Full text of DOI:10.1002/oti.116

Occupational Therapy International, 7(3), 153–162, 2000 © Whurr Publishers Ltd
153
MAJOR PAPERS
Being that bit older: Mature
students’ experience of university
and healthcare education
MARGARET SHANAHAN School of Health Care – Occupational Therapy,
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford
ABSTRACT: This study used a phenomenological approach to gain insight into the
lives of a small number of mature female students on healthcare programmes at uni-
versity. The qualitative methods used sought to reveal aspects of that lived experience
that would explain why mature students lack confidence in their academic abilities.
Data were collected from participants using an in-depth interview, a diary/journal,
an open questionnaire and group discussion. The emergent themes showed that
mature students see education as a catalyst for change in their lives and feel a
tremendous pressure to succeed. With the multiple roles they have to juggle there is
not enough time in the day to accomplish all the tasks to the high standard they
expect of themselves. These compromises leave the women experiencing feelings of
guilt, which seems to be expressed as anxiety about the academic demands of the
programme. However, experience of life and the world of work is stated as one of
the great advantages of being a mature student, and one that adds to their level of
confidence as they prepare to qualify and enter the workforce.
Key words: healthcare education, mature students.
Introduction and literature review
In the United Kingdom a mature student is classified as someone who is aged
2
1 years or older on admission to university. These students often have
tremendous demands on their time. They succeed academically, but many
express doubt about their ability, even when provided with formative feed-
back of their own successful progress (Challis, 1976; Edwards, 1990; Burns et
al., 1993; Daines et al., 1993; Pascall and Cox, 1993).
Previous research indicates that mature students in university attain higher
levels of academic achievement than their younger peers (Smithers and
Griffin, 1986; Maynard, 1992; Hoskins et al., 1997). Although more moderate

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results were found by Richardson (1995) and Trueman and Hartley (1996),
mature students outperformed their younger peers in vocational subjects and
languages (Johnes, 1992) and in arts and social science subjects (Walker,
1
975). There are also gender differences, with female students outperforming
male students (Woodley, 1984; Hoskins et al., 1997); both single and married
mothers in higher education performed better academically than other stu-
dents, including mature students in general (Burns et al., 1993).
Students seek advice and support from academic staff in universities about
a number of issues that concern them. An interesting phenomenon at Oxford
Brookes University is the fact that many mature students who seek support
express a low level of confidence in their academic ability, despite meeting the
university’s entry standards.
The findings of these studies, coupled with the experience of the
researcher in higher education, raises interesting disparities between quantita-
tive evidence of the success of mature students and the experiences described
by mature students themselves in qualitative research. This study aimed to
explore the lived experience of being a mature student by using a phenomeno-
logical approach. It was hoped that this approach would provide an insight
into the lives of a small number of female mature students and reveal aspects
in the lived experience that would explain why mature students lack confi-
dence in their abilities.
Methodology
To offset the small number of participants that could be recruited to the study
using a phenomenological approach, it was decided to use a triangulated, two-
phase data collection strategy. Mature students were recruited by means of a
flyer on the university bulletin board, asking for volunteers to participate in
the study. Five responses were received, which included one of the administra-
tive staff who was about to leave her employment at the university and
embark on a degree at another university.
Ethical considerations are central to a study of this nature, so pseudonyms
were selected for all respondents so that anonymity could be assured in all
recordings, transcribed notes and journals. All participants were assured of
total confidentiality in the data collection and storage, and of total anonymity
in the presentation of findings.
As the researcher was an active member of the teaching staff at the univer-
sity at the time of data collection it was important to consider the possible
influence of an academic faculty member on the responses from the partici-
pants, and therefore a variety of data collection methods was used. The five
participants were allocated a data collection method that would minimize the
researcher’s influence in the data collection and achieve neutrality of the data
(Krefting, 1991). The face-to-face interview was carried out with the partici-
pant who was least well known to the researcher. The diary, which was the

