Understanding Persistence Using a Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory

Abstract

Objective: Despite significant enrollment in community colleges, persistence and graduation rates are quite low. This study aims to better understand how students’ person–environment relationships and self-organization together contribute to the persistence decisions of community college students. Using Spencer et al.’s phenomenological variant on ecological systems theory (PVEST) framework, we aim to clarify the psychological functioning behind students’ persistence that is impacted by diverse systems, including the community college itself, family, and the broader community. Method: This study utilized qualitative interviews with 66 participants across two community colleges. Findings: We find that when participants’ experiences were analyzed through a PVEST frame, a majority of students described having phenomenological experiences around their student/learner identities. The feedback from these experiences prompted participants to negatively or positively reorganize their self-perceptions in regard to how they saw themselves as students and learners; this reorganization led to behaviors that influenced persistence plans. When participants’ microsystems (e.g., family, work, college) intersected, patterns emerged regarding how participants processed environmental feedback that resulted in a cyclical feedback loop, suggesting a more dynamic relationship with environments than previously presented. Contributions: Using PVEST as a framework allows for a more in-depth examination of the interface between students’ psychological foundations, processing of environmental feedback, and the resulting reorganization of self in regard to how role identities (e.g., student) provide greater insight into students’ persistence decisions. This study offers PVEST as an important framework for rethinking previous models of researching and supporting community college student persistence.

Keywords

community college students persistence phenomenology ecological systems theory

Community colleges are critical institutions of higher education for a diverse and significant number of students who seek access to a college education and workforce development. In 2017, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described the role of community colleges as “nimble, inclusive, and entrepreneurial,” which make education more affordable and “help identify and close the skills gap between employers and job seekers, so U.S. businesses and industries can thrive and expand” (Morris, 2017, para 4). To support these goals related to workforce and economic development, community college students must have access to and achieve educational success. Since 2000, enrollment at community colleges has increased by 29%—from 5.9 to 7.7 million students (McFarland et al., 2019). Although this growth has tapered, these institutions have enrolled a relatively constant 45% proportion of the U.S. undergraduate population (American Association of Community Colleges [AACC], 2016, 2017). Community colleges have traditionally been a primary entry point into postsecondary education and their role in increasing access continues to be essential.

Despite the function of and significant enrollment in community colleges, persistence and graduation rates are quite low. Persistence rate data for community college students are complex and scant. One third of students enrolling in community colleges graduate with either a degree or certificate within 3 years (Barnett, 2010). Juszkiewicz (2016) found that 38.2% of students who start at a 2-year public institution complete within 6 years, and Karp et al. (2010) reported that 47% of community college students leave without earning a degree or certificate. Term-to-term rates are similarly bleak; some state-based term-to-term data found that approximately 45% of students are not retained from the fall of one academic year to the next (Jaggars & Xu, 2010; Xu & Jaggars, 2011). Another study found the percentage to be higher (60%) for the 2014–2015, fall-to-fall retention rate (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2017). Long term, 39% of community college students who began school in 2010 earned a 2- or 4-year credential within 6 years, with only 16% of those credentials at 4-year institutions (Shapiro et al., 2017).

The large proportion of undergraduate enrollment and consistently low persistence rates are concerning, given the multitude of programs designed to improve persistence (Bailey, 2017; Bailey et al., 2015; Nitecki, 2011). In this study, our focus moves away from students’ experiences, support programs, or policy separately, and instead investigates persistence as embedded in person–environment interactions. Using Spencer et al.’s (1997) phenomenological variant on ecological systems theory (PVEST) framework, we aim to clarify the psychological functioning behind students’ persistence that is impacted by diverse systems, including the community college itself, family, and the broader community, in addition to policy and sociohistorical events.

Literature Review

Students attending community colleges are a diverse group. The AACC (2016) described the range of students on community college campuses as being diverse in age, financial independence, enrollment and financing, having dependents, and academic preparation. Community colleges also serve a significant portion of high-risk students (e.g., low income, Black, Hispanic, part time, working, first generation) who are disproportionately likely to possess risk factors for educational departure (Bailey & Alfonso, 2005; Cohen et al., 2014; Community College Survey of Student Engagement [CCSSE], 2002; Horn & Nevill, 2006; Parsad & Lewis, 2003). Although these institutions are tasked with meeting an incredibly wide range of student needs and educational goals, they are doing so with fewer resources than most of their 4-year counterparts (Berkner et al., 2000; Cohen et al., 2014; Ma & Baum, 2016; National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 2011; Shapiro et al., 2017). The extensive college impact and persistence literature provides insight, models, and recommendations for key elements that influence community college student retention, persistence, and success.

Community College Students and Retention Theories

There is deep and enduring literature focused on college student persistence and educational outcomes. One focus of this broad college impact literature examines how exposure and experience in college affect educational attainment and persistence (Mayhew et al., 2016; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991, 2005). Foundational to this literature is Tinto’s (1993, 2012) theory of departure. In this theory, Tinto (1993) attempts to model key intersections between the student and institution as the student proceeds through college. First, students’ pre-entry characteristics (e.g., family, academic preparation, identity, skills, abilities) shape their intentions and goal commitments upon entry. Next, students engage and integrate (or not) with the academic and social systems in the institution. Finally, the student departs the institution either prior to educational goal attainment or with a degree. Tinto argues that the extent of social and academic integration critically impacts students’ persistence to educational goal attainment or the decision to leave college without attaining their goals.

