You can’t ignore us: what role does family play in student engagement and alienation in a Ghanaian university?

ABSTRACT

Much of the existing literature on student engagement focuses on what happens within the higher education environment or what the institution has direct control over, restricting understanding of how issues outside of the institution affect engagement. This paper argues that efforts to improve student engagement should be broadened to incorporate issues relating to the family. It employed a case study design in order to develop a broad and more in-depth understanding of how family influences the amount of time and effort students invest in their learning in a large public university in Ghana. It was established that engagement is influenced by family expectation, financial and social support, as well as monitoring of students’ academic performance. The unique contribution of the study is that it broadens current understandings of engagement because it adds an aspect that has not been highlighted in current work on engagement, making a case for institutions to work more with families to get a broader understanding of challenges students face in order to provide comprehensive support.

KEYWORDS:

• Family
• engagement
• alienation
• higher education
• university
• Ghana

Acknowledgments

This project was funded under the University of Otago Postgraduate Publishing Bursary (Doctoral). Thanks to Professor Nick Zepke (Massey University, New Zealand) for making his questionnaire available to us and providing feedback on the manuscript. Further thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments that improved the manuscript significantly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded under the University of Otago Postgraduate Publishing Bursary (Doctoral).