The main objective of the study is to identify factors that contribute to the resilience of South African female master's students in response to adversity and challenges. Findings: The study reveals key findings regarding the influences of context on the difficulties faced by South African female postgraduate students and their coping strategies.
Introduction
Background
Students are asked to share their life stories in a dialogic space with fellow health promotion students and the module lecturer. The impact of teaching through life stories varies from one individual to another and there are positive and negative effects of this specific approach to teaching.
Problem statement
4 The above statistics did not raise particularly problematic concerns, but rather examine why more female students enroll in higher education institutions than male students and choose to continue their studies to master's and doctoral degrees at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Centre for Higher Education Trust, 2015; Institute for Education and Training, 2015). The study focused on South African female students who were able to defy the status quo and advance their post-graduate studies to master's and doctoral level.
Research aims and questions
Ethical clearance
Outline of dissertation
The discussion of the study findings was also assimilated into the chapter to develop a coherent argument for the results presented. The study explored the multi-layered systems of socio-ecological factors that contributed to the difficulties or coping of South African female students.
Introduction
What are life stories?
The use of life stories was to establish more understanding of the perceptions of students and to explore what resilience means for everyone. Part of the applicability and use of life stories is the ability of individuals to remember and organize their life experiences, and this lends itself to the exploration of resilience through the pathways of lived experiences.
Resilience
Mental health
Mental health services remain scarce in South Africa, as resource allocation is still not prioritized as psychological services are disproportionately available in the private health sector (Bezuidenhoudt, 2017). In terms of mental health interventions, psychological resilience is viewed as more than just a personality trait, but rather a process that involves the interaction between the individual, their life experiences, and the current life context (Meredith et al., 2011).
Resilience, education and context
According to Bonanno (as cited in Davydov, Steward, Ritchie, & Chaudieu, 2010) mental health is much more than the mere absence of a disorder, but resonates with the identification of innate and acquired biological as well as environmental characteristics that are safe. - maintain mental health amid risk factors. Theron (2013) asserts that young people whose parents are illiterate, incompetent and unavailable have a negative impact on their life outcomes and present as risk factors for their educational aspirations.
Aspiration to academic achievement
Context of education attainment
According to Williams and Bryan (2013), educationally resilient students are those who thrive in school despite the occurrence of adverse conditions. Students classified as educationally resilient often have challenging backgrounds, but are still able to succeed in school.
Self-efficacy
Bandura (1997) notes that belief in one's own efficacy is an essential personal resource for change and development at the individual level. Efficacy beliefs influence whether an individual thinks optimistically or pessimistically and in self-enhancing or self-depleting ways.
African traditional contexts
Gender dynamics in South African context
The literature has also informed the applicability of the framework to ecological systems, taking into account the diversity of the South African context. The framework is discussed explicitly below and takes into account the different levels of the ecological systems and how these manifest in the lives of the participants.
Ecological systems theory
- Microsystem
- Mesosystem
- Exosystem
- Macrosystem
- Theory triangulation
Berk (2000) asserts the microsystem as the direct environment for an individual and is inclusive of the structures with which the individual maintains direct contact. Although the macrosystem is said to be the outermost layer of the systems, Berk (2002) argues that it has the ability to penetrate through all other layers and can have direct influence on an individual.
Resilience theory
Resilience within the systems
Masten (2016, p.298) defines resilience in a systems perspective as "the capacity for successful adaptation to disturbances that threaten system function, viability and development". 31 Literature relevant to the present study examined the risk and protective factors as two imperative concepts intrinsic to understanding resilience (Rutter, 1990).
Defining risk factors
The study also focused heavily on how both concepts can make a significant contribution to understanding how students continue to succeed in school despite the presence of difficulties (Green & Conrad, 2002).
Adversity
Fergus and Zimmerman (2005) argue that the resilience literature has limited the focus to typical risk and protective factors, whereas in reality, most young people face multiple risk factors who in turn possess multiple assets and have access to in multiple sources.
Towards a strength-based approach
Defining protective factors
Protective factors are defined as factors that reduce the effect of risk that youth encounter in their diverse environment, which broadly encourage resilience (Hawkins, Catalano, & Miller, 1992). Therefore, Toland and Carrigan (2011) later asserted that protective factors refer to those factors that act to protect an individual from developing a problem even in the face of adversity.
Protective resources anchored in personal life
Furthermore, it is suggested that protective factors can powerfully reduce an individual's vulnerability to risk factors and increase resilience to these risk factors by protecting them from developing internalizing and externalizing problems (Hawkins et al., 1992). They are both the internal qualities of the individual and their systemic external strengths that are called protective factors or defensive mechanisms (Johnson, & Howard, 2007).
Protective factors embedded within social environments
Chapter summary
Introduction
Research aims and objectives
Research design
The narrative life stories were included as secondary data in the study as they were conducted for the first time as part of the health promotion module. However, for the study dataset, this was the researcher's first dataset.