Tinto’s (1993, 2012) theory of departure was heavily criticized by scholars for its questionable application to institutional types outside of the 4-year, residential college institution type that the theory was built on (Gillett-Karam, 2016; Ozaki, 2016). First, given the rarity of housing at community colleges, the importance of external commitments, and the likelihood of students to locate their social lives outside of campus, researchers have called to question the applicability and importance of Tinto’s (1993) concepts of social integration and involvement for community college and nontraditional students (Cabrera et al., 1992; Napoli & Wortman, 1996, 1998; Tierney, 2000; Tinto, 2012). Second, multiple scholars have also critiqued the theory’s utility for understanding minoritized and underrepresented student departure (Rendon et al., 2000; Tierney, 2000). These students are known to often have significant external commitments, raising questions for the relevance of on-campus social involvement particularly given the high proportion of these students enrolled in community colleges (AACC, 2016; Tierney, 2000). Third, it is important to note that the varied and ranging enrollment patterns among community college students (Crosta, 2014) are not well reflected in Tinto’s unidirectional, linear model. Embedded in the departure theory is the assumption that a student is attending one institution and if he or she drops out, that it is permanent. In contrast, very common enrollment patterns among community college students include transfer, attending multiple schools simultaneously, intermittent attendance, and stop out with gaps in attendance. These complex attendance patterns imply potential movement across institution, nonlinear progress toward educational goal attainment, and multiple departures and returns to higher education, for which Tinto’s (1993, 2012) theory does not easily account.

There are a limited number of theories that provide greater assistance for understanding community college student persistence. Bean and Metzner (1985) argued that contemporary attrition and retention models overemphasized social variables, arguing that they are less relevant for nontraditional students. Their proposed alternative conceptual framework included academic, background, psychological, and environmental variables. They proposed that the environmental variables would have the greatest effect on withdrawal decisions. Bean and Metzner’s (1985) work was among the first to suggest and support the possibility that different college environments may differentially affect students’ experiences.

More recently, Braxton et al. (2004) presented a theory of student persistence specific to students at commuter colleges and universities. Similar to Bean and Metzner (1985), Braxton et al. argued that the theory of student departure lacks explanatory power for commuter campuses, pointing out the absence of external obligations and communities as potentially important factors in commuting students’ educational decisions. When accounting for student experience in their proposed model, they intentionally included external, campus, and academic environments, and examined their relationship to persistence. Although both theories (Bean & Metzner 1985; Braxton et al., 2004) bring the literature closer to a more inclusive theory that helps explain students’ persistence decisions, they fall short of addressing the unique contexts, populations, and success patterns at 2-year colleges.

Retention and college impact theories have served as heuristics for understanding students’ thinking and decision-making with regard to persistence in college. However, the focus on 4-year, on-campus student experiences omits those of community college students with external environments that are integral to their persistence. Although most of the literature attempts to examine the varied factors related to college student experiences and environments, few delve into the influence of an individual student’s psychological state in relation to environmental contexts on college-going and persistence decisions.

Psychological States and Environments

Retention and persistence literature suggests the importance of students’ psychological states for their ability to persist despite challenges and constraints (Baird, 2000; Bean & Metzner, 1985; Tinto, 2012). Given the diverse community college population (AACC, 2016), how students perceive, balance, move between multiple environments (e.g., family, work, school) and manage the interactions between these contexts has lacked attention within retention theories, specifically in relation to the role of students’ psychological states. Where and how psychological states and perspectives support persistence is less clear. This gap in the literature is particularly vacuous when attempting to understand the community college student experience whose academic (internal) and nonacademic (external) environments are often intertwined and reciprocally influence one another.

The importance of internal and external environments for community college students challenges the researcher to adopt conceptual and theoretical frames that do not limit student experiences to the college campus. Ecological systems theory (EST; Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1993) views the individual’s development in relation to his or her environment, beginning with the most immediate contexts, the self, and expanding to historical and societal events that may influence that person. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1993) framework provides the opportunity to understand student perspectives and psychological states and their development in the context of the most relevant environments, not only the academic setting. Spencer et al. (1997) introduced the PVEST framework that expands EST to examine environmental influence on how individuals understand themselves and use that information to develop strategies to resist negative feedback. The unrestricted inclusion of relevant environments and focus on the individual’s psychological self as it confronts the constraints, conflicts, and negative feedback from their varied environments provide a useful framework for studying community college student persistence.

EST

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1993) EST framework posits that individuals are situated in nested systems (e.g., environments): microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems, and chronosystem. Bronfrenrenner depicts the EST framework of nested systems as concentric circles: with self in the center, microsystems circling the self, and ending with the chronosystem as the outermost circle. In this model, individual development is continuous, existing throughout each of the systems. The result of person–environment interactions is termed proximal processes. In other words, development is an outcome of an individual’s interaction with their environment, including the people and physical objects within. The more the interaction occurs over an extended period of time, the more influential it will be. Examples of proximal processes for a college student finding themselves failing a course might include (a) the student’s relationship with the instructor as they try to rescue their grade, (b) the engagement with the content of the course when they are studying for the final, (c) a part-time job and manager who the student asks for time-off to put in extra study time, and (d) their parents, who are paying for the course and have told the student that, if they fail, they will need to pay their parents back. Using the proximal processes concept, the context of the student’s home and parental relationships might have the greatest developmental influence because they are making them take responsibility for potentially failing, which may affect their self-efficacy, confidence, and locus of control.

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1993) microsystems are individual small systems the student regularly interacts with. This may include a single person (e.g., instructor or parent), clusters of people (e.g., class- or workmates), or environments (e.g., school, home, work). Including the person within the microsystem allows for examining the role that students’ individual characteristics play in development. The mesosystem comprises each of the individual’s microsystems. Students’ microsystems interact with one another, intersecting with the students’ individual characteristics in ways that potentially influence development. For example, in the previous scenario, because the student is failing the course—their work, home, and school microsystems are intersecting. How the student manages the situation, and the individual characteristics that they draw on or enact, can influence their personal development. Outside of the mesostyem, the exosystem exists in settings that students are not part of, but that influence their developmental possibilities (e.g., family economics, financial aid policies). Next, the macrosystem represents the greater culture and society that provide structure to the nested systems (e.g., world economics). Finally, the chronosystem reflects the influence of time, by way of change or consistency, on the individual (e.g., physical growth, change in personality, development of maturity) and in the environment (e.g., changes to family structure, socioeconomic status, place of residence or employment).

