Growing through failure: enhancing students' career resilience

While still hard to define precisely, resilience is a much discussed concept by both graduate recruiters and universities. Research at The University of Edinburgh investigates how careers services can help students develop the tools they need…

Resilience continues to be something of a hot topic, often fuelled by concerns that universities are experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis within their student population.1 Much of the wider debate and literature situates resilience within a mental health and wellbeing agenda, but without addressing the careers and employability angle.

In January 2017 project researchers, myself and Dr Lynsey Russell-Watts, secured funding from AMOSSHE to conduct a small scale research project designed to surface students' attitudes to resilience, their perceptions of challenge and failure, and how well equipped they felt to transition from university to employment.2

The impetus for the project emerged from several key factors:

• A perception that some students struggle to navigate the demands of a highly competitive and increasingly globalised job market.
• Recent research from HECSU, the Graduate Resilience Project, indicating high levels of workplace attrition for graduates at the 6-12 month point.3
• The expansion of higher education and new fee structures instilled a more consumerist orientation among students with attendant effects on behaviour, attitudes and expectations. The 2:1 threshold imposed by graduate recruiters has further amplified this trend.
• An observation based on prior experience that students often seem to be poorly equipped to deal with these pressures and stresses, for reasons the project aims to explore in its initial stages.
• A supposition that university structures and processes often create and perpetuate a protective environment that cushions students from risk and failure, potentially impeding the development of resilience.
• A concern that while students are often urged to 'be more resilient', there seems to be little in place to facilitate this.

Means, method and methodology

A mixed methods approach was adopted, combining both primary and secondary research. Following completion of a literature review to explore intersections between careers and resilience in the UK graduate population, the research moved into a more 'active' phase, comprising these key elements:

• Focus groups with current students exploring their ideas and experiences of failure, resilience and perseverance, and how resilience in the face of career setbacks could be fostered (probably three groups of eight participants, drawn from penultimate year UK students). At this initial stage, the project team were primarily concerned with students' experiences of the UK job market, while aware that international students may have different cultural approaches to and understandings of resilience. Many penultimate year students are beginning to focus on their careers post-graduation, and may have exploratory experiences of the graduate job market through applying for internships or similar. The focus groups were recorded, transcribed and the data coded, analysed and written up.
• Interviews with key staff (for example students' association representatives, directors of student experience, senior tutors) from across the university to gather a range of staff perspectives. Interview data was treated in the same way as focus group data.
• From the information gathered from the literature, focus groups and interviews, the project team developed workshop materials designed to foster resilience.
• Design of a questionnaire, drawing on pre-existing materials such as the MTQ48 questionnaire, which students could complete before and after the workshop, with the aim of measuring any change in their attitudes towards resilience.4
• A sample of students from each workshop group were also be invited to participate in a semi-structured interview, exploring their responses to the questionnaire more fully, and gathering richer qualitative data about the impact on their attitudes towards resilience.

Did the workshop work?

Students responded well to the workshop: they viewed the potential impact of setbacks as more positive, and felt more encouraged to engage in goal-setting and career planning.

Further refinements and additions have been made, so the original workshop is now a suite of resources and materials that colleagues can adopt and adapt. Walker et al have demonstrated that it is both possible and desirable to design learning experiences that foster resilience, and certainly the post-workshop responses indicated a positive shift amongst the student participants.5

This suggests resilience themed workshops can stimulate thinking and initiate small, incremental changes in attitude, but a single intervention is unlikely to instigate real change in attitude or approach. It is clear from close analysis of the focus groups and staff interviews that a collective, institution-wide response is necessary to truly achieve change and develop resilient behaviours in students.

Research findings and future focus

All research participants acknowledged the benefits of exposing students to failure and creating opportunities within the curriculum to encourage experimentation. The Edinburgh College of Art students were comfortable sharing their experiences of failure, but felt this was at odds with the prevailing culture. So, what did the key findings surface?

• Although hard to accommodate and process at the time, failure and challenge present valuable learning and motivational experiences.
• An exclusive focus on success narratives within institutions can be alienating and limiting for many students.
• A paradox, insofar as many of the interview and focus group participants advanced the need for open discussion about failure, but the willingness to engage with the debate privately failed to translate to the 'public' sphere. When asked about using the language of failure and setbacks, there was real resistance along the lines of 'students wouldn't engage with that'.
• Both staff and students conclude that resilience - and resilient behaviours - can be acquired and nurtured, but over time and through experience. This requires a committed, concerted approach from both universities and the wider HE sector.

A full exposition of research findings and project outputs can be found in the full report.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of HECSU/Prospects

Notes

1. Mental health: a university crisis, The Guardian.
2. AMOSSHE (Association of Managers of Student Services in Higher Education).
3. Graduate Resilience Project Report, Lancaster University/HECSU, 2016.
4. MTQ48 (an assessment tool designed to measure 'mental toughness').
5. Walker, C, Gleaves, A and Grey, J, 'Can students within higher education learn to be resilient and, educationally speaking, does it matter?', Educational Studies. 32(3): 251–264, 2006.

Written by

Helen Stringer

Assistant director

The University of Edinburgh careers service