Ragia Hassan, a Curriculum and Instruction doctoral candidate, and Crystal Machado from the Department of Professional Studies in Education presented a paper titled “Resilience During a Global Pandemic: Voices of Six International-Student Mothers Enrolled in Doctoral Programs in the USA” at the 2022 American Educational Studies Association annual conference in Pittsburgh on November 5, 2022.
Abstract
The challenges that international mothers face when they join a doctoral program are magnified even more during a pandemic. This is especially true if they begin to take course work synchronously and asynchronously while they are transitioning from their home country to the USA during a pandemic. We are using Bridges’ Transition Model for Change (2009) and Goode’s Theory of Role Strain (1960) to qualitatively study international doctoral student mothers’ academic performance, mental/emotional wellness, social interaction, and their access to support during the COVID-19 pandemic. We presented a cross-section of the data related to the following research questions: (1) What types of stressors did International Doctoral Student Mothers (IDSM) experience during the pandemic? (2) In what ways did IDSM exhibit resilience during the pandemic? Our findings have implications for institutions that offer doctoral degrees in the US, doctoral faculty, and doctoral students.