- Title
- Academic resilience of engineering students: a case study
- Creator
- Mapaling, Curwyn
- Subject
- Resilience (Personality trait)
- Subject
- Engineering students
- Date Issued
- 2023-04
- Date
- 2023-04
- Type
- Doctoral's theses
- Type
- Thesis
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/60775
- Identifier
- vital:67337
- Description
- Extensive research has been done and much knowledge exists about academic resilience among youth in school contexts, but there is a lack of data and literature on academic resilience at university level. This knowledge gap is especially critical in disciplines such as engineering, where student dropout rates have historically been high. In 2017, a redesigned engineering degree qualification, the Bachelor of Engineering Technology, was introduced at South African universities. This case study explored the academic resilience of the first cohort of final-year Bachelor of Engineering Technology students at Nelson Mandela University. Mixed methods and multiple theories were employed, which allowed for the generation of rich data for this exploratory case study. In the quantitative phase, 66 students from Industrial, Civil, Electrical, Marine and Mechanical Engineering courses participated by completing a series of standardised psychometric measurement tools. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was conducted on the quantitative data collected from the measurement items. In the qualitative phase, 13 engineering students, 6 engineering lecturers and 6 support staff members were interviewed individually, to explore their perceptions and experiences of academic resilience. Qualitative data generated through the semi-structured interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings suggested that staff and students perceive academic resilience differently. It also seems that staff wellbeing impacts the academic resilience of students, and the relationship between staff wellness and student academic resilience is suggested as a next step for research on the topic of academic resilience at university level, especially among courses with high drop-out rates like engineering. Although not generalisable, it appears that a variety of extracurricular support structures and initiatives and strong relationships between the higher education sector and engineering industries can contribute significantly to students' academic resilience.
- Description
- Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, School of Post Graduate Education, 2023
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (xvi, 374 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Education
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | MAPALING, C.pdf | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |