How Do Those Left Behind Succeed?: An Investigation Into the Educational Achievement Routes of First Generation Students in a Rural Town

This book explores the unique educational achievement routes of selected rural-origin first generation students (FGSs) in South Africa. The study aimed to understand the family-, social-, community-, and school experiences and paths of three rural-origin FGSs who were able, successfully, to enter university study. This study applied a combined theoretical framework of Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital, Yosso's (2005) Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework and the Figured Worlds theory (Holland et al., 1998), to address the main research question of this study, which is: How do first generation students from a rural town construct their educational achievement routes during their high school years to gain access to university? The methodological research design employed for this study was qualitative, based on an interpretive phenomenological research approach. This approach is characterised by its central focus on the lived experiences of the research participants. For this reason, it was chosen as the most suitable approach to understand the nuanced educational achievement routes that the individuals in this study had to establish as aspirant FGSs, growing up in a rural and impoverished small town environment. The data collection method used was the indepth semi-structured interview. The most important finding of this study was that unlike the other young people from their rural home environs, the FGSs in this study demonstrated resilience to the restrictive environmental influences around them. Their educational paths were grounded in their ability to use their capitals and community cultural wealth to recognise and utilise the opportunities for educational achievement both outside (in their family-, social-, and community environments) and inside the school. These students used their agency to mobilise the resources in these environments to shape their educational subjectivities in a way that led to them becoming academic achievers, which enabled their entry into the Figured World of educational achievement operating within their high school.