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Use this space to post your questions about women and literacy. Question: The following question originally appeared in a post to the Women & Literacy listserv on 18 October 2006. To view the original post, click here. It has been posted here on behalf of the author. She is looking for resources to use in her disseration. Please read on. Why are low-income women's rates of persistence and transfer across the trajectories of adult education and literacy and community college programs so low? At a less institutional and more social psychological level, the issue is sometimes framed as one of educational (and occupational) aspirations and expectations and/or one of motivation and achievement, which is of course relevant and the point at which I actually began my inquiry into the topic. However, this dissertation is for the Ph.D. in sociology, so a more institutional and/or policy-oriented approach is being taken. I'm looking for very recent (2004-2006) literature, and I've already included some of the well-known reports listed on the NCSALL website (e.g. Comings, Soricone, Beder, Reder, etc.). I've come across the literature that identifies the big "risk factors," but much of this is quantitative analysis of nationally representative data sets, and although an important contribution to my own investigation, my research will be qualitative because I'm interested in the relationship between these factors and in how they organize to influence or shape the (often poor) educational outcomes of women learners, particularly in terms of their longer-range ability to access occupational opportunity structures. So other very recent studies that investigate this or similar issues using qualitative methodologies is what I need. And I'm particularly interested in studies that address the implications of gender, age, race/ethnicity, class, and location (or place) in rates of persistence an transfer. Thank you. --Ditmar
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