor’s degree completion rates, this mixed methods study investigated whether a theoretically based undergraduate course intervention measurably contributed to participants’ competence as self-regulated learners. Respective quantitative and qualitative analyses of data collected from two sample...

This article draws on the framework of new literacy studies (Gee, 1996, 2005) to explore remedial students’ academic identities. The authors use discourse analysis to examine students’ written assignments from one remedial summer bridge course. Student-written assignments include themes and rhetorical devices that suggest the complexities of negoti...

Anthropologist Michael Taussig calls it a “polymorphous magical substance.” This is how he “prefers to think of color, something more than a spot of red or blue on a page. It affects all the senses, not just sight. It moves. It has depth and motion, and it connects such that it changes whatever it comes into contact with.” Color is elusive. The eth...

Evidenced in several now classic reviews of the field, much has been made of theoretical and methodological “difference” with regard to research in the sociology of education. Although such renditions often constitute important intellectual contributions, the authors suggest that it is increasingly important to read across theoretical and methodolo...