Resilience of vulnerable students transitioning into a South African university

African Emerging Adult Resilience: Insights From a Sample of Township Youth

“…Likewise, Gustavsson and colleagues' (2017) account of the resilience of 16 young Ugandan women (19-28 years old) who had served as child soldiers with the Lord's Resistance Army included personal resources (e.g., belief in a better future and capacity to make constructive meaning) and social-ecological ones (e.g., social support from trusted friends and/or family, religious belonging, and cultural rites that facilitated reintegration into the community). The same intra-and interpersonal resource patterns were broadly evident in the sub-Saharan studies with emerging adults challenged by care-leaving (Frimpong-Manso, 2018;Van Breda & Dickens, 2017;Van Breda & Hlungwani, 2019) and with residential university students challenged by structural disadvantage (Theron & Theron, 2013Van Breda, 2018;Zulu, 2019). For instance, Zulu (2019) found that the resilience of African university students without fathers could be attributed to relational resources (especially strong mothers) and to self-reliance and undeterred personal agency.…”

“…Although multiple studies have documented the risks and resilience of youth living in sub-Saharan Africa (for systematic reviews of these studies, see Theron, 2020;Van Breda & Theron, 2018), few delimited the youth samples to emerging adults (i.e., worked exclusively with young people in the age range 18-29 or with samples with a mean age within that range). The exceptions include a handful of sub-Saharan studies that focused on emerging adult resilience in the face or aftermath of care-leaving (Frimpong-Manso, 2018;Van Breda & Dickens, 2017;Van Breda & Hlungwani, 2019), communicable disease (Harper et al, 2015), or armed conflict (Gustavsson et al, 2017), as well as studies that reported the resilience of residential university students challenged by structural disadvantage (Theron & Theron, 2013Van Breda, 2018;Zulu, 2019). However, these studies (including the careleaving ones; see Van Breda & Pinkerton, 2020) were inattentive to the participants in question being emerging adults and, as such, engaged in a unique phase of development characterized by specific developmental tasks.…”

The mediating effect of academic experience on the relationship between personal resilience and satisfaction of students registered in student assistance

“…Among these experiences, it is possible to mention the student's change of city so that he can study, the different reality of high school with different methodologies of the teachers, Research, Society and Development, v. 9, n. 11, e1079119721, 2020 (CC BY 4.0) | ISSN 2525-3409 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.33448/rsd-v9i11.9721 the demand for a more critical and reflective posture, deadlines to be met and excessive study hours that they demand time management, study strategies and new sleep routines (Adachi, 2009;Oliveira & Morais, 2015;Lameu, Salazar & Souza, 2016;Fernandes et al, 2018;Arino & Bardagi, 2018). In the literature, there are also difficulties related to the institution's infrastructure (Carelli & Santos, 1998;Theóphilo & Lopes, 2009), the financial situation where many students need to work to help support their home (Veloso & Almeida, 2002;Breda, 2018) and also for personal reasons, such as relationship difficulties and level of self-esteem (Almeida, 2007;Lameu et al, 2016).…”

“…These financial concerns distract students and are often a reason for dropping out of school (Breda, 2018). In a survey carried out at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Sales et al (2016) identified that low-income students who receive student assistance are more likely to complete the course, but the aid received by these students is often insufficient, which can takes them to the University dropout.…”

Evaluating the institutionalisation of diversity outreach in top universities worldwide

“…Lastly, in Africa, the access to higher education is regarded as a privilege for few, thus reinforcing inequality in society with the exclusion of different students in terms of disability, ethnicity or race, culture, language or rural background [30]. In particular, less than 1% of people with a disability can access higher education [31].…”