Mature students’ experience of university and healthcare education
155
most remote method of data collection, was used with the former administra-
tive assistant who had been a close colleague of the researcher’s. The ques-
tionnaire and group discussion were assigned to the three second-year
occupational therapy students as they were keen to be interviewed together
and had indicated that the topic was one they had spent many hours dis-
cussing among themselves.
Participants
The first respondent, ‘Jane’, was a 40-year-old single female final-year student
who had worked as a medical secretary before applying to occupational thera-
py. The interview explored issues that arose from the literature relating to
mature students, such as her motivation for starting a degree, perceptions of
how it felt to be a mature student, relationships with staff and students, and
the impact that the student role had on life in general. The interview lasted
about an hour, was fully transcribed from tape recordings, and was reviewed
and the emerging themes coded.
‘
Karen’, a former administrative assistant, was asked to keep a reflective
diary to record her thoughts, feelings and reflections from when she started
her degree in radiography. This 33-year-old recently separated mother of three
children had always wanted to be radiographer, but as she married soon after
leaving school the opportunity for further study never arose. The rich data
collected during her first term at university provided a clear insight into those
first few weeks in a higher education setting. The diary was analysed and
coded at the same time as the interview data. Similar themes emerged from
the diary, although these varied in intensity.
Three second-year occupational therapy students, ‘Alison’, ‘Susan’ and
‘
Jenny’, were asked to comment on the initial themes that had been extract-
ed from the interview and diary data. These were grouped under categories
that formed the basis for open-ended questions in a group discussion. The
students had established a close bond and actively participated in a group
discussion, which centred on their reaction to the themes and personal
experiences. No new themes emerged, but their discussion did provide a dif-
ferent perspective on the initial findings as these three women were all mar-
ried, living with their partners and had children aged between 8 and 16
years of age.
The data collection methods used in this study reflected the characteristics
of qualitative research discussed by Streubert and Carpenter (1995). The
belief in the multiple realities of an experience is in direct contrast to tradi-
tional positivist methodologies that would search for one truth of students’
experience of university. The different interpretations of these women’s expe-
riences are presented using a literary style that is rich in the participants’ com-
mentary. No attempt is made to assign proportions to responses or to search
for consensus opinion.

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Results
Five main themes emerged from the data and are presented in the Table 1.
The over-arching theme is presented in column one, and more detail on the
theme is given in column two. The supplementary information from the sec-
ond phase of data collection is presented in column three.
Education – the catalyst for change
The decision to enrol in an educational programme was, for the women
in this study, a chance to change direction in their lives. For some it was seen
as an opportunity to do something for themselves after looking after children:
‘
Just picking up the role of me as a person after putting [my life] on hold for
a few years while the children were small and the mother role took over’
Alison).
For others, education was a chance to rewrite their life story after experi-
(
encing some dissatisfaction with their previous employment. Jane, a single
mature student with no children who had worked as a medical secretary, chose
TABLE 1: Emerging themes from the investigation into mature students’ experience of
university and healthcare education
Emergent theme
Supporting data on the
theme from interviews and
diary method
Supplementary data from
questionnaire and group
discussion
Education – the catalyst
for change
Double motivation to study Something for me
A chance to rewrite one’s
life story
Juggling different balls
Meeting the demands of
family and university
Role loss
Extreme guilt about not doing
anything very well
Sacrifices have to be made
Friends and family –
it’s good to talk
The value of support
The tremendous value of peer
and family support
Rollercoaster of confidence
Feelings of inadequacy in
academic ability
On the right track?
Not sure if you are getting
the level right
Been there, done that
The value of life/work
Fieldwork more like the world
experience for some aspects of work and therefore familiar
of the curriculum and in
fieldwork
Re-entering the world of work
at an advantage
Transitions into the workplace

