Children’s Mental Health Week | How do people’s life experiences impact on their learning, and how do tutors and institutions help them cope?

Hannah Wixcey is a doctoral researcher at USW, examining the relationship between retention and well-being in Further Education (FE). She is a member of the Sport, Health and Exercise Science Research Group.

Ensuring students stick it out for the duration of their course is a constant challenge for FE colleges. In the last five years (2016-2021) two thirds of FE colleges in the UK have seen a five percent increase in the proportion of learners withdrawing (Association of Colleges, 2021). The reasons behind this trend are ambiguous. While ‘personal reasons’ such as; unhappiness, domestic issues, and whether or not they feel they ‘fit in’, top the list of reasons cited by students who withdraw, staff who work in these environments feel the underlying issue is well-being. What’s missing, however, is the empirical evidence to support this. My research hopes to remedy that by exploring why learners withdraw from FE and the role well-being plays.

Initial interviews found that well-being was cited as a reason to drop-out, with 67% of the 85 learners citing reasons related to mental health and well-being, as their main reason for withdrawal from their course. 

The second part of the study examined resilience, which is key to well-being. Improving learner resilience is likely to enhance overall well-being, which has a positive impact on academic outcomes.

Such findings indicate the need to consider how tutors and wider staff are able to engage with needs-supportive behaviours, which promote the satisfaction of learner’s basic psychological needs and subsequently enhance well-being.

The relationship between the tutor and the students is vital to identifying and dealing with issues by:

• Developing coping strategies for students and increase their sense of competence
• Educating students on stressors and demands
• Encourage student/tutor and student/student relationships which can help to identify stress and impact on well-being. For example, a list of voluntary staff and students who are available to be contacted as part of a mentoring system. The purpose of such mentors would be to answer any questions about the college, provide well-being support and, if required, signpost learners to additional support or specialist advice. 
• More support should be given to learned to deal with stresses at certain times, so they can develop a sense of competence, ownership, and institutional belonging
• Help students to build their personal resilience so they can deal with stress. For example, educating students on what resilience is and developing strategies which will enable students to overcome adversity if, and when, it arises.

You can read more about this research here.