Shared values, different paths : first-generation Iranian men's and women's perceptions of the cultural production of an "educated person"
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this dissertation, I examined the lived experiences of eight first-generation Iranian immigrants (six women and two men) enrolled as full-time undergraduate students in predominantly English institutions of higher education in Montreal. Using the key principles of phenomenology and critical ethnography, and through a series of open-ended, in-depth interviews, I explored the situated meanings of education in the lives of these men and women. The findings of my study show that the participants' perceptions of higher education seemed to be greatly influenced by their cultural values and beliefs. They perceived "education'' as social and cultural capital which secures their status and prestige within their families and communities. They also identified economic advancement, upward social mobility, personal fulfillment and easier access to Canadian higher education as factors that significantly influenced their decisions to pursue their undergraduate degrees. The study revealed that the women emphasized the crucial role of education in securing their financial and intellectual independence from the men in the household. They held the belief that being an "educated woman" contributed to having a stronger voice and a more authoritative space within the family. The results of my study suggest that the voices of these men and women were linked to the issues of "agency", "critical thinking", and "belonging". The participants talked about their lives as "immigrants" and members of a marginalized minority group. While some openly talked about the existence of "covert" or "hidden" racism in Canadian society, they all expressed contentment with their lives in Canada when compared to Iran. They articulated their awareness of the conflicting concepts of gender roles existent in the traditional Iranian culture and the culture of the host country, and viewed western values of women's education and career development as a positive factor in pursuing their academic aspirations. Highlighting the significance of individual narratives and lived experiences of first-generation immigrant students, this study may contribute to broadening our understanding of issues faced by immigrant students in institutions of higher education. Furthermore, the insights from the lives of these men and women may have important implications for educators, administrators, and faculty staff in order to create more accepting and culturally sensitive campuses.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".