Mature students’ experience of university and healthcare education
157
a career in occupational therapy to build on the personal skills she had devel-
oped in her secretarial job,
I wanted to involve myself more with people. … I wanted to work more on my own and
have my own case load if you like, whereas I enjoyed the work that the doctors were
doing but I was one step removed from it and I thought there must be some career I can
pursue that would enable me to use the skills that I’ve got.
For Karen and Jane, the motivation for coming into higher education mir-
rored the findings of Scott et al. (1998), who found that higher education pro-
vided the means to discover new roles as a result of difficult life circumstances
such as marriage breakdown or dissatisfaction with former employment. Alison,
Susan and Jenny’s venture into higher education was to find an identity beyond
that of wife and mother. Pascall and Cox (1993) found that mothers who
entered higher education expressed ‘a sense of unease about putting their own
lives first’ (1993: 26). These feelings were found in the data collected from the
participants in this study, but they were expressed more as guilt because there was
not enough time to attain quality in all the roles and tasks they were juggling.
Juggling different balls
All participants saw themselves as having many roles to juggle in their lives:
partner, mother, homemaker, friend, daughter and student. This sense of
multi-tasking echoed the findings of Arksy et al. (1994). Four out of the five
women in this study were mothers and it was this role that provided the great-
est challenge to their organizational skills. They experienced a sense of guilt
in relation to the quality of the home life that they provided:
There is a constant feeling of guilt because you are serving chips for the third time that
week, telling the kids they won’t be able to stay for after-school activities because you
won’t be there to pick them up, if friends’ parents pick them up you feel guilty because
you can’t do your share of the school runs. You feel constantly tired and therefore snap
everybody’s head off and then you feel guilty about that. (Alison)
The participants recognized that there were sacrifices that had to be made to
obtain a degree. In particular they mourned the loss of the friendship role in their
previous social networks and spoke about having no time for leisure activities.
However, these transformations in life and the subsequent loss of past
friendships (Pascall and Cox, 1993) were compensated for by the develop-
ment of new friendships in a group of mature students who shared similar
identities, experiences and responsibilities (MacDonald and Stratta, 1998).
Friends and family – it is good to talk
Having outlined the juggling involved in sustaining home and university
roles, it comes as no surprise that the women in this study felt stressed during

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the term. However, what arose from the data was the tremendous value of peer
support in dealing with this stress. All the participants in the study used this
coping mechanism: ‘The stress is incredible but kept under control with support
from peers, particularly other mature students in the same position’ (Susan).
Studies have found that women form close supportive relationships with
other women, based on a shared understanding of the difficulties of being a
mature student with family responsibilities (Edwards, 1993; MacDonald and
Stratta, 1998).
Karen, on beginning her course, was happy to meet up with a few other
students ‘who were in the same boat as me, namely two or three kids, on their
own and all worried as to whether we were good enough to complete the
course’.
It seems, however, that the women in this study also formed friendships on
the basis of age similarities and shared anxieties about academic abilities. Jane,
who was single with no children, drew a lot of support from women of a simi-
lar age to herself. They telephoned each other in the evenings and at week-
ends: ‘It was very helpful just being able to talk to other people in the same
boat.’
Support from husbands or partners and family was also important to the
women in this study. The three married women expressed an ability to juggle
home and academic activities as long as the notion of support was there
(Edwards, 1993; Scott et al., 1993).
Rollercoaster of confidence
Daines et al. (1993) saw adult learners as more likely to lack confidence in
themselves and to underestimate their own powers. The women in this study
confirmed these findings by expressing feelings of inadequacy in terms of their
academic ability. Jane summed up these feelings when she said,
I felt very daunted to begin with. I remember the first day, thinking, gosh, am I going to
cope with this … and that I was at a disadvantage because the young ones fresh out of
school knew what academic work was all about.
These sentiments were shared by the other women, who admitted that
even though they study hard they are still anxious: ‘I study more in-depth
[
than younger students] however this does not increase my confidence in
terms of preparing written work for assessment or exams’ (Susan).
Alison, who expressed more confidence in her academic ability, saw the
problem in terms of knowing ‘if you were on the right track’, which is echoed
by the other women.
Karen wrote in her diary: ‘have handed in two assignments so far, [I am] a
little nervous as to whether they are correct or what is required but I should
find out sometime next week; nail biting time!’
The students found the first assignment particularly stressful to prepare,

