There are others who inhabit the participants’ lifeworlds. They too, influenced participants’
engagement experience. On the one hand participants lived in a face-‐‑to-‐‑face world of family, friends and work: on the other, the online world with peers, tutors and the university. This was not to confect a dichotomy as lived relations (van Manen, 1990) exist across both environments within the
participants’ lifeworlds, however such an arrangement reflected the participants’ own experience. They found themselves in both worlds, if not at the same time then constantly slipping between them as foregrounded stimuli change and impact. Consider what an important skill apparently seamlessly transitioning between lived human relations in two worlds becomes to those who develop it.
Student engagement was impacted by changes in these relations. To maximise engagement they needed to manage the other people involved. Participants provided stories of the way in which changes in relations were pragmatically managed by them and their significant others. Implicit and explicit ‘deals’ were made to reduce or remove tensions in particular relations. Whilst these deals were outside of the online unit, their success was pivotal to the participants’ study engagement and success.
Mary was conscious of her husband’s views regarding her studies and was able to distance herself from them in her mind by linking them to his socio-‐‑cultural background as this discussion about her husband’s attitude indicated:
Mary: He hates it. [laugh] A: Any reasons in particular?
Mary: Um, well he’s not um/ None of his family have ever gone to uni/ I don’t think any of his family have ever actually finished/ they’ve come from England anyway so it’s a different schooling system, um, never went on and did their SATs or whatever they call them -‐‑ the equivalent of year eleven and twelve. Um, none of them have ever gone on and done that. Um, so he just doesn’t [pause] / You’re born to work, basically is his assumption about life.
The pressures of her relations regarding her marriage were in tension with the new relations she was building as a student.
It spoke to the strength of Mary’s engagement with her studies that she was able to transcend such a pressured environment. She went on to underline her continuing commitment to her studies and how she was looking forward to the final results. Her commitment was also emphasised by her actions in developing a proposal for an Honours year.
Participants were all prepared to weather pressures from existing relations, and balance them with the developing relations of student life. To a large extent at some time, family and social
relations took a back seat to study. Wanda and Jane even used the word selfish regarding their need to manage their family relations and engage with their study; but they rationalised it for themselves by pointing out that their success was also good for the family socially and financially, at the very least.
Relationships which existed before study began needed to change to accommodate personal changes arising from new found activities and changing perceptions of their identities and other relations. As Jane described, the changes might have been as insignificant as reorganising home duties:
... or my husband might even do his ironing. His ironing, not mine ‘cause they’re his work shirts. “I’ve run out of shirts so I’ve ironed them” he’ll say. It’s like “Thank you honey”. With study I just make sure that my family’s taken care of, meals are done. We have a roster for what meals are being cooked and so my husband does the food shopping so I have to make sure that what I get him to shop for is what I am putting in my meals, so it’s just a matter of being organised. My husband bought me a slow cooker26 so around assignment time I can just put something in the slow cooker and dinner’s ready and I don’t have to worry about cutting anything up at four o’clock when the kids are going manic.
Family meals also played a part in relations and their management, as Indigo explained:
26 At this point, I am not advocating that slow cookers be considered a type of educational technology in spite of the fact that they clearly impact on student engagement.
I’d say that my husband’s annoyed. Yeah, he’s been very annoyed lately. Which is one of the reasons I’m only doing one unit and you know, I know he’s got no right to feel it really in one way, but in another way it’s been a big change for him because I am / my head is in a computer. You know, I used to cook delicious fabulous meals all the time and now it’s just the quick, chilli con carne. [laugh] “Not that again” kind of thing. The kids haven’t complained.
However, there were many roles which these students needed to fulfil. Besides having children to ferry around after school, Ida identified other roles: Outside of uni, I actually enjoy where I work. It’s different to what I’d thought it would be. [...] um outside of my work it’s, well yeah, family and farm all that sort of thing, keeping it all together. Keeping it all together brought with it a blurring of the roles. At any one time a participant might be fulfilling roles other than that of student, so feelings of engagement were contextualised.
