Research on the extent of food insecurity amongst the South African university student population has gained momentum over the past decade, and for good reason. Along with the multiple other challenges that South African university students face (e.g. funding shortfalls, limited access to student housing, high levels of failure and dropout,…

Early childhood development research typically focusses on populations that are either of upper or lower socioeconomic status. A population especially overlooked is the 'missing-middle', represented by middle-income, urban populations. Knowledge of children's development from middle-income populations to guide the implementation and customisation…

The shortage of nurses is a global crisis, particularly in remote and rural communities. Contributory factors are retirements, resignations, recent increased deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the reduced production of nurses because of high attrition rates. This article's purpose was to investigate the provision of student support in the…

Teachers are students' first contact in the classroom and the ones with whom they experience their relationships most intensely after those with their own classmates. Relationships with teachers and their actions in the classroom are of great relevance in how students develop their careers. Young people at risk of exclusion, which has been…

This paper sought to examine psychological grit, defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and its efficacy in determining postgraduate retention among historically disadvantaged students enrolled at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The Grit-S scale was used to gauge the level of grit among the participants (n = 594) followed…

Student dropout is a significant concern for university administrators, students and other stakeholders. Dropout is recognised as highly complex due to its multi-causality, which is expressed in the existing relationship in its explanatory variables associated with students, their socio-economic and academic conditions, and the characteristics of…

A lack of understanding of statistics, and being unable to apply its techniques, not only has a negative impact on the pass rates of students studying introductory statistics, but also affects the potential usefulness of these students when they enter the marketplace. I report here a novel scale developed to measure various factors that may be…

Purpose: This study examined the psychometric properties of intention to drop out and study satisfaction measures for first-year South African students. The factorial validity, item bias, measurement invariance and reliability were tested. Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional design was used. For the study on intention to drop out, 1,820…

The purpose of this study was to examine variation in doctoral students' experiences of ethics in doctoral supervision and how these experiences are related to research engagement, burnout, satisfaction, and intending to discontinue PhD studies. Data were collected from 860 doctoral students in Finland, Estonia, and South Africa. Four distinct…

Resilience-promoting interventions, such as the Read-me-to-Resilience intervention strategy, that consists of culturally relevant indigenous stories has been shown to encourage resilience in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) orphans. In this study, educator participants reflected on the protective systems that the Read-me-to-Resilience…

This study aimed to critically assess the current state of transgender student inclusion in South African universities, highlighting the challenges, progress and potential areas for improvements that exist. This article highlights the complexities of legal identity, self-determined identity and the recognition of transgender identity in South…

The introduction of progression policy, which prohibits the repetition of a grade to more than once within each of the four phases of Basic Education, was enforced in South Africa in the Further Education and Training phase in 2013, but appropriate strategies which could be applied to support progressed learners are not addressed. This research…

The quest for access to higher education has increased rapidly in the past 25 years of democracy in South Africa. However, this increase has not been matched by student academic success. This lack of success may even be worse with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has given rise to challenges that have affected student learning,…

The issue of school feeding is placed at the top of global agenda currently more than ever before. Challenges imposed by COVID-19 have created an opportunity to broaden and deepen debates focusing around the significance of school feeding programmes internationally. Throughout the duration of the lockdown period, billions of learners worldwide…

This article reports on the results of an investigation of the predictive accuracy of five different mathematical models to identify at-risk students in a Business Statistics course. Low levels of students' success, especially in mathematics-related subjects such as statistics, are a salient problem in South Africa and other countries. Statistical…