Study Of Factors That Influence Campus Engagement Level Of School First Generation College Students From Rural Areas

With the popularization of development of higher education, quality of educationbecomes the focus of public attention. As a new concept of education quality assessment,student engagement can evaluate students’ development process in campus througheffective investment of time and effort of students (i.e., student engagement) in educationalactivities in campus, and it becomes an important means of evaluation of quality ofundergraduate education.Factors that affect student participation are many, and it not only needs to be supportedby school environment and policies, but also needs to be effectively supported by the family.The popularization development also means a growing number of first-generation collegestudents of rural households entering university campuses. Related researches show that ruralhouseholds due to the lack of family capital, their children’s education become vulnerablepopulation. In our country, the first generation of college students in rural households due tolack of effective support from family, their participation was significantly lower than othercollege students. Existing research literature give more emphasis on the perspective ofeducation fair to research this group, but they rarely explore the factors affecting ruralfamilies’ first generation of college students’ campus participation degree from theperspective of family capital. This paper attempts to make an attempt in this aspect, focusingon the following two sub-questions:1. How does the family capital affects campus participation of rural families offirst-generation college students?2. What are the barriers that hinder first generation college students’ engagement oncampus of rural households?This paper adopts qualitative research methods, and collects data through the depthinterviews on eight first-generation college students in rural households. Data analysisshowed that the lack of family social capital and cultural capital of the family,first-generation college students rural households lack deep understanding of the University,and they had great randomness and blindness in school and profession choice, resulting in professional choices satisfaction low, thereby affecting their campus involvement. Afterenrollment, first-generation college students of rural households suffered obstacles in allaspects of learning and life. While solving these barriers, first-generation college students ofrural families not only don’t get support from family capital, but also not be supported bythe school system, which affect their campus learning cognition, emotion and behavior;Professional set is too detailed, first-generation college students’ information is inadequate’school training mode is unreasonable and scholarship selection and examination process existinequities, students were not enthusiastic and feel confused for their own career development;school’s concern is not enough for students’ mental health, and guidance for students’career planning is not enough; Estranged relationship between teachers and students andcontradictory relationship of students are usual. These institutional barriers of campusseriously affected first-generation college students’ motivation of integrating into campuslife and study, leading to their low participation.This study consists of five parts. The first part of the paper is an introduction. Theresearch background and significance as well as the definition of key concepts are stated andillustrated in this part. The second part is the theoretical basis and analysis framework of thepaper. The research status at home and abroad are demonstrated. The third part is about theresearch plan, mainly expounds the research object, interview outline design, the reliabilityand validity analysis.The fourth part is the thesis findings. A detailed analysis of familyfactors and school factors is presented. In the fifth part, feasible proposals are providedaccording to the factors influencing the engagement level of first generation college students.