Chapter 4: How Place and Class Affect Identity Development as Life Long Learners: An Examination of Resilience in First-Generation, Adult College Students From Appalachia

This chapter will focus on the role place and class play in shaping identify development for an oft-forgotten population. Moreover, the chapter will emphasize resilience as an antecedent factor in explaining identity development, especially the identity as a lifelong learner—a term that can be conceived of as all intentional learning that occurs across one’s life and includes “all types of learning—formal, nonformal, and informal” (Merriam & Bierema, 2014, p. 20). Specifically, this chapter will tell the story of adult college students from the Central and South Central Appalachian region of the United States as they navigate the challenging and unfamiliar world of higher education as first-time college students. The tension to be presented in this chapter is the lived experience of a group of people as they struggle to accept parts of their cultural identity (without judgment) while at the same time strive to improve not only themselves but also their chances of competing in a globalized society. At play in the development of these first-time college students, is the role of psychological resilience (a malleable characteristic) in helping them to become more than they have been and better than where they started. The role of resilience will emerge as a prominent theme in identity development from the people who participated in the transcendental phenomenological study that informs this chapter’s message. We will overlay important values from higher education in this exposé as we do privilege the outcome of college completion as a result of an influential factor in the identity of Appalachian adults who have chosen higher education and lifelong learning as ways to become more than they are.