By recognizing the ways that person, process, context, and time intersect, the model provides the opportunity to examine how a person’s development is influenced through and by the environment over time. This is particularly useful for studying community college students for two reasons. First, EST (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1993) allows for multiple and varying environments that are influential and relevant to a person’s development. This is critical to the study of community college students because EST allows research to represent the diverse population and does not restrict environments to the college setting, as previous research has been known to do. Second, EST focuses on proximal processes and person–environment interactions that reflect community college students’ complex lives: the influence of interactions on and off campus that may support or constrain persistence.

PVEST and Community College Students

Although helpful in acknowledging the person–environment relationships at play in development, and that development is nested in systems, EST (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1993) is less of a heuristic for examining the person–environment interaction’s influence over time than it is a snapshot of where a person is developmentally at a particular moment in time. Bronfenbrenner shows where students develop, but how they develop in the midst of these systems of developmental contexts remains unclear. PVEST (Spencer et al., 1997) builds on Bronfenbrenner’s EST by adding a self-organization theory to the systems.

Self-organization theory (Spencer et al., 1997) explores how individuals develop a differentiated—or clearer—and identified sense of who they are, with the goal of being able to respond to negative feedback (i.e., experiences that call into question who you think you are) in ways that maintain the internally understood sense of self. The theory seeks to describe how individuals understand and perceive themselves, and how that understanding is used to buffer and protect one’s sense of self against events and situations that threaten their self-perception (e.g., negative feedback). The information (e.g., feedback) comes from the relationships and contexts or environments—Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1993) micro- and macrosystems—that socialize students and explicitly tell students about who they are or should be.

For example, a student who is enrolled in an academically competitive community college nursing program who has stopped out multiple times in the past but is now continuously enrolled may now see themselves as a persistent and intelligent individual. They may also understand themselves as independent and as someone who thrives in being different and unique from most of their peers. This internal sense of self is key to their academic success. The ability to take negative experiences and feedback (e.g., stopping out) without impacting self-perception, and to take positive achievement (e.g., enrollment in a competitive nursing program) into their self-organization, allows them to continue on the nursing path until now. However, if they simultaneously experience negative feedback from peers, such as being told they never spend time with their friends due to always being busy with school, this may make this student start to question their sense of self. In this example, school and friendship microsystems are clashing (within the macrosystem), providing conflicting feedback about who this student is or should be—all of which they must compare with and consider in relation to self-perception.

According to Spencer et al. (1997), there are two key factors in students’ development of a sense of self: (a) the contexts or environments the student participates in, because they provide feedback about who the student is, should be, and could be, and (b) the student’s phenomenological experience of their personal and identity characteristics in the context of the microsystems and macrosystems. Achievement of self-organization is predicated on the notion that experiences and feedback led to changes in how one perceived oneself (self-perceptions). This in turn led to changes in how experiences were perceived with regard to the validity of the information provided about how to perceive oneself, and if this cycle was repeated enough, it led to changes in self-organization (Cicchetti & Tucker, 1994; Lewis, 1995; Spencer et al., 1997). As participants moved from diffuse to hierarchic integration then, they became increasingly capable of differentiating themselves from societal expectations, stereotypes, and biases held by both others and themselves, and to articulate and maintain their differentiation across contexts. For community college students, PVEST may be helpful in researching community college students because it allows for examining dynamic person–environment relationships at various levels that might influence students’ persistence, while also highlighting the importance of how students experience personal characteristics in these environments and what these experiences do to understanding of self and possibilities.

This study applied PVEST to investigate institutionally identified high-risk students’ community college experiences. Despite the fact that high risk and community college are often considered to be one and the same, in this study, we focused on students who were part of government-sponsored support programs for the most marginalized students (e.g., parents in welfare-to-work programs), and thus it seems important to note that our students were at higher risk of dropping out or stopping out of college than their community college peers. Although the retention literature has shown that persistence is related to the degree to which community college students see opportunities in school as outweighing both their academic and other constraints, the literature has not focused on explaining how community college students develop such a perspective. Our study helps begin this conversation by investigating two research questions.

Research Question 1: Do phenomenological experiences resulting from person–environment interactions influence participants’ self-organization around academic and other dimensions of self-perception (DSPs)?

Research Question 2: How does self-organization resulting from phenomenological experiences influence students’ thinking about whether school opportunities outweigh existing constraints or commitments when making persistence decisions?

Together, these questions overlay PVEST and retention literature to better identify the experiences and production of psychological mechanisms that theoretically facilitate persistence.

Method

This study focused on applying the PVEST framework (Spencer et al., 1997) to the persistence experiences of students at two community colleges. To this end, qualitative methods seemed most appropriate as they allowed for exploration of students’ specific phenomenological experiences (PEs) and meaning-making about those experiences, allowing patterns and themes to emerge (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). For the purpose of this study, PEs are identified as instances during the interview when a participant described how they perceive or make sense of an experience regarding race, gender, social class, or other DSP.

Sample

Email and advertisements were used to recruit participants from student services and state programs for low-income and marginalized populations (e.g., extended opportunity programs and services [EOPS] and welfare-to-work programs) at a Southern California community college, and an Eastern Michigan community college. Ultimately, 93 students voluntarily participated in this study.

