Understanding the African-American Student Experience in Higher Education Through a Relational Dialectics Perspective

Front Row Friendships: Relational Dialectics and Identity Negotiations by Mature Students at University

“…Subsequent to conducting and transcribing all of the interviews in this study, transcriptions were systematically analyzed and coded, producing inductive constructs which appeared most useful for explicating the data (cf. Brown, 2011;Goins, 2011;Lowry-Hart & Pacheco Jr., 2011;Simmons et al 2013). Particular attention was given to common patterns in responses (including similar metaphors and repeated terms) as well as anecdotes used to illustrate tensions of one sort or another.…”

“…Discussion in interviews centered mainly on episodes and encounters recalled by informants, who were encouraged to elaborate on their responses and to delve into salient issues (cf. Simmons et al, 2013). In all cases, interviews progressed from initial questions about personal background and education history, to motivations for entering university, and then finally to campus experiences and friendships, with a focus on experienced tensions or contradictions at each stage of questioning.…”

“…These authoritative discourses, as Avis (1997) pointed out, do not sit outside of experience but are constitutive of it (see also Goins, 2011). Therefore, each new utterance must be understood as part of a chain (Baxter, 2011); each new utterance in some sense responds to and is part of the utterances that came before (Simmons et al, 2013). In some respects, this storehouse of images and associations may be negative, with the effect that mature students may enter university life primed with anxiety and apprehension.…”

“…More commonly, however, the often lively responses of informants centered on extracurricular encounters, during which their consciousness of being different (or perceived as such) was heightened. These often embarrassing encounters, though mostly recalled with humor, cast mature students as campus outsiders of a sort-or what Simmons et al (2013) imaginatively termed "cultural visitors" (p. 382). As a consequence of these experiences, informants tended by and large to band together and maintain friendships primarily (if not exclusively) with other mature students.…”

“…For example, Dumlao and Janke (2012) pointed out that scholars from a range of disciplines, including psychology, communications, and business studies, have used RDT to study a wide variety of topics, such as friendship (Rawlins, 1992), diverse families (Sabourin, 2003), postmarital relationships (Graham, 2003), and community health initiatives (Medved et al, 2010). Though the majority of early studies focused on two-person relationships, scholars have increasingly sought to extend the dialectical perspective beyond the interpersonal dyad to wider social relationships (e.g., Goins, 2011;Lowry-Hart & Pacheco Jr., 2011;Orbe, 2008;Simmons, Lowery-Hart, Wahl, & McBride, 2013). Furthermore, Altman (1993) has argued that scholars should consider dialectical tensions within individuals (what he terms intraindividual dialectical processes) as well as those experienced at the intergroup level.…”