Geraldine’s situation mirrored that of other women participants, but she used her new environment to accommodate her new life. As she explained, due to her engagement with study, there has been a role reversal between her husband and herself:
Broadly, it’s changed my and my husband’s roles I guess -‐‑ that has definitely changed because basically before I started studying I did inside and he was outside. He was doing the gardening and looking after the chooks and the veggie garden and all that. Now if I need a break and want to move around and that, I’ll go out and do some of the outside things. So, we’ve basically swapped, but not totally. I still do some of the housework, yeah. I use mowing the lawn as getting out and doing some exercise. Getting outside and everything.
In what was a simple and rational deal, these agreed role changes helped Geraldine manage her transition to study. Additionally as a result of her study, she had become the family ‘bread-‐‑winner’. Particularly at over fifty years old, these were significant relationship changes, and their successful transition was pivotal to the success of her study program. Geraldine felt that the deal for her to become the breadwinner was the main reason for the changes. For her family, potential tensions in relationships had been circumvented in a very pragmatic way by simple changes.
Mary’s relations with her children also had an impact. When asked about her children’s responses to her study Mary said: My kids are at a point now that they hate it. They hate it. When asked why, she replied: Just the time, the time factor. I was sitting here the other night and they were saying to me, just quit mum, just quit. Jane spoke of similar concerns about her relations with her children. The impact of engaging as a student on her feelings about her parental responsibilities weighed on her mind, as she described: Um, I do. I’ve got my study desk over there [...] um I’m trying to fit study in between kids: especially in school holidays, it’s very difficult, but yeah, I feel I sometimes especially when assignments are due, that I am just bogged down and the house suffers a lot [laugh] the kids suffer.
Bill would: generally, wait until my kids have gone to sleep before he could listen to a lecture. He was conscious of his parental responsibilities and the importance of doing his share of parenting, as his wife was the wage earner.
Geraldine was also being rewarded by her granddaughter’s positive response to incorporating her into her study activities. As she explained, by managing her study program and including her granddaughter, she was able to blur the separation of family and study worlds:
Yes. I think so. She’s enjoyed and I’ve enjoyed this semester’s study more, because when she comes to stay on the weekend, which is most weekends, I’ll save the art activity or the music activity, and we’ll have fun doing that while she’s there. Whereas, last semester because I did four units, I was always studying when she was there and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to/ she used to say in the end that I don’t wanna go to Nan’s, she’s always studying. But this semester it’s oh, I wanna go to Nan and help her with her fun. So, you know, so it’s not a bad thing now: it’s become fun.
Geraldine had briefly managed to merge her study and family worlds. At that moment, in that place, Geraldine the grandmother, Geraldine the student and Geraldine the student teacher became one and satisfactory outcomes were achieved for all.
Relations with friends outside of study also had a role to play. Mary acknowledged that she had lost friends as a result of her studying, but quickly noted that good friends still kept in contact,
signalling that good friends understood her engagement with her study to attain her goal, and accepted changes in her, and changes in the relationship. In this case it was not so much that these relations impacted her engagement, but rather her increased engagement impacted the relations. She explained that those who could not understand her engagement were not good friends and it was their lack of support that would end their relationship:
With studying there’s a lot of contact um that I’ve lost with other people. Um, but I also figure/ There are some that have completely dropped off and I’ll probably never have anything to do with them again. Doesn’t worry me to be honest. Um, there are other people, really good close friends who, while they fully don’t understand what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, they’re quite happy, you know, if we only have that phone call every three months, then that’s great and they
appreciate it, I appreciate it, because that’s the network, you know that close relationship you have so that’s OK.
Engagement with study also brought about change in professional relations and was a potent
motivator when impacting on existing work (professional) relationships. As Bill was already working in a school environment, he was sensitive to these changes:
I went up to another school, and was in grade preps, so I was Mr. Shaw then, I wasn’t Bill, and um the teacher there said to me that I was obviously a great classroom assistant, but I needed to take the step from being an assistant to being a leader. And she said that quite early in the placement and er, and then she was quite happy in the end that I’d made that step and really took it on and then to come back to being Integration Aid and to being the assistant was a difficult transition.
Bill noticed the difference in his roles and this provided a motivation for him to resign from work to study full-‐‑time, so that he could finish quickly and move on to his new profession. There were financial and family considerations too, but the recognition of the possibility of change appealed to him.
Engaging with study activated complex changes in the way in which participants interacted with the others in their world.