[2] These interventions are intended to bridge the gap between FGCS and their educational experience by providing them with the access to information and resources their non-first-generation peers already have.
The researchers were interested in the effects that gender, age, socioeconomic status, race-ethnicity, and institutional type had on the persistence and attainment rates of first-generation college students.
The Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program has become a national educational intervention for first-generation college students in U.S. public middle and high schools.
In order to achieve this goal, AVID's curriculum was developed in alignment with David T. Conley's Knowledge and Skills for University Success (KSUS) Standards.
In addition, a quasi-experimental research design was used to explore the effects the AVID program had on students' attitudes toward school, self-efficacy, self-reported grades, time spent on homework, educational goals, and academic motivation.
[7] The Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program (GEAR-UP) is another evidence-based intervention that promotes higher education for low-income students in U.S. public middle schools.
[9] The Bridge Project study examined the academic and psychosocial effects on students who participated in an after-school program for 25 English-language-learner Mexican immigrant children, from prekindergarten through 6th grade .
[11][12][13] With this, these organizations aim to aid their students in making positive personal changes and gain capital for academic success in order to matriculate to colleges and universities that can bring them greater economic mobility.
[14] Several examples of privately funded programs that have arisen to address the U.S. education debt include: SEO Scholars in San Francisco and New York,[15] the New York-based Opportunity Network,[16] and the national organization Minds Matter.
First-generation and/or low-income college students navigate a unique set of circumstances in attending higher education institutions.
Professor Shawn A. Ginwright's work draws on ethnographic studies across the nation to address healing strategies for stressed schools and community organizations that aim to support students in becoming powerful civic actors.
[25] This pedagogy is centered on Shawn Ginwright's five features of healing: culture that anchors young people in their ethnic identities and embraces and celebrates urban youth culture; agency that is in the form of collective and individual acts compelling youth to explore their personal power when transforming problems into possibility; relationships that allow for the capacity to create, grow, and sustain healthy connections with others; meaning that builds awareness of the intersections of personal and political life; and finally achievement that acknowledges one's movement toward explicit goals in which students understand oppression but know they are not defined by it as they explore the possibilities for their own lives and collective work.