School Satisfaction as a Pathway Linking Lecturers’ Support to Resilience Among Continuing Education Undergraduate Students in Public Universities in Nigeria

Abstract

Continuing education (CE) students face several academic challenges in their programmes, leading to high rate of attrition. To improve retention, fostering their resilience becomes critical for higher education stakeholders. Consequently, we set out to understand the pathway through which the resilience of CE students could be built. We adopted correlational research design and using the simple random sampling technique, 300 undergraduates enrolled in CE programmes in the faculties of education between 2021 and 2024 academic sessions in two public universities in Anambra State were recruited for the study. Three validated scales measuring lecturer support, satisfaction with school and resilience were used for data collection. Our findings revealed that lecturer support had a significant direct effect on the two dimensions of students’ satisfaction. While these dimensions of satisfaction with school significantly mediated the association between lecturer support and students’ resilience, they were also positively associated with higher resilience. We concluded that lecturer support could not only strengthen students’ satisfaction with school but also could facilitate their capacity to cope with challenges, with satisfaction serving as an important pathway through which resilience is fostered. It is recommended among others that universities should strengthen support services for CE students, and that lecturers and administrative staff should be professionally trained to improve the quality of the support they can offer these students.