Given the importance of chronological time in considering how PVEST may function in persistence plans, we felt that there needed to be at least two phenomenological experiences across different time points. Thus, we began by excluding participants who had fewer than two phenomenological experiences in their interviews. In addition, we restricted our sample to participants who had a phenomenological experience relating to an academic DSP (i.e., student or learner) or being a parent. The academic restriction was important for our interest in the theory’s implications for understanding academic persistence plans, and the parent restriction was included because it was one of the most prevalent dimensions associated with participants’ phenomenological experiences (as outlined below). Therefore, 66 participants were left for the final theory building described below.

The 66 participants were predominantly female (41), with 24 males, and one transitioning female-to-male participant. Racially, the participants were predominantly White (37), African American or Black (15), Hispanic or Latina/o (nine), Asian or Pacific Islander (one), Middle Eastern (one), “More than 1 Race” (one), American Indian (one), or declined to answer (one). Participants’ age ranged from 20 to 54 years, with a mean age of 31.3 years. At the time of the study, participants had completed between 0 and 124 credits, with an average of 39.5 credits completed. Most participants had departed and returned (e.g., stopped out) to community college (62); approximately four participants were continuously enrolled in community college. Of those 62 returners, 27 had departed and returned two or more times.

Data Collection

All participants completed a demographic questionnaire and a semi-structured one-on-one interview. The demographic questionnaire asked participants to provide information regarding personal characteristics such as race, sex, course credits completed, and postsecondary educational history information.

One-on-one interviews were approximately 60 minutes and conducted either by one of the authors or a trained research assistant on the student’s college campus face-to-face. There were five interviewers in total, and all the interviewers were women. Two Asian American women and two White women conducted interviews in Southern California. A mixed race (Asian and White) female conducted the interviews in Michigan. The semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed for commonality across the interviews in terms of stem prompts, while also providing flexibility to follow up on the unique aspects of each participant’s experiences (Merriam, 2009). The interviews began by asking participants to talk about their postsecondary educational history, focusing on when they had chosen to stop out and when they returned, or when they had thought about stopping out but chose not to. The participants’ descriptions were probed for more information about why they made the decisions they did and influences on these decision-making processes. Interviewers questioned where participants learned the responses they had to the influences and feedback they were receiving. In line with self-organizational theory situated within PVEST, these questioning patterns allowed for understanding of participants’ phenomenological experiences of their personal characteristics across contexts, and in relationship to past responses to feedback they received from their relationships and environments.

Data Analysis

Data analysis began with verbatim transcription of the digitally recorded audio of all interviews. In line with constant comparative analysis, transcripts were read multiple times with the goal of generating codes and patterns (Strauss & Corbin, 1994) that captured participants’ persistence decisions and experiences, the influence of environments and relationships, and where and why they either learned or broke out of their responses to these influences.

In line with the emergent nature of qualitative research, the coding process began with the authors sharing memos and conferencing about the general construct to examine the coding process (Patton, 2002). Although the research was emergent in nature, the focus on self-organization theory required a focused analysis. The initial step of identifying the broad coding categories focused on topics related to theory and allowed us to create an organization for the eventual codes. Given the complexity of the theory, the codes were not so specific that these broad categories were used as final analytical codes. There were six broad coding categories identified, with a total of 27 specific codes used in the analysis. The broad coding categories (a priori) identified included whether the participant was a returning or continuous student (two codes), phenomenological experiences (one code; participant describes how they perceive or make sense of an experience regarding race, gender, social class, or other DSP), DSPs involved in the phenomenological experiences (eight codes; i.e., age, gender, race, student, learner, mother, social class, immigrant status), impact of the phenomenological experiences on the focal DSP (three codes; e.g., participant describes phenomenological experience as negatively impacting DSP), microsystems (10 codes), and macrosystems (three codes). This identification of key coding categories allowed for reading the transcripts in ways that were both aligned with the research goals and theoretical framework but also provided broad enough categories that the codes could be truly emergent from the data.

One co-principal investigator (PI) then generated a preliminary set of codes that extrapolated on the coding categories through line-by-line coding of a subset (10 interviews) of the California data. The second PI then tried these codes on a subset (five interviews) of the Michigan data. Through memos and conferencing, these two authors constructed a coding scheme that they then tested on the first 25% of the total data from across the sites. During this process, codes were added, deleted, and revised to most accurately capture what was represented in the data. This code generation process allowed for careful consideration of our coding scheme’s applicability of and ability to capture experiences across participants and sites (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002; Strauss & Corbin, 1994).

The next phase of analysis involved all four authors coding the remaining data in coding dyads. In this way, the data were split into two groups, and each group was coded by two coders. This double coding created space to examine coding biases and consistency in application of codes between coders and across participants. All disagreements were worked out in the pairs. Several rounds of iterative coding occurred through dyads and memoing, working to consensus within dyads and cleaning data for coding consistency. A final data set was created using HyperRESEARCH 3.0.2 software where emergent themes were then tested using the hypothesis theory testing function, which provides data on the number of cases in which the proposed theme worked, as well as which cases were the ones that did and did not support the theme. Two themes emerged as relevant to the research questions. One theme related to how PVEST and its main components applied to community college students; the second theme was an examination of how PVEST contributes to understanding students’ persistence plans.

Findings

Given the complexity of PVEST and that our purpose was to investigate whether PVEST helped in understanding community college students’ persistence plans, the results are presented in two parts. First, discrete components of PVEST for participants are described. Second, two general patterns are introduced and illustrated through presentation of two cases. These cases serve as exemplars of the patterns that emerged from our study.

