Abstract:

First-person accounts of academic resilience may provide novel insights into how individuals with lived experience of academic resilience understand and perceive their behaviour. Our aim was to explore the academic resilience of the Bachelor of Engineering Technology (BEngTech) students, lecturers and student support staff at the Nelson Mandela University. The sample of BEngTech progressed to final-year despite the evidence of risk and/or adversity and an established positive outcome despite risk, in order to understand how these students construct and understand their academic resilience. For this study, data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 10 engineering students, 5 lecturers and 5 student support staff via Zoom.

Thematic analysis yielded four superordinate themes:
(1) personal and educational background;
(2) circumstances and situational factors (including but not limited to the COVID-19 pandemic);
(3) protective factors; and
(4) personal character strengths.

Student participants performed elements of academic resilience in the way they described their experiences; positioning themselves as resilient and describing their individual risk (internalising and externalising dimensions) and contextual risk factors in relation to their resilience process. The perceptions of lecturers and student support staff suggest that the academic resilience of engineering students in South Africa could be supported by helping them focus on their mental health and well-being. The findings further suggest that the way South African engineering students narrate their academic resilience may not always be congruent with dominant Western accounts. Limitations of the study include remote interviewing due to COVID-19 and a small sample size at only one university. Findings from this study can inform learning and teaching policies and practices pertaining specifically to student coaching and advising initiatives, as well as benefit prospective BEngTech students who envision studying at South African institutions of higher education.

Keywords:

Academic resilience, engineering students, risk, South Africa.