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There are currently over 1 million military spouses in the United States (U.S.). The Post-9/11 GI Bill has made it possible for U.S. service members to transfer their financial educational benefits to their spouses and dependents. As a result, many military spouses have the financial means to pursue higher education programs. However, the specific problem is frequent geographical moves make it extremely difficult for military spouse students to advance in their chosen career fields or succeed in their chosen educational programs. This problem not only impacts active duty spouse students pursuing higher education, but also military families as a whole, as well as the future retention rates of the 100% volunteer U.S. military. A qualitative, autoethnographic design was chosen for this study, as its main purpose was to explore the lived experiences, particularly, the mobility and persistence of one tied-migrant military spouse student in a doctoral program. Schlossberg’s transition theory and Tinto’s persistence theory guided the study. Chang’s (2016) procedures for autoethnography data analysis and the analysis software, NVivo were used for analyzing collected data. The single participant and researcher’s positionality stemmed from the theoretical lens of a postmodernist view. The single subject of this study is a 38-year old career active-duty military spouse doctoral student whose family, at the time of the study, was stationed in Washington, D.C. The results revealed three emergent themes: the tied-migrant military spouse doctoral student had additional opportunities because of her military spouse lifestyle, faced additional challenges because of her military spouse lifestyle, and persisted despite those additional challenges. Examining the life of one tied-migrant military spouse doctoral student through the first person narrative contributes valuable insight to the integration of persistence, higher education, and military spouse scholarly literature and guides the future practice of higher education administrators and leaders of the U.S. military.
Advisor: | Fowler, Dr Rollen, Throne, Dr Robin |
Commitee: | Erb, Dr Rebecca, Vance, Dr Joanna |
School: | Northcentral University |
Department: | School of Education |
School Location: | United States -- California |
Source: | DAI-A 81/9(E), Dissertation Abstracts International |
Source Type: | DISSERTATION |
Subjects: | Higher education, Adult education |
Keywords: | Academic persistence, Adult education, Doctoral student, Higher education, Military spouse, Tied-migrant |
Publication Number: | 27741763 |
ISBN: | 9781658458153 |