Perceptions of Academic Resilience by Senior Phase Learners and Teachers from Low Socioeconomic Schools

This article reports on the perceptions of academic resilience of Grade 8 and Grade 9 learners and their teachers in low socioeconomic township schools. Learners from township schools experience many risk factors that can impede their academic success and careers. A lack of resources is one of the risk factors experienced by the learners. During COVID-19, where an online or hybrid learning model was relied on for teaching and learning, most township schools relied on the rotational learning model instead. The study's main aim is to evaluate and understand the learners' perceptions of their academic strengths, future aspirations and motivation, and to compare their perceptions with those that emerged from their teachers' blind evaluations. The participants were teachers (n = 8) and learners (n = 12) from two purposively sampled township secondary schools. Data-generation instruments included semi-structured interviews for learners and a self-constructed Likert-type-scale questionnaire for teachers. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings suggest that risk factors to academic resilience exist within the family and the school environment. Lack of parental support and school security, poor teacher-learner relationship and unemployment were frequently mentioned. However, factors that can enhance academic resilience were also identified within the family, school and community. Risks and protective factors affecting learners' immediate threats and needs were identified. Access to technology and the need for technological advances were not identified as resources or risks. Future research should examine the relationship between resilience, academic resilience, career aspirations and the role of technology in education. © 2023, OpenED Network. All rights reserved.

Dimensions of Wellbeing of University Students During a Pandemic

This study explored the wellbeing of undergraduate students at a large, residential South African university during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative methodology, that utilized online, individual, brief interviews as a data collection strategy, was adopted. During the brief interviews, the participants were asked the following question: "What supports your wellbeing at university?" Undergraduate students (n=212) from a variety of degree programmes participated in the interviews. Most of the participants (58%) were female and the mean age for participants was 21.8 years (SD=1.8 years). Verbatim responses from the interview data were interrogated via a theme analysis. Findings indicate various sources of support for student wellbeing along five key themes: emotional support, academic support, selfcare and agency, social interaction, and a sense of purpose coupled with intentional futureorientations. The findings present high resonance with previous studies on student wellbeing, but present amplified dimensions of student wellbeing during a pandemic, i.e. substantive levels of student agency and future foci and a prioritization of academic success. Findings from this study can potentially inform planning processes for wellbeing interventions for undergraduate students during a pandemic.