Mature students’ experience of university and healthcare education
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I felt as though I was working, groping in the dark and just hoping that what I was
doing was what was required of me and I suppose I felt like that to a certain extent
throughout the course but the first one was very, you know, gosh, I thought I haven’t
got a clue what was required. (Jane)
Getting formative feedback on their assignments was essential to feelings
of confidence at least until the next assignment. Karen epitomized this roller-
coaster of emotions, when she wrote the following in her diary on getting very
positive feedback in a classroom test: ‘I feel really brilliant … at least today I
do.’
Mature students express anxiety about examinations and written assign-
ments, but are more confident and less inhibited in small group teaching situ-
ations and feel that they can compensate for their perceived ‘intellectual’
shortcomings by drawing on their experiences as parents and employees
(
Challis, 1976; Edwards 1990). MacDonald and Stratta (1998) also found
that previous experience in the work environment and life experience can be
assets in vocational-type degree programmes which involve considerable peri-
ods of fieldwork.
Susan found that life experience, including knowledge of the world of
work, helped in her fieldwork component of her degree – ‘certainly fieldwork
is easier having worked before’.
Been there, done that
‘
Mature students do not just bring their experience with them, they are their
experience’ (Edwards, 1993: 83). For the women in this study this experience
proved invaluable in understanding some of the subjects in their curriculum,
such as sociology and psychology, where their understanding of life and
human nature provided a framework for exploring theoretical perspectives.
Jane felt that the transition into the workplace as a qualified professional
might also be easier for her as a mature student.
In a way it is easier because having been out and working I know more or less what to
expect and my eyes are already open about the sort of problems that you run into, like
with relationships and work groups, but anyone going into their first job still has to
learn all that.
Alison, on the other hand, saw graduation as
starting as a new professional in a job that’s going to have an effect on people’s lives, I
don’t think that there will be that much difference between me and a younger student.
Younger students seem to have more confidence nowadays anyway.
Richardson (1995) found that mature students displayed a deeper
approach to studying, combined with a readiness to think divergently and
relate topics from different parts of the curriculum into a meaningful whole.
These learning skills, combined with the self-motivation, a sense of self-

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direction, organizational skills and the ability to readjust life roles, were cited
as desirable work attributes in a recent report on graduate employment in the
UK (Harvey et al., 1997).
Discussion
The findings presented in this study are a description of the way the mature
students constructed and expressed the reality of their experiences of universi-
ty. The participants presented different, yet similar, perspectives on being a
mature student. One notable finding was the relationship between the length
of time the women had been enrolled as students and the intensity of the feel-
ings of being pulled in many different directions. Karen, who had only just
begun her course at the time of data collection, did not express as many feel-
ings in her diary about demands being made on her time. It was the second-
year students who had the strongest emotions in this area.
In this study the number of voices represented is small and limited to stu-
dents on healthcare programmes, so the transferability of the findings to the
wider population of mature students could be questioned. One approach to
establishing transferability is to locate a study in the context of the current
body of literature relating to mature students. This engagement with the cited
literature on a theoretical level has served to place this small study in the con-
text of the existing work in this area.
The credibility of this study was achieved by using different methods of
data collection over two time phases. The second round of data collection
provided an opportunity for the three second-year mature women students
with older children to comment on and recognize their experiences in the ini-
tial findings of the interview and diary. This strategy served to confirm the
findings of phase one, thus achieving some neutrality in the data and minimiz-
ing the potential influence of the researcher as an academic faculty member.
The excellent quality of the supplementary findings that arose from this sec-
ond phase of data collection may, however, be because these students were
attending classes taught by the researcher. This period of prolonged engage-
ment meant that they were accustomed to the researcher and were comfort-
able discussing personal issues in her presence.
Conclusion and recommendations
The study set out to explore the lives of a small number of mature female stu-
dents in higher education settings. There is a mounting body of quantitative
evidence that indicates that mature students attain higher levels of academic
achievement than their younger peers. Yet studies that explore the experi-
ences of mature students in higher education unanimously agree that they
lack confidence in their abilities. This small study identified five themes that
are mirrored in the writing of others. The study has highlighted that mature

Mature students’ experience of university and healthcare education
161
students see education as a catalyst for change in their lives. This last chance
to prove their competence (MacDonald and Stratta, 1998) inflicts on them a
tremendous pressure to succeed. With the many roles they have to juggle
there is not enough time in the day to achieve all the tasks to the high stan-
dard they expect of themselves. This compromise in standards leaves the
women experiencing feelings of guilt that is often expressed as anxiety in rela-
tion to the academic demands of the programme. Greater experience of life is
one of the great advantages of being a mature student (Challis, 1976) and one
that should be reflected back to them by lecturing staff at the times when they
are experiencing doubts about their academic abilities. Lecturers may have a
role to play in exploring these feelings with students and, where possible, pro-
mote social and study networks among mature students. This, combined with
early formative assessment and greater flexibility in the learning process,
could mean that universities could go some way towards acknowledging the
various roles mature students have to juggle in their lives.
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Address correspondence to Margaret Shanahan, MSc, PG Dip Stats, Dip COT, Senior Lecturer,
School of Health Care – Occupational Therapy, Oxford Brookes University, 58 London Road,
Oxford OX3 7PE, UK. Email: mmshanahan@brookes.ac.uk