Research paradigm
Entry into the research site
The study participants were enrolled students from the university, which was an advantage for the researcher as all applications for gatekeeper approvals were made internally. The survey site goes on to prove that it was a better option because most of the participants were still traceable and the researcher was able to get them all together in one place for information sharing and consent form signing.
Selection of participants
In addition, Howard College UKZN has proven to be a convenient institution, offering a course with The Person is the Professional module and using life stories for course requirements, which is not available in many places. All Master's students in Health Promotion would complete the Personal is an Expert module in accordance with the course requirements.
Data collection method
Data collection instruments
42 In preparation for the interview process, the researcher participated in a five-day qualitative research training held at her workplace. The researcher generated interview forms specific to each participant, and this process was based on each participant's life history.
Pilot testing
The researcher's native language is IsiZulu and it was compatible with translating some IsiZulu terms into English. In this specific study, the pilot study provided the researcher with the opportunity to make any refinements to the interview schedule, such as removing ambiguities and improving one's own interviewing skills.
Semi-structured interview process
44 more on the interview procedures rather than worrying about whether they were able to capture every important point the participant had shared (De Vos et al., 2002).
Data analysis
Thematic analysis process
46 The researcher became familiar with the data for the first time during the analysis of life stories, during the development of the interview schedules. Codes attempt to identify features from a data set that appear to be of interest to the researcher.
Trustworthiness of the study
- Credibility
- Dependability
- Confirmability
- Transferability
Confirmability refers to the extent to which the study results directly result from the study focus rather than the researcher's biases (Babbie, & Mouton, 2004). The researcher was able to distinguish between personal values and the values of the study participants through self-reflexivity (Rubin, & Rubin, 2005).
Ethical considerations
50 of the extent to which contextual information about the fieldwork is sufficiently provided by researcher Lincoln and Guba (as cited in Shenton, 2004). To achieve transferability, the researcher collected quite detailed data and further reported it in an articulate manner.
Chapter summary
51 studies, reflexivity and the role of the researcher as an instrument were part of the literature discussion.
Introduction
Description of study participants
Four of the seven participants were completing their follow-up year (M2), the remaining three were in the first year of their master's degree. Participants' names were changed to pseudonyms in accordance with best practice in the ethical conduct of social research.
Findings according to the Ecological systems framework
The researcher categorized the ages in line with the South African political timeline to gain an explicit understanding of the context of the experiences. This chapter presents the findings of the research, which are discussed on the following pages under four main themes, each with subthemes summarized in Figure 4 below.
Microsystem: Individual internal characteristics
Retrospective interpretation of events
Reflexivity-life story processes
This sub-theme aims to accurately show how participants describe and understand their hardships over a period of time and after telling their life story. In November 2010, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB), because of which I wrote my matriculation exam in the hospital.
Microsystem: Internal factors fostering coping mechanisms
Human agency and self-esteem
Human action in this study context refers to the social-cognitive processes that attempt to influence development, adaptation or change. I felt disappointed, I wasn't even happy. I just thought, “Am I going to come here?” The whole place was already intimidating, but my mother was excited.
Self-efficacy
65 The important role socio-ecological systems played in this case was that as Participant 4 was sharing and re-telling her life story, there were traces of different layers of systems and how the participant maneuvered and interacted with them. However, research has established that individuals with high self-esteem or a high sense of control are more likely to adopt active problem-focused coping strategies (Dumont & Provost, 1999).
Self-expression
None of the study participants admitted to having preferred routine coping strategies that they resorted to in the face of challenges or when circumstances became unfavorable. The research participants showed a high level of self-esteem and confidence in overcoming difficult circumstances.
Mesosystem: Social environmental influences
- Family system
- Access to education services: Private versus public schools in South Africa
- Unconducive social environments
- Religious beliefs
Demotivates because you don't get low grades because you want to, you really tried, but then it's the best you could have done. It was always like that, all my life I don't remember anything but studying, even now it's just studying, it's the only thing else I do.
Exo and Macro systems: Interaction of external environmental factors
Socially constructed ideologies
Basically it was a community perspective but it wasn't the same with how my family did things because I think I'm the last born and all my sisters are educated. In the citations, the study reports on three notable dynamics that the participants experienced.
Socio-economic influences
88 hair, so when I passed the exam, I didn't really want to go to college because I just thought, what's the point. Furthermore, issues such as not having access to school due to the restrictions associated with the Apartheid regime and living prescribed lives according to cultural dictates were some of the problems reported by the study participants.
Chapter summary
Conclusion
In understanding how context and coping with adversity contribute to resilience, the study found numerous challenges and difficulties that students reported at each layer. The study shows that the students developed resilience over time in response to adversity at the different levels and with different experiences of the ecological context.
Limitations
Recommendations
The current study provides a qualitative examination of research that is “the flesh to the bone” of quantified reports, taking into account the experiential factors of female students in particular in the context of South Africa. Going forward, the factors revealed in the current study could provide a starting point for future research in the field of adversity and resilience.
Chapter summary
If you decide not to participate in the research, there will be no negative consequences. All information discussed in the interview will be used for the purposes of this research only.