Persistence in the first year at university is a phenomenon that has been studied many times. However, most research has taken a very linear view of the persistence process and little research has attempted to understand persistence by taking into account its full complexity. Yet the process of academic persistence is punctuated by striking events…

The training and licencing of aircraft maintenance engineers fulfils a crucial protective function since it is they who perform and supervise aircraft maintenance and certify that planes are safe afterwards. In Australia, prior to training reform, a trades-based system of aircraft maintenance engineer training existed in an orderly relation with…

Students with disabilities face several barriers during their academic lives. However, as many of them manage to access a variety of resources, their experiences can be examined through the lens of salutogenesis, which is employed to analyze the mechanisms whereby people succeed in preserving their wellbeing while dealing with stress and…

Student-faculty interactions are a component of social integration, a key concept in Tinto's theory of student persistence which has received empirical support. However, the influence of social integration for commuting students has been questioned. Furthermore, student-faculty interactions in the classroom are under-researched and arguably…

This article discusses how student disengagement is conceptualized by English-speaking youth attending English urban public schools in Montreal, Quebec. School dropout is theorized as being a culminating event in a process of school disengagement (Rumberger, 2011). Using 2 qualitative methods (maps and interviews) in a grounded theory approach…

This article argues for the importance of studying the moral meanings that young people attach to their aspirations and plans for the future. Drawing on semi-structured interview data with 29 young people from a sixth-form college in a disadvantaged area of East London, I show that aspirations are closely connected to the formation of individual…

This study explored the causes of student disengagement from their doctoral studies in the biological and environmental sciences. The data came from interviews of 40 doctoral students (male = 15, female = 25) and underwent qualitative analysis for content. Our results showed that doctoral studies provide multiple contexts for disengagement, such…

Resilience is understood to be the ability to adapt positively in the face of adversity. In relation to new students on a distance learning module, this can mean how they adapt and make sense of the demands of their chosen study to enable them to persist in their studies. This article reports a small-scale study involving semi-structured telephone…

The high number of non-enrolment students had decreased the retention rates in the Indonesia Open University. Prior studies revealed that student support had a pivotal role in enhancing student persistence. Therefore, this study was aimed to explore contribution of student support in increasing student persistence by employing mixed methods…

This article deals with the problem of student dropout during the first year in a higher education institution. To date, no model on a budget has been developed and tested to prevent dropout among Engineering Students. This case study was conducted among first-year students taking evening classes in two practical engineering colleges in Israel.…

With anglophone countries now experiencing unprecedented levels of ethnic and linguistic diversity, it is considered increasingly important that young people learn to communicate in ways which are effective for the multilingual and intercultural contexts they live in, will work in and will travel to. One of the key vehicles for promoting and…

While Honduras's post-1990s enrolment status has improved, no reports examine changes in status. We examined changes in enrolment patterns by analysing 1689 children's data using the true cohort method. We also analysed educational-development strategies/policies and project documentation. Grade-failure numbers did not improve over time because…

Due to the speedy emergent investigation in self-directed learning (SDL) over the past 40 years, SDL is an education technique used progressively within tertiary institutions. SDL can be well-defined in terms of the amount of accountability the student accepts for his or her own learning. The self-directed students regarding learning take control…

In this qualitative study, I explored the strategies that international undergraduate students at a public research Midwestern university in the United States employ to persist and survive their educational transition to achieve academic excellence. Using Tinto's (1987) theory of persistence as the theoretical framework, this paper employed a case…

This study identifies pathways to educational success among refugees. Data are from an original online survey of Somali diaspora and in-depth qualitative interviews with Somali refugee students educated in the Dadaab refugee camps of Kenya. This research builds on Bronfenbrenner's ecological model to consider both the locally and globally situated…