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Abstract

Nationally, educational institutions are responding to changes in the postindustrial economy by emphasizing the preparation of students to enter more highly technical jobs. Schools and colleges look toward strengthening their graduates by tying classroom work more closely with the skills students need to be successful in the workplace, by emphasizing workplace values, and by teaching on-the-job behaviors that employers find desirable. In this study, a group of rural African American women entered a community college work program to seek the skills they needed to escape the welfare rolls and to prepare themselves for jobs in their community. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of "habitus " was used to help explain the contradictions and complexities in the daily lives of these women as they struggled to overcome their difficult situations and faced decisions about their futures in a rural community offering few options for long-term employment.

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Searching for a Path out of Poverty: Exploring the Achievement Ideology of a Rural Community College

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