| This study examined the college related sources of impact community college students perceived to have affected their identity development. One hundred twenty nine community college students each described a critical incident that had affected their sense of self, along with their ratings of the impact the incident had on them. For this a variant of Flanagan's (1954) Critical Incidents Analysis Technique was used. Three raters used those incidents to develop 12 categories of impact. Then, 22 students rated the between-category similarity of every possible pair of categories on a Likert type scale. Those ratings were used to develop a similarity matrix which was used to conduct multidimensional scaling (MDS; with a two-dimensional solution) and hierarchical cluster analysis. The graphical results were overlaid on each other to construct a concept map. Those results suggest that students perceive college impact to fall along the two dimensions of what inspires them (teacher vs. other sources) and of factors that promote learning (teacher style vs. support). The cluster analysis indicated that these categories may be grouped into seven distinct clusters, such as: external motivators, feedback, socialization, self-awakening, helping choose life path, persistence, and teacher attitude. Limitations of the study are discussed, as well as implications for teachers and administrators in a community college, and directions for future research. |
