The long road to Rhodes University: narratives of African first-generation students whose mothers are/were domestic workers

Mapele, Nomonde

Title: The long road to Rhodes University: narratives of African first-generation students whose mothers are/were domestic workers
Creator: Mapele, Nomonde
Subject: Household employees -- Children -- South Africa
Subject: Women household employees
Subject: Rhodes University -- Students
Subject: Black people -- Education (Higher) -- South Africa
Subject: Students, Black -- South Africa -- Personal narratives
Subject: First-generation college students
Date Issued: 2020
Date: 2020
Type: text
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MA
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/150530
Identifier: vital:38982
Description: First-generation African students contend with psychosocial, structural, educational background and financial struggles to gain access to university. The first-generation students exercised their available resources and power, agency and acquired skills to negotiate their journey and entrance to university. They had to figure out for themselves how to navigate a daunting and complex path to university without relying on the knowledge and informative engagement with previous older familial generations who had the experience of attending university. They are a testimony of a generation of young people who have the resilience and grit to compensate for the structural deficits they have and experienced through their disadvantaged educational systems and their financially disadvantaged backgrounds. Although one would expect that teachers would automatically be the first encounter a high school student has of acquiring information on how to gain access to university, many of the previously disadvantaged school teachers are simply too inundated with work to be able to facilitate this process. First-generation students found themselves mostly having to look beyond the parameters of the classroom to acquire these resources. Following a qualitative approach of narrative enquiry, five African students with life experience of being first-generation Rhodes University students whose mothers were or are domestic workers, narrated their personal stories. A first-generation student’s agency, negotiation and navigation through obstacles, struggles and setbacks in the backdrop of having mothers who were/are domestic workers who socialised their children in a specific ideology to value and pursue education are the foundations for this narrative enquiry. This research provides a framework for investigating the concept of adequate and appropriate university preparedness to address the inadequate resources that previously disadvantaged schools have in terms of preparing their students to compete (in often times with more advantaged students) to gain access to university. These first-generation students did not come from educational environments where career counselling or aptitude tests are done to better equip them for entrance into university and appropriate subject and degree choice. Several common traits emerged that give perspective to the narrative of the journey that first-generation students’ had to endure and overcome to gain access to university.
Format: 90 pages
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Psychology
Language: English
Rights: Mapele, Nomonde

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