Thirty-First International Conference on Learning

Abstract

The guidance and support of South African students experiencing ancestral callings and their customs needs more research and transformation in institutional advising and support practice to close the equity gap and improve academic success as a correlation. In the process of creating an institutional advising and support system for this cohort of students, it should improve their sense of belonging. This is of importance, since in our own advising experience at the University of Pretoria these students often feel isolated – feeling misunderstood and not knowing where to turn for (culturally related) support. Furthermore, two of the main aspects of identity development (the developmental age of most students entering university) is self-concept and self-esteem. Being aware of the African identity in this aspect in advising and support is therefore not something we could keep ignoring. Through our advising experiences we have realized recently that there are many African students dropping out of university related to ancestral calling not being understood. Often, they give their reason for deregistration as “mental health/health issues”. We have experienced the same in our exclusion processes. Our proposed intervention in this relatively new field thus focuses on the importance of an institutional and specifically an advising and support system awareness of this growing cohort of students as a success measure to reduce the equity gap, which should increase retention and academic persistence in record time.