An Exploration of Tinto's Integration Framework for Community College Students
- 1 May 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice
- Vol. 12 (1), 69-86
- https://doi.org/10.2190/cs.12.1.e
Abstract
Tinto's integration framework is often assumed to be inapplicable to the study of student persistence at community colleges because one of the linchpins of the framework—social integration—is considered unlikely to occur for students at these institutions. Community college students are thought to lack the time to participate in activities, such as clubs, that would facilitate social integration. Using in-depth interviews with students at two urban community colleges in the Northeast, we examine the ways that first-year community college students engage with their institutions. We find that the majority of them do develop attachments to their institutions. Moreover, this sense of attachment is related to their persistence in the second year of college. We also find that this integration is both academic and social. Contrary to findings from other studies that apply Tinto's framework, we find that these two forms of integration develop in concert for community college students. The same activities lead to both academic and social relatedness. This is particularly true for information networks that students develop in the classroom.Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- Student Success Courses in the Community CollegeCommunity College Review, 2009
- Differential impacts of academic and social experiences on college-related behavioral outcomes across different ethnic and gender groups at four-year institutionsResearch in Higher Education, 1996
- Latino student transition to college: Assessing difficulties and factors in successful college adjustmentResearch in Higher Education, 1996
- Schooling as experimentation: a reappraisal of the postsecondary dropout phenomenonEconomics of Education Review, 1989
- A Conceptual Model of Nontraditional Undergraduate Student AttritionReview of Educational Research, 1985
- Dropouts and turnover: The synthesis and test of a causal model of student attritionResearch in Higher Education, 1980