CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS
5.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
counsellor or an outside professional, and supported in the everyday school context by a peer counsellor.
• Itis proposed that the peer counselling programme be further incorporated into the school life. Mission statements, lists of services available at the school and letters to parents and sponsors are examples of ways that this might be achieved. Perhaps a joint meeting with peer counsellors, teachers, and school counsellors could be arranged to discuss ways in which peer counselling is meeting the learners' needs and ways in which the peer counsellors and teachers can assist each other.
• In considering the positive effects of the peer counselling training on the peer counsellors, it might be worth designing a pre-selection peer counselling programme which assists those learners who are interested in developing skills of relating to others. Such a training programme could be available to those Grade lO's who are interested in becoming peer counsellors in Grade 11. In addition, this might serve the function of assessing which learners are interested in developing helping skills, thereby facilitating the selection process. This also gives a greater number of learners the opportunity to learn skills of relating to others in a positive and helpful manner.
• In order to gain the learners' trust in the school environment, it has been suggested that peer counsellors' roles and functions should be further defmed. Discussing issues of confidentiality at the beginning of a peer counselling interaction might also be beneficial.
In addition, the number of people in the peer counselling room should be kept to a
minimum. Having a separate room for more personal counselling interactions should also be considered if this is practically possible.
• Perhaps the peer counsellors could also occasionally assume a "peer education" role.
They could distribute health related information through awareness days, through eye- catching displays on their notice board, and/or through additional group discussions.
They might organise for speakers to come to the school to provide information or to speak about their experiences. This might be an appropriate way that peer counsellors could take responsibility for raising health and safety awareness in the schools.
research links may be made between the present study and other South African studies, was therefore very limited. Itis hoped that further research into peer counselling in South African schools will contribute to the research literature on this topic. Research into secondary school peer counselling programmes in our local context may also serve the purpose of
informing the implementation, training, and supervision needs ofthese programmes. In
'1
addition, it could inform decision-making regarding how to increase the effectiveness of such
J
programmes within our unique South African context.
Another limitation ofthe present study relates to the ge1!eralisability of the~e~lts. The investigation was undertaken at one school in the area and, as such, the findings are not necessarily generalisable to other schools. There are a number of factors that may vary from one school to another. An important distinction might be the role of life skills and guidance in the school in the present study. The school counsellor and school principal are noted for their commitment to meet the learners' psycho-social as well as their educational needs.
Other schools might not have such a supportive school context in which to implement a programme.
The role of language comprehension and expression was another potential limitation in the study. Most of the learners in the school were English second-language speakers. Learners may have experienced difficulty in expressing themselves within an English written modality.
It is possible that the learners may have lacke~the necessary written language skills to effectively articulate their viewpoints with regards to the peer counsellingprogra~eat their school. In addition, it may be that the term "peer counselling programme" was unfamiliar to a number of learners. This may have led to some confusion and served to inflate the number of learners who claimed not to have heard about the programme.
In addition it is felt that the techniques for analysing written language in this study may have concealed important aspects ofthe learners' lived experiences. Perhaps more observational and non-verbal data-collection procedures would have yielded more contextualised
information. Observations oflearners' behaviours in and around the peer counselling room (in terms of the learners coming, going and/or avoiding the room due to its "crowdedness") might have provided very useful non-verbal information. In addition, observing actual peer counselling sessions and/or the peer counselling discussion groups through the use of audio- visual equipment, might have also provided more contextual, and to some extent, objective
observations of the peer counselling interactions. The extent to which these research procedures would influence the natural situation and the ethical considerations of such research methods, would obviously need consideration.
Another limitation relates to the research design and data-analysis used in the present study.
Qualitative analysis requires interpretive reading. The researcher's interpretation was influenced by her subjective life-world perspective. Perhaps follow-up interviews with a sample of learners and/or teachers would have provided clarity on learners' helping needs and the learners' and teachers' perceptions and observations of the peer counselling programme.
Related to the above limitation, it is argued that the "researcher as outsider" may have influenced the way in which the peer counselling programme was presented. Itis possible that the learners and teachers wanted to present a very positive perception of the peer counselling programme to the researcher due to its evaluation. This may have led to a slightly more positive account ofthe programme in its representation to the researcher.
