Page 63 - Volume 4 - Issue 1 - DBU Journal of K-12 Educational Research

Journal of K-12 Educational Research 61 draw.” Other students told stories about how individual teachers, coaches, administrators, senior coordinators, counselors, or other staff inspired them. Their stories indicate that ethic of care and/or social capital experiences have powerfully impacted their college aspirations. Implications Both the quantitative and qualitative results of the current study show that students’ college aspirations were heavily impacted by the absence or presence of social capital and ethic of care provided during their high school careers. Quantitatively, the current study results showed that students’ college aspirations do not have connections with students’ attendance and academic performance. These results revealed that students’ experiences that are tied to their academic performance or/and attendance may or may not be impactful on their college aspirations. Qualitatively, students who aspire to go to college identified their teachers, coaches, staff, administrators, counselors, senior coordinator, and parents to have shown them support during high school. This finding supports the notion that several researchers claim that social capital and ethic of care help students encourage and prepare for college (Holland, 2012; Holland & Farmer-Hinton, 2009; McClafferty, McDonough, & Nunez, 2002; Schneider, 2007). The results of the current study further revealed that unless school leaders provide an environment and culture where social capital and ethic of care are experienced by students, college preparation will remain, as one respondent described, the “luck of the draw” especially among the low-income minorities. Transformation proponents (Bunda, 1999; Connelly, 2008; Freire, 2005, 2014; Giroux, 2011; Halpern, 2009; Heclo, 2008; Joseph, 2011; Ruiz, 2018) believe that success of innovations for transformation requires that school leaders are willing to listen to the voices of the stakeholders and are paying attention to the demands of time so that change can become responsive to the needs of the students and their community. In the current study, the voices of students seem to indicate hope for a school environment where students are provided the encouragement and preparations for college while they are in their P-12 school. The current study results showed further that graduates heavily relied on the sporadic social support and care of adults in school who pushed them to go beyond high school. There were four students who reported that there was nothing in school that they can remember that has neither encouraged nor prepared them for college. With the responses of these four respondents, the researcher saw self-determination as displayed by both social capital and ethic of care as an experience outside the sphere of influence of the school. From students who did not plan to go to college, 15.3% shared that they need help on college applications, and another 15.3% stated that they do not feel ready to go to college as they needed more academic preparations. Students’ narration of their experiences is supported by the research of Corwin and Tierney (2007) who assert that low income minorities and first-generation college goers should be provided with a college-bound culture experience to prepare and motivate them to go to college. The work of Royster, Gross, and Hochbein (2015) also supports the result of the current study on the positive impact of providing social capital and ethic of care experiences to students so they will be encouraged and prepared to go to college. In the current study, the social capital subthemes that emerged in the findings have been reported by students as helpful in their college aspirations. In the same manner, the ethic of care subthemes that emerged in the findings of the current study were perceived by high school graduates as powerful forces in encouraging and preparing them to go to college. Royster et al. (2015) believe that college-bound practices are indispensable, especially when teaching students whose parents are non-English speakers. They further explained that these college-culture practices can truly exist, can be identified, and adapted or adopted to establish a campus with a college-bound culture. Different study results affirm that for schools like the one in the current study that serve first-generation college students and whose many parents did not study in the United States, a college-bound learning environment based on social capital and ethic of care is vital for encouraging