TY - JOUR
T1 - Students coping with change in higher education
T2 - an overview
AU - Co, Mary Jesselyn
AU - Hamadeh Kerbage, Samira
AU - Willetts, Georgina
AU - Harvey, Loretta
AU - Bhattacharya, Ananya
AU - Croy, Glen
AU - Mitchell, Bruce
PY - 2023/2
Y1 - 2023/2
N2 - Higher education institutions implement purposeful change to improve their performance or impose changes in response to their external environments. To deal with these changes, students are expected to develop their coping capacity – the emotional and cognitive ability to manage the demands of adverse situations. Student coping is composed of four interdependent core elements – self-efficacy, engagement, resilience and anxiety. This article synthesizes the evidence on the effect of higher education changes on student's ability to cope. Using Polanin et al.’s (2017) overview process, our search generated 551 articles, and after three rounds of screening, the remaining 12 reviews were analyzed using the narrative descriptive synthesis approach. We found that the quality assessment within the included reviews were inconsistent and, sometimes not clearly defined. From the analysis of the reviews, four key themes emerged: (1) change is complex; (2) the nature of change is varied; (3) there is an interdependent relationship between the coping elements; and (4) the measurement of change is not sophisticated. Our findings highlight the need for higher education institutions to adopt a principle-based approach to purposefully develop students' coping capacity, by improving their self-efficacy, engagement, and resilience, and reducing anxiety. Limitations and future research directions are outlined.
AB - Higher education institutions implement purposeful change to improve their performance or impose changes in response to their external environments. To deal with these changes, students are expected to develop their coping capacity – the emotional and cognitive ability to manage the demands of adverse situations. Student coping is composed of four interdependent core elements – self-efficacy, engagement, resilience and anxiety. This article synthesizes the evidence on the effect of higher education changes on student's ability to cope. Using Polanin et al.’s (2017) overview process, our search generated 551 articles, and after three rounds of screening, the remaining 12 reviews were analyzed using the narrative descriptive synthesis approach. We found that the quality assessment within the included reviews were inconsistent and, sometimes not clearly defined. From the analysis of the reviews, four key themes emerged: (1) change is complex; (2) the nature of change is varied; (3) there is an interdependent relationship between the coping elements; and (4) the measurement of change is not sophisticated. Our findings highlight the need for higher education institutions to adopt a principle-based approach to purposefully develop students' coping capacity, by improving their self-efficacy, engagement, and resilience, and reducing anxiety. Limitations and future research directions are outlined.
KW - Engagement
KW - Resilience
KW - Self-efficacy
KW - Anxiety
KW - University students
U2 - 10.1016/j.edurev.2023.100508
DO - 10.1016/j.edurev.2023.100508
M3 - Article
VL - 38
JO - Educational Research Review
JF - Educational Research Review
SN - 1747-938X
M1 - 100508
ER -