Investigating the resilience of first-in-family men longitudinally: a mixed method approach

ABSTRACT

Young men from disadvantaged contexts are the least likely to attend university in Australia; furthermore, when they do attend, they are likely to struggle. This article draws on empirical data documenting the aspirations and resilience of first-in-family young men in Australian higher education, with the aim of nuancing their classed experience of university. Drawing on an exploratory longitudinal study (n = 42) and adopting a mixed method approach, we use the 25-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and semi-structured interviews over a three-year period to explore changes in resilience of first-in-family men from the age of 17 to 20. The mixed-method approach employed in this study allows us to draw connections between the participants’ subjective experience of resilience and the more objective measures of resilience as captured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, a psychometrically sound and validated instrument. Quantitative analyses of data enable us to document the trends in resilience over time for different groups of first-in-family men, while qualitative data provide insights structured around three key themes: independence and isolation; managing and adjusting; and using support structures. The article draws on analysis across these data to consider the participants’ perceptions of their resilience, and how these perceptions change in reference to their experience, in order to paint a more nuanced picture of first-in-family men’s classed experience of higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Aspiration
• perception of resilience
• masculinity
• mixed method
• longitudinal

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval statement

Ethics was approved by University of South Australia.

Notes

1. We acknowledge the forty or so years of research documenting working-class masculinities, labour and the role of breadwinner (Sohn-Rethel, 1978). In his seminal work, Willis (1977) highlights how his participants – the ‘lads’ – are engaged in a process of cultural self-preparation for the shopfloor describing ‘a masculine disdain for qualifications’ where the stigma of manual work becomes ‘positively expressive,’ almost heroic (p. 152). See work by Archer et al. (2001) and Woodin and Burke (2007) for how the pressure to be the breadwinner can pull working-class men away from education.

2. The explicit mention of ‘sucking it up’ was representative of locale slang and, therefore, it was adopted as part of the coding.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council: [grant number DE170100510].

Notes on contributors

Garth Stahl

Garth Stahl is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and Research Fellow, Australian Research Council (DECRA). His research interests lie on the nexus of neoliberalism and socio-cultural studies of education, identity, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects encompass theoretical and empirical studies of learner identities, sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, educational reform and gendered subjectivities.

Wojtek Tomaszewski

Wojtek Tomaszewski is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Queensland. His expertise is in quantitative research methods, statistical analysis of complex data, and in research on poverty, social exclusion, housing, homelessness and ageing.

Nicholas Ghan

Nicholas Ghan is a Research Assistant in Education Futures at the University of South Australia. He has researched many projects involving the study of learner identities, masculinities and widening participation.