Supporting the Well-being of Student Who are Parents

Let's get visible: evidence-based interventions aimed at supporting, empowering and celebrating student-parents in higher education.

“…Although the population of students with dependent children is increasing in postsecondary institutions (Briegel et al, 2021), they are 'relatively invisible in the policy and physical spaces of universities' (Moreau and Kerner, 2015, p.4). The widening participation and lifelong learning agendas of successive governments over the past two decades have encouraged higher education applications from non-traditional student groups such as student-parents, but 'the lack of concern' for this cohort 'has remained a constant', with them being 'ignored or only briefly mentioned in central government reports and speeches' Todd Let's get visible: evidence-based interventions aimed at supporting, empowering and celebrating student-parents in higher education Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, Special Issue 26: February 2023 2 (Moreau, 2014, p.2).…”

“…Whilst further research since 2014 has explored the experiences of studentparents (e.g. Brooks, 2015;Moreau and Kerner, 2015;O'Shea, 2015;Sallee, 2015;Mallman and Lee, 2016;Parr, 2017;Dickson and Tennant, 2018;Stone and O'Shea, 2019;Scharp et al, 2020;Webber and Dismore, 2020;Briegel et al, 2021), there is no evidence in the literature or elsewhere of Moreau's recommendations having been heeded in any deliberate or organised way. Several recent studies have focused on the impact of Covid-19 on student-parents (Arowoshola, 2020;Lin et al, 2021;Savage, 2021;Bogossian, 2021;Nikiforidou and Holmes, 2022) This action research study (Arnold and Norton, 2018) employed an inductive approach, helping the researcher to understand what is happening in practice (Saunders et al, 2012) and involving the collection of data and the subsequent emergence of theory and meaning (Stokes and Wall, 2014).…”