What PVEST Looks Like for These Community College Students

Phenomenological experiences

These are identified as instances during the interview when a participant described how they perceive or make sense of an experience regarding race, gender, social class, or other DSP. For example, one participant stated,

I come from, again this sounds really bad; I come from basically white trash. Is how I look at it and it is a culture set all in its own. So, I get a lot of slack from my culture, from that family and from that type of people because they don’t believe in going to college. You should be a mother, staying home, pregnant with kids doing that thing and it’s just not me.

In this instance, the participant is describing their sense making about their race and class as “white trash,” and gender in relation to college-going and their community’s expectations.

With respect to the persistence plans described by participants, the majority of participants planned to persist at least through graduation from community college: (a) 37 participants planned to persist to graduation and (b) 28 planned to persist and transfer to a 4-year institution; only one participant was currently questioning persistence. None of the participants were actively planning to depart. There were no distinct differences in the frequencies or impact of PEs across the different persistence plans.

DSPs

By examining the DSPs related to the PEs participants described, we delineated the experiences, perceptions, and approaches of self-organization related to the participant’s persistence plans. There were 23 unique DSPs described by participants, although only five were most often described as DSPs and will be further described below. Phenomenological experiences had a positive impact on students’ DSPs approximately 60% of the time and a negative impact approximately 20% of the time. This means that the phenomenological experience of the specific DSPs impacted students’ self-perceptions and self-organization in ways that made the student more positively organize their understandings of themselves and future possibilities or vice versa.

In some instances, there was no impact, but instead, the DSP was made salient in approximately 20% of the phenomenological experiences. This means the participants did not describe the DSPs changing or being viewed differently, but rather that the dimension was brought to the participants’ attention. The dimensions described as most impacted by their phenomenological experiences were student (156), parent (91), age (43), learner (30), and social class (28). Given that in some instances the DSPs of student and learner were not clearly individually distinct, these categories were combined into an academic self-perception category, making this DSP the most frequently discussed (186). A number of participants described managing multiple expectations besides being a student. This was evident in the large number of DSPs discussed that focused on being a parent.

Microsystems and macrosystems

An important component of PVEST is the examination of the person–environment relationships at various levels and how these might influence students’ persistence plans by impacting their self-organization. Overall, 36 microsystems (MIS) were described as affiliated with students’ phenomenological experiences; all participants described at least one microsystem. The microsystems described most frequently as affiliated with phenomenological experiences were family of creation—family the student created (98), college (68), family of origin (56), courses (46), and peers (40).

Although most students did not mention macrosystems (MAS), there were 12 macrosystems that nine students described as affiliated with their phenomenological experiences, but three were mentioned by only one student. The most common macrosystems were welfare policy (19), financial aid policy (13), and job market (10). Overall, the most commonly nominated microsystems (family of creation, college, and family of origin) and macrosystems (welfare policy) appeared related to key phenomenological experiences and DSPs previously discussed.

PVEST and Persistence Plans

PVEST was a helpful tool for understanding how phenomenological experiences influenced persistence plans. Two different patterns emerged related to the different ways PEs could influence how students perceived negative and positive feedback from others, and those influences on their self-organization. The first pattern identified the process of developing the academic DSP, whereas the second pattern revealed how the intersections between microsystems contribute to the reorganization of self in multiple dimensions. Both patterns appeared influential for participants’ persistence plans. To discuss in depth the ways PVEST may be helpful in describing participants’ persistence plans, these two patterns are presented through two exemplary cases.

Developing the academic DSP

All 66 participants described phenomenological experiences around the academic DSP. These experiences centered around feedback participants received about their academic identity and clearly led to what participants saw as their possible routes through or out of academic-related microsystems. Below, Glory’s case illustrates how participants in this pattern tended to depart or persist based on phenomenological experiences that influenced DSPs related to being a student or learner. Here, the academic dimension captures the essence of both the student and learner roles: participants’ perception of themselves as capable of learning material, achieving in school, and fitting into their classroom lives. As participants experienced different classroom environments, pedagogies, peers, and received feedback about their abilities, they found new ways of self-organizing that changed possibilities and persistence plans.

Glory

Glory was a 29-year-old African American female student, attending a community college in Michigan. Glory had previously attended college and dropped out, and she described her experiences within her major as impacting how she thought about herself as a student:

I guess with me changing my major so many times especially the initial time just engineering wasn’t a good fit for me. Math and the natural sciences was never just an aptitude for me. My fit was more so towards English and later in college once I got towards my major—social sciences. Those were classes that were a better fit for me and I saw that I did well in those classes, but I guess a major factor for me too was my grades and I guess just—I mean not getting the grades I just felt that maybe I wasn’t good enough for those type of majors. So that’s partly why I kept changing my major as well, ‘cause some of the courses I had to take—like I had to take chemistry three times.

This phenomenological experience described by Glory demonstrates how her experience in the engineering major negatively impacted the way she thought about herself as a student. These negative self-perceptions are what she described as contributing to her departure decision as an engineering major. Glory’s response to the perceived negative feedback of not doing well in her courses influenced how she organized information about who herself as a student.

Glory’s first attempt in college provided a series of phenomenological experiences that negatively impacted her student DSP. Consistently failing her chemistry class provided her feedback about her potential in a science field. These failing experiences resulted in emergent negative self-perceptions of herself as a student, which led Glory to change her major. Through this action, Glory indicated that she reorganized her self-perceptions around a new sense of who she was and would become, “I just felt that maybe I wasn’t good enough for those [science and math] types of majors.” Compounding her declining perception of herself as a student based on her chemistry class, she found a number of her classroom spaces unwelcoming and unsupportive.

Yeah, and those classes are required before you can graduate, prerequisite courses. So some of the natural sciences and pre-calc, I took that twice, and so it was just frustrating. Like, okay, I know I’m not stupid. What am I not doing for me to make these grades so I can pass the class? I think a lot of it, not only that, was some biases to—I felt that some instructors were prejudiced as well to where certain students you could tell they would work with more and then others it was kind of like the cold shoulder, “Oh, I’ll see you next semester,” and that was it. They didn’t give you kind of any leads or anything to go by to say, “Well maybe you should try this.”

