Increasing student retention is one of the greatest challenges faced by community colleges. First-year community college students face a complex set of issues in grappling with their new academic roles and identities. Therefore, there is a need for effective retention efforts that support students during this time of transition. First-Year…

Sense of belonging is a social construct encompassing feelings of being integral to a system. A positive sense of belonging is associated with better social and academic engagement and retention. Traditionally, belongingness has been examined in terms of helping students integrate into existing systems; however, this study instead examines the…

The growth of the number of persons pursuing education outside of their home country has created a relatively new population of transnationally mobile students who experience a pivotal developmental period crossing and across international borders. There are few suitable theoretical models to examine the developmental experiences of this growing…

This paper seeks to unveil the situated struggle that students experience in comprehending the often tacit rules that govern academic practices in order to engage fully with their academic studies and develop a sense of belonging. I present a critique of the prevailing conception of student belonging, which I suggest does not effectively consider…

The transition from secondary education to the first year of higher education is a phase in which students are faced with many challenges. First-year students may lack the academic capital that is needed to understand explicit and implicit rules of higher education. We investigated students' participation in a preacademic program and the…

Academic integrity concerns related to students' use of technology have renewed calls for teaching, assessment, and learning best practices, including those that involve and empower students. Empowerment is a benefit of developing students' assessment literacies, or how students contextually understand, plan, and undertake assessment and use…

This study investigates Chinese international students' acculturation strategies and pragmatic intentions to address identity conflicts in Hong Kong study experiences through a developmental lens. We treat conflicts and stressors as indicators of active commitments and the process of engagement as strategic, goal-oriented, intentional investments…

This paper presents a small-scale qualitative study, which addressed stories of 'becoming an undergraduate student'. The work took place in one university in the South West of England and involved 4 researchers, 4 co-researchers (undergraduate students) and 12 students from a Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Stories of 'becoming student' were…

Given how China has been the top source of international students worldwide, there has been growing media and research interest in Chinese international students. However, much of the narratives tend to focus on their struggles. In this commentary, I draw upon insights from my personal experience as an international student and, consequently,…

The Division of Student Engagement and Enrollment Services at Old Dominion University (ODU) submitted a Request for Assistance to examine the challenges sophomore students face that can lead to attrition. A doctoral research team conducted a exploratory, sequential, mixed-methods study consisting of a literature review, focus groups and interviews…

Students are in constant transition as they move from one academic institution to another, from one academic level to another, from one major to another, or from college to the world of the work (Killam & Degges-White, 2017). While all of those stages of transition have been the focus of numerous studies, the increasing diversity of student…

Previous research that evaluated first year students' transition into university found that the values of 'being, belonging and becoming' were important in particular within the first few months and within the first year of university. From our previous work, we reported that three things matter to students: the academic staff they work with, the…

This article contests the narrative of Chinese international students (internationals for short) as passive and problematic to reveal the complexity and fluidity of their experiences. Simultaneously, it troubles the overly linear approach of stage theory in understanding internationals' adjustment. Following nine first- and nine second-year…

The purpose of this study was to identify the ways in which veterans with disabilities navigate the process of transition from their lives as members of the military community to participants in the community college. This study analyzed the subset of veterans with disabilities in a community college to identify the support structures and services…

Institutions of higher education must include policy-informing research into their long-term retention planning to improve institutional practices regarding student support and persistence (Bean, 2001; Kuh, 2006; Brown, 2015). This information is needed to make institutions of higher education aware of how student characteristics interact with the…