Kristine Harrington's Doctoral Dissertation
“Not Everyone Will Get There”: Bourdieu, Identity, and Ideology for Rural Regional Students Experiencing a Cultural Competence Immersion at the Pine Ridge Reservation
This dissertation’s interpretive qualitative study looks at how nursing students from Kent State University’s Salem rural regional campus narrated their experiences of a ten-day cultural competence immersion at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and at what this immersion and participants’ stories might reveal about their identities-in-progress. Conceptually, following Reismann’s theories of narrative inquiry, this dissertation’s assertion is that human identities are storied and are processed through stories. Theoretically, Bourdieu's theory of practice provides a schema for understanding that identity is embodied as well as socially produced and reproduced through stories. This dissertation looks specifically at Bourdieu’s concepts of hysteresis and cultural capital as they emerged in this immersion intended to develop participants’ cultural competence when engaging with U.S. internal others.
Data from the study’s nine participants were collected primarily through pre-immersion and post-immersion semi-structured interviews as well as through some field observation. Participants were all White, female-identifying nursing students at the Kent State University Salem Campus, and most participants were first-generation college students (FGCS) from working class or working poor rural backgrounds.
The findings show that student participants experienced the Pine Ridge Reservation immersion as a source of identity disruption. They sought to reconcile this disruption while negotiating the impact of hysteresis, which Bourdieu defines as a structural or knowledge gap or lag, in the subfield of the Pine Ridge immersion and the fields of nursing and academia more broadly. Participants also narrated the ways in which they felt the immersion had transformed them professionally by providing them with cultural capital in the form of increased cultural competence and personally by provoking them to recognize their advantages in the larger U.S. hegemony.
The results of this study have implications for academics who engage with working class, working poor, and rural FGCS as well as for cultural competence programming as a part of healthcare education and higher education curricula.
Kristine Harrington
M.A., English Literature and Professional Writing
Youngstown State University
B.A. English Literature and Professional Writing
Youngstown State University
Kristine is an Associate Lecturer in the English Department for Kent State University on its Salem, Ohio regional campus. She has taught first-year writing, literature, journalism, and professional writing at several college campuses since 1993. Kristine also currently serves as the Honors Program Coordinator at the Kent State University Salem Campus. In addition to her teaching experience, Kristine has worked in development with two humanitarian not-for-profit organizations, writing grants, annual reports, newsletters, and donor correspondence. She has also volunteered on the boards of directors for two community arts-based not-for-profit organizations.
Academically, Kristine has presented at a range of conferences including the American Educational Studies Association, Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society, Association of University Regional Campuses of Ohio, Conference on College Composition and Communication, and Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. She was recently published in Journal of Interactive Learning Research.
In addition to her academic writing, Kristine is also a published essayist with pieces both online and in print, most notably in Brill’s 2019 Scientists and Poets #RESIST anthology and in The Sun literary magazine. She also led a workshop at the annual Winter Wheat creative writing conference and created and directed a theatrical production of dramatic monologues, The Strand Project, for three years.
Doctoral Dissertation Committee
Director
Tricia Niesz, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies
College of Education and Human Services
Members
David Dees, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies
College of Education and Human Services
Natasha Levinson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies
College of Education and Human Services
Matthew Hollstein, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies
College of Education and Human Services
Graduate Faculty Representative
Francisco Torres, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies
College of Education and Human Services
