Support structures : perspectives of single mother graduates who received public assistance while pursuing their degree

Abstract

This interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) sought to understand the experiences that promoted the persistence to graduation efforts of six bachelor-degree recipients who were single mothers and received public assistance while pursuing their degrees. The question that guided this study was: How do single mother bachelor degree recipients from an urban comprehensive college who received public assistance while in school make sense of the experiences that facilitated their self-efficacy to persist to graduation? The research question was informed by Bandura's self-efficacy theory, which postulates that people's beliefs about their capability to perform is influenced by four sources of information: enactive mastery experiences, vicarious learning, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. The data for this IPA study was collected through semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with a commitment to an in-depth idiographic approach that focused on how each participant made sense of her experiences. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) accepting their reality, (b) overcoming barriers to graduation, and (c) encouragement and support. As per the findings, accepting their reality explained the resilient sense of self-efficacy participants developed as a function of mastering experiences with adapting and changing in the face of adversity; overcoming barriers to graduation lent support to the development of perceived self-efficacy based on previous successes or failures and its influence on the participants' perceptual lenses in relation to their capability to achieve academic success; and encouragement and support underscored the value faculty supports embodied on participants' self-efficacy beliefs to persist to degree completion. These findings have relevance for higher education institutions, state and federal policymakers, and student constituencies.