Microsystems of classrooms and professors were influential in Glory’s perception of herself as a student and led her to reorganize her perception of self to not include college. Without additional phenomenological experiences suggesting that she was a capable student, Glory left college.

Upon returning to college, Glory described another phenomenological experience that positively impacted her such that she reorganized her perception of herself as a student.

I saw that I was more of an assertive student. Even though somebody might not tell me about resources I would seek those resources out. I would pick the brains of the professors to the point where I had a professor tell me, “Oh, you must be concerned about this class” and I said, “Yeah, I am concerned about this class.” I said, “I will get an ‘A’ out of this class” and I ended up getting an “A” out of that class. It was developmental psych. So yeah, I did get an “A.”

In this phenomenological experience, Glory described how her developmental psychology professor noticed her and provided her with feedback about how she was being perceived—as a concerned student. This feedback, coupled with her own work ethic, led Glory to not only do well in this course but also see herself as “an assertive student” who was both concerned and capable of doing well in school. Her self-organization shifted again: As her self-perception along the student dimension became more positive, Glory became a social science major and viewed herself as having potential as a student.

Glory’s comments regarding the role of instructors demonstrated how the same type of microsystems that influenced her to initially leave college later supported her reorganization of a more positive self-perception as a student when she returned to college and changed majors.

I had my first test in [instructor’s] class and I had got a “C” and she wrote in red letters, “If you’re not understanding the material come and see me” and anybody else kind of took that as . . . intimidation, but I saw it as a means of she wanted me to do better in her class. So I did take advantage of seeing her during her office hours and that’s when she explained to me that she did want me to do better in school.

Glory’s phenomenological experience this time around was very different because of the ways that she interacted with her microsystems and how she ultimately believed she was perceived as a student in this context. Glory’s new way of negotiating her self-perceptions as a student and her possibilities not only influenced her to persist but also ultimately influenced her plans to transfer to a 4-year institution.

Intersecting microsystems and reorganization of selves

A majority of the participants (41 out of 66) described intersections between microsystems that resulted in a reorganization of self in multiple dimensions. This pattern was particularly related to the role of being a parent and participants’ desires to model positive academic behaviors for their children. A majority of the participants were parents and described their children as significant microsystems with which they operated. Although the microsystems (e.g., children) could have pulled participants away from pursuing college, they tended to positively influence persistence plans. As in Adriana’s case below, these phenomenological experiences that occurred in both the family and academic microsystems generally positively influenced how participants reorganized perceptions of self as both student and parent. The intersection between microsystems supported persistence plans.

Adriana

Adriana is a 28-year-old, Latina, single mother who recently returned to a community college in southern California. Adriana discussed how, at her first college, she dropped out within a month of enrolling. It was not until getting laid off from her job that Adriana began to wonder about available options to help support her daughter and herself. Still unsure about her abilities, Adriana connected with her church to gain support. She described how this has influenced her decision to return to school:

So my career path was finally like the first thing I did in my life where I felt like I was like, this is the school I’m going to, this is what I’m going to do with my life, and I’m doing it all on my own. I’m going to class, I’m getting my grades, I’m going to counseling meetings—nobody else is doing it for me but me . . . Success means a lot. It means different things. It means financial stability for me and my daughter, it means independence for me, it means being able to finally being able to be proud of something that I accomplished that nobody else had a hand in . . . and I’ve never done that.

Returning to college to pursue a new career path was a new microsystem being added to Adriana’s world. The ensuing phenomenological experience of being successful and doing well in her academic career prompted her to positively reorganize her self-perceptions as a student. For the first time asserting agency as a student successfully, she is developing an identity as a student. This phenomenological experience within her academic microsystem led to a positive impact on Adriana’s self-perception as a mother, and as a provider in her family of origin. Adriana described her plans to continue her education now that she saw the impact it had on her role as a mother, and now that she also had a positive self-perception of herself as a student:

I hope to get a job, but I want to get a job where my schedule is kind of flexible so that I can continue to go to school to hopefully get my radiation certification, or assistant certification . . . something. I don’t want to stop, so hopefully I can get a job where I can support me and my daughter on my own, but still continue to educate myself because I have a need for it now. You know, during the summer break I feel like I’m going nuts I have the need to constantly put information in my brain. I have the need to be just a better me, just to be a better person.

In Adriana’s case, her family microsystem (daughter) interacted with her phenomenological experience within her academic microsystem in a way that made her positively reorganize her self-perceptions as a parent and influenced her decision to return to college. Adriana’s development of her student identity in response to the positive feedback she received during the phenomenological experience of succeeding in college had implications for how she perceived her role as a parent. Doing well in college, being a successful student and learner, meant that she could be a good parent, independently supporting her daughter. A positive phenomenological experience in Adriana’s academic microsystem prompted a change in her student and learner identities. This experience led Adriana to examine what being a successful student meant in relation to being a good, independent mother. She ultimately reorganized her self-perception as a parent. The feedback from change within her parental dimension reinforced her desire to continue, persist, and succeed in school.

Discussion

Findings from this study suggest that PVEST (Spencer et al., 1997) is useful for understanding community college students’ persistence plans. All participants discussed the importance of phenomenological experiences in their ecological systems for shaping their academic DSPs. Our first research question was, “Do phenomenological experiences resulting from person–environment interactions influence participants’ self-organization around academic and other dimensions of self-perception?” The findings suggest that PVEST is useful in clarifying what academic integration looks and feels like for community college students. Because existing work on academic integration focuses nearly exclusively on grades (Tinto, 1993), our findings regarding the central role of the development around the academic DSP may provide insight into a psychological foundation of academic integration and persistence. Following a brief discussion of how the current study’s findings extend existing work on the PVEST framework, these themes regarding PVEST and persistence are discussed.

