The Road I Traveled: Examining Black High School Students’ Understudied Postsecondary Influences and Nuanced Definitions of Success

Abstract

Centering Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit), this qualitative research study uses interview data to accomplish the following related aims: (1) to investigate under-explored factors that influence participants’ postsecondary decisions and pathways as Black high school students and (2) to examine the nuanced, alternative definitions of success they construct and employ during their high school trajectories. The study findings serve to expound factors impacting Black high school students’ postsecondary trajectories that, in the current literature, are less pronounced. Additionally, the findings identify self-defined meanings of success held by Black students, challenging prevailing and often exclusionary conceptualizations of student success.