ABSTRACT
Personal statements are an important site of study for scholars interested in destabilizing inequity in higher education, given their use in admissions, fellowships, and hiring to add and contextualize information about applicants. Rather than considering only statements’ linguistic and rhetorical form, function, and organization, this study considers how the larger, politicized context of higher education shapes the ways in which marginalized students (Black women and/or femme-identified folks, in particular) construct themselves as meritorious while applying to education Ph.D programs. Rather than simply viewing personal statements as another piece of student writing, this critical analysis will reveal how statements can be used to justify entry into or reinforce exclusion from the academy.
Project Lead
Aireale Rodgers
University of Southern California
Project Lead
Martha Kakooza
Morgan State University
GOALS & RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. How do personal statements perform merit?
2. What discursive and rhetorical strategies do Black women and/or femme-identified applicants to education Ph.D. program use to write about themselves in their personal statements?
3. What does this tell us about their perceptions of the institutional culture of academe? Their prospective graduate program? Their positionality in these contexts?
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Theoretical perspectives on meritocracy in graduate education (Posselt, 2016), Black feminist thought (Collins, 1990), and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) undergird the analysis of narrative self-construction (Wortham, 2001) in personal statements.
METHODS
There are two main components of data collection: a demographic questionnaire and the critical narrative analyses of personal statements. Critical narrative analysis (Souto-Manning, 2014) brings together micro- and macro-levels of analyses to study how discourse becomes real and enacted in people’s lives. This study utilizes a two-phase approach to data analysis, starting with a deductive analysis using sensitizing concepts from the literature on critical narrative analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis to identify patterns in narrative structures, discursive practices, subjective positions, and institutional discourses present in the personal statements. After addressing these ‘what’ questions, we will move toward the ‘how’, seeking to understand how narratives were constructed and how discourses were used to perform merit in the graduate application process.
CONTRIBUTION TO PROJECT GOALS
This study contributes to IGEN’s goals of using research to identify and refine more inclusive practices. If we truly perceive increased diversity as an essential part of a more just academy, we must take seriously the ways in which racialization in the construction and interpretation of personal statements may reify or disrupt inequity in the admissions process.
FOCUS AREA WITHIN GRADUATE EDUCATION
Admissions