Students who choose to enter college in their twenties, thirties, and beyond face the challenges of balancing their academic experiences with busier lives, often with little social capital to guide them through the intricacies of college life. Students may feel overwhelmed, easily discouraged, or overlooked by people within their institution, including their professors. Instructors who, themselves, lack the experience of being first-generation college students may struggle to identify with the behaviors of the students they teach. They may see their roles as evaluators more than as partners or guides. The practice of compassionate grading and teaching can increase opportunities for trusting relationships to form among instructors and students, and for learning to occur.
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In the United States, nearly 72% of students enrolled in 4-year private, for-profit universities are first generation students (RTI International, 2019). At one such institution—also the authors’ home institution—78% of incoming undergraduate students have full- or part-time jobs, and almost half receive no financial support from their employers for educational expenses (Walden University, 2020). In addition to this, many in our predominantly female population are parents who, in addition to raising children, care for older family members.
First-generation adult undergraduates in online universities face well-documented challenges to persistence and retention through successful completion of bachelor's degrees (Seay, 2006). This population of students brings valuable life experiences and prior knowledge that their academic institutions may overlook. Many first-generation college students require support when connecting their existing strengths to academic study goals and their continued development as learners. As they manage competing personal and academic priorities at every turn, first-generation adult online learners may challenge many professors’ instructional skillsets.
Undergraduate educators, who sometimes are admonished to “teach the students we have; not the students we want,” may struggle to understand the meaning of this call to action. For lack of applicable references, many professors’ teaching methods default to those they experienced as students. If they encounter limited success by default, professors may wonder how to better approach students whose behaviors are informed by different experiences, circumstances, and perspectives.
Among our institution’s undergraduate population, 77% identify as female. The gender demographic is reflected in our faculty, which is 76% female. In terms of ethnicity and race, 35% of our students identify as Black or African American, and 43% identify as White. The faculty makeup differs here, with 19% identifying as Black or African American and 71% who are White (Walden, 2020). Intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1990) highlights the complexity of experience through the lens of identity. Though many faculty overlap with students in one aspect of their identities, they diverge in other essential ways. Faculty who may connect with students based on similar social classes of origin may diverge when it comes to experiences based in race and ethnicity. Faculty with similar ethnic backgrounds to their students may come from vastly different class and linguistic origins. Essential differences exist among faculty and their students in every case because of the inherent power differential they face. To address this imbalance, and to enable the primary goal of the pursuit of education—growth and development of learners—we offer some suggested methods for communication through feedback in the form of compassionate grading.