The second research question was, “How does self-organization resulting from phenomenological experiences influence students’ thinking about whether school opportunities outweigh existing constraints or commitments when making persistence decisions?” Study findings support previous characterizations of community college students as diverse individuals with a wide array of responsibilities and roles (e.g., school, work, children, caretaking) who move throughout differing environments. When participants’ experiences were analyzed through a PVEST frame, two patterns emerged elucidating how phenomenological experiences influenced persistence plans. The majority of students described having phenomenological experiences around their student and learner identities. The feedback from these experiences prompted participants to negatively or positively reorganize their self-perceptions in regard to how they saw themselves as students and learners; this reorganization led to behaviors that influenced persistence plans. When participants’ microsystems (e.g., family, work, college) intersected, a second pattern emerged. For a majority of students, their parenting roles provided motivation for individuals to enter or return to college. When they were successful in college, participants’ student and learner self-perceptions changed, inducing reflections on how being a good student led to being a good parent, which reinforced the students’ goals of being an independent role model for their children, creating a cyclical pattern.

Advancing the Use of PVEST

The PVEST framework (Spencer et al., 1997) was developed with and has been applied in cases where the participants were all adolescents. We chose PVEST as a theoretical framework for understanding community college students’ persistence plans because, as a framework, it acknowledged that students and their developing sense of self were situated in systems and environments that all communicated (sometimes divergent) messages about who they could be and should be. Because community college students are, on the whole, more likely to be older or be parents than their peers at 4-year institutions (Horn & Nevill, 2006; Provasnik & Planty, 2008), PVEST helps acknowledge that community college students’ persistence plans are informed by diverse environments.

The findings of our study’s application of PVEST to an adult population demonstrate the need for further specification of DSPs. Existing literature using PVEST has nearly exclusively focused on applying PVEST to African American adolescents (e.g., Cunningham et al., 2009; Hall et al., 2008; King & Madsen, 2007; Lee et al., 2003; Seaton, 2007; Spencer et al., 1997, 2003). Spencer (1999) described PVEST as a theory that “simultaneously considers culture, context, and normative psychosocial developmental processes” (p. 43) but never specified it as a theory for understanding only African American adolescents’ experiences and development. However, there is little research that uses PVEST to consider phenomenological experiences about any other DSP than race for African Americans. Some researchers have used PVEST to examine racial and ethnic identity development for Latina/o students (Lara, 2009) and multiracial youth (Cszimada, 2011), but such examples of PVEST application are rare. Equally unexplored is how PVEST works when the phenomenological experiences are not about participants’ racial self-perceptions. For instance, Fredland et al. (2008) explored gender self-perceptions and PVEST and Warrens et al. (2012) edited a book where multiple chapters examined spiritual and religious self-perceptions.

Collectively, the literature about and using PVEST has focused on phenomenological experiences based on social identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, religion). Although social identities played into some of our participants’ phenomenological experiences, the most significant phenomenological experiences described by participants were related to their academic and parent identities. Across our 66 participants, there were 198 phenomenological experiences about academic self-perceptions and 91 phenomenological experiences about parent self-perceptions. Clearly for these participants, role identities were salient; academic and parent self-perceptions were the areas of their identities that they received most feedback about from others.

Recognition of role identities (e.g., academic and parent) in addition to social identities as areas of self-perception along which students might have phenomenological experiences is an important expansion of PVEST. This highlights that community college students may be more focused on figuring out whether they can be a good college student and a good parent, more than they are focusing on their meaning-making of their social identities. This overwhelming focus on role identities over social identities also points toward the difference in age of the participants in this study. In existing PVEST studies, adolescents typically are moving between home and school, whereas the participants in this study moved between home and school, home included both with their family of creation (children) and with their family of origin. Additional microsystems were welfare offices, social services, work, faith communities, and peers at school and at home.

The diversity of microsystems that participants move between also suggests that any single microsystem may have less of an effect on them than any single microsystem in which adolescents participate. In addition, although adolescents and traditional-aged, 4-year college students may be focused on developing identity and coping with social identities, our participants’ focus seemed less on finding or defining themselves, and more on being a good parent. To be a good parent, school became a part of the formula for many of them, and as such, the participants had to care about being a good enough student to graduate and get a better paying job, and ultimately be a better parent. The theoretical implications for PVEST are that phenomenological experiences are not limited to social identities, and that role identities might emerge as dominant identities around which phenomenological experiences occur if microsystems are more diverse and responsibilities of care for others are attached.

Rethinking Identity in Integration and Persistence

The emergence of role identities, such as parent roles or student identity, as dominant for our participants considering the diverse microsystems through which they move among and engage with also has theoretical implications for understanding persistence and its literature. This study builds upon and extends current applications of Tinto’s (1993, 2012) approach to understanding persistence and retention. The findings suggest a way to deconstruct academic integration that is more developmental than the quantifiable measures (e.g., grade point average [GPA], persistence, achievement tests, interactions with faculty, number of hours spent studying) that are often used to examine academic integration. Rather, we found that how students developed their identity as a student or learner, and the character of that identity as positive or negative, became integral to a majority of our participants’ persistence decisions. Academic identities developed as a function of the feedback loop that existed between a phenomenological experience within a salient microsystem (e.g., class, family, children, work, faith communities) and the participants’ self-perceptions, ultimately resulting in self-organizations that contributed to students’ persistence, attrition, or reentry. The student or learner identity, therefore, becomes foundational to students’ ability to engage in learning and their academic environment, fore-fronting the importance of academic integration among these participants. Although the critical nature of academic integration, as opposed to social integration, for similar populations has been supported previously (Braxton & Lien, 2000; Napoli & Wortman, 1996, 1998; Nora et al., 1990). These findings serve to provide a developmental picture of how students’ psychological interpretation of PEs within salient microsystems influence their perceptions as academic agents in their lives.

Specific to these participants was the intersection and interplay between the development of students’ student or learner identity and parental role. External microsystems to college, in particular students’ families of creation with children, were critical in providing an impetus for attending or returning to college and developing a more positive academic self-perception. In doing so, the positive feedback often prompted a positive reorganization of the parental DSP. This dynamic interaction between the students’ academic self and nonacademic microsystems is reflective of the lives of community college students. The competing roles and responsibilities of community college students’ lives are often touted as a reason for students’ lower persistence rates (Cohen et al., 2014; CCSSE, 2002; Horn & Nevill, 2006; Parsad & Lewis, 2003). Yet, our findings demonstrate that it is exactly this interaction that contributes to these students’ decisions and intentions to continue in college. Not only do these students’ microsystems outside the college setting have a significant influence on students’ persistence choices, but for most of these students, their academic integration was predicated on the feedback and self-organizational responses to phenomenological experiences that occurred both in academic and nonacademic microsystems. Contrary to Tinto’s (1993, 2012) model that acknowledges the presence of external commitments, these participants’ dynamic intersection between their student or learner role and parental role identities places external commitments at the center of their persistence decisions.

Theoretically, the findings support previous propositions that community college and nontraditional students experience academic integration as more critical to their persistence experiences than social integration. Yet, we expand this understanding by deconstructing how the development of student and learner identities provides the psychological foundation for further academic commitment and integration. Furthermore, although external commitments have remained present, this study demonstrates the essential role they play in the development of identities that underpin academic integration and persistence decisions.

Limitations and Areas for Future Research

Despite the theoretical implications of the findings of this study, there are limitations to note. First, the sample was reasonable for this study. We reached saturation, the metric used to determine appropriate sample size, for emergent qualitative research studies. That said, because the sample was drawn from only two community colleges, future studies could sample more colleges from more regions of the country in a larger quantitative study to further test these findings. In addition, because all data were self-reported, future studies might find ways to triangulate participants’ self-reported data. Alternatively, longitudinal studies would be able to avoid retrospective self-reported data by interviewing participants at multiple points across time. In this way, participants could report only about their current thinking, experiences, and persistence plans. Then, the researchers could track how these change across time, rather than rely on participants’ recall.

Implications for Practice

The findings and theoretical significance of this study also extend to implications for practice. First, given the importance of academic integration and college microsystems (e.g., classroom, instructors, peers) for this population, we must emphasize the importance of the academic environments for community college students—not only as connections for academic integration but also as critical to students’ development of positive academic and student identities. By highlighting the importance of academic versus social microsystems on campus, those who serve students in those settings become more critical to supporting students’ development and persistence. Therefore, faculty can provide constructive, supportive feedback that, regardless of the student’s academic level, supports a positive student and learner identity. This feedback can reinforce a sense of belonging in an academic environment, confidence, and commitment to the goals that brought the student to higher education. Proposing a psychologically developmental approach to teaching requires recognition of the psychological underpinnings and the toll, in addition to the logistics, that often accompanies persisting in and returning to college. Yet, expecting instructors to adopt a developmental orientation may be a tall order, considering most instructors have little formal education in college teaching, adult learners, or higher education. Professional development opportunities can help faculty better understand their student population and the importance of academic and nonacademic microsystems, how students may experience academic integration and what that means for persistence, and how teaching with a developmental approach, particular to student and learner identities, may be imperative.

Second, student affairs professionals at community colleges are expected to respond to and support students with greater variation in academic goals and background with small staffs, translating into incredible workloads where the expectations to fulfill more functions is at a more frenzied pace (Hirt, 2006). Furthermore, often student affairs professionals are trained in traditional student development theories and engagement literature that assumes the developmental experiences of traditional-aged students at residential, 4-year institutions. Therefore, given the demands of the profession at a 2-year institution and a lack of institution-type-specific preparation, student affairs professionals require professional development that educates them on the developmental experiences and foci of individuals at community colleges. Although a student development course in a master’s program may help prepare professionals with how to design programs that support students’ social identity development, our community college student participants were more focused on developing role identities that support academic integration and persistence. These students are also more likely to have microsystems external to the institution that are central to their academic integration, motivation, and persistence decisions; therefore, student affairs professionals must do their work without alienating external microsystems. Instead, student affairs professionals need to recognize external microsystems as part of students’ lives and often a core aspect of their persistence.

Finally, the findings underscore that 2-year institutions must create campuses that recognize the importance of the many environments students move through each day and the significant impact they have on students’ perceptions of themselves as students or learners. Therefore, if campus environments can develop ways to affirm these intersecting microsystems, then students could increasingly persist. An example of such a linkage would be to acknowledge these intersections through individual interactions with students through policies such as faculty providing a flexible absence policy that accommodates student parents, or for more campuses providing daycare facilities. Also, in considering student affairs’ traditional focus on the cocurricular college environment and holistic approach to understanding the student, working with students whose academic identity and integration are prominent factors in their persistence decisions may need revisiting. Fostering partnerships across student and academic affairs would emphasize the academic focus of student experiences without shedding the recognition of students as more than just their learning capacity.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

C. Casey Ozaki is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at University of North Dakota.

Avery B. Olson is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership and Director of the Center for Evaluation & Educational Effectiveness at California State University, Long Beach.

Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero is an associate professor in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program at the Ohio State University.

Jane Elizabeth Pizzolato is a higher education consultant.

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