The lack of more objective measurements of the peer counsellors' experiences, limits the conclusions one can make about the impact of their role. Performing pre-and post-test research with the peer counsellors might have allowed for more conclusive observations regarding their growth in terms of self-esteem and self-concept levels. Dorrian's (1998) study provides useful direction for a pre-and post-test research design with regards to measuring changes in the peer counsellors' self-concepts.
Finally only half of the peer counsellors participated in the focus group. Therefore, the results from the focus group may not be indicative of the whole peer counselling group. It might be that the most motivated peer counsellors were available for the focus group, which may have positively skewed the results of this data-collection procedure.
A number of these research limitations are related to suggestions for future peer counselling research studies. These are presented in the following chapter, which also serves to conclude the present study.
CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION
Adolescence is recognised as a time of excitement, stress, adjustment, and transition. An adolescent's experience varies due to the situational and social contexts which are inherent in daily life. The school environment is an example of one such context.
Schools have for some time been recognised as central sites for prevention and health promotion (Green& Kreuter, 1991 in Donald et a!., 1997). A supportive and health- promoting school environment is recognised to provide critically important life learning for its school-goers. The Consortium for the Promotion of School Based Competence writes:
Schools as organisations enjoy unequaled influence- both formalised and unformalised- in children's lives with respect to social, moral, intellectUal and behavioural development. With respect to social adjustment, schools are particularly well suited as sites to promote children's development (Consortium, 1994, in Cowie& Sharp, 1996, p. 145)
In particular, South Africa is recognised to have experienced rapid changes in the process of its transition to an emerging democracy. The school environment is recognised for its roles and responsibilities within this process. The term "whole-school guidance"
provides a framework for incorporating the role of emotional support, guidance, and the facilitation oflife skills into the school curriculum, structure, and general school ethos.
The new Outcomes Based Education system compels all South African schools to provide an accountable and visible Life Orientation programme. The implementation of peer-help programmes is one way that South African schools can actively involve the learners and wider school context in the educational process, which includes preparation for life outside of school. Dorrian (1998) asserts that peer counselling is a form of participative management, by learners, for learners, and is based on a model of social responsibility.
The traditional role of the school counsellor is thus extended from providing the majority of the psycho-social support in the school, to training others to share this responsibility.
Such a form of participative management and social responsibility in the school is perhaps a reflection of the democratic principles underlying the new Outcomes Based Education System and, more generally, South Africa's emergent democratic government.
The emphasis in this study has been on a whole-school evaluation of a peer counselling programme in operation at a local secondary school. A wealth of literature exists regarding the development, implementation, and reported efficacy of peer help
programmes, especially in American, Canadian and British secondary schools. Although peer counselling is a relatively new approach in South Africa for providing psycho-social support in school settings, it offers some definite benefits for learners and the school staff
The development of an effective peer counselling programme can provide a school with a cost effective vehicle for broadening the range and variety of helping formats offered in the existing school guidance programme. In addition, it allows the counselling service to address problems that might be less effectively handled in an adult-child relationship (Downe et aI., 1986). The benefits for the peer counsellors themselves include a sense of self-esteem arising possibly from the prestige of being selected and having a useful and constructive role in the school. The benefits of helping and assisting others are also well documented as providing these peer counsellors with a sense of self-confidence and satisfaction. The interpersonal skills that they acquire in their training are perceived as useful and may be transferred to their other relationships and life experiences. Benefits for the learners themselves are also evident. Learners may benefit from talking and sharing experiences with someone whose similarity in age may allow for greater empathy. The added element of social support in the school has also been discussed in the way that it contributes to the support and perception of help-availability in the school setting.
131
Itis suggested that the peer interactions that characterised the present peer counselling programme, enabled the learners (both peer counsellor and help-seeker) to navigate their psycho-social development in a socially responsible and empowered way. Learners could engage with the developmental tasks of identity formation in the context of the supportive helping environment and supportive relationships which the peer counselling programme was perceived to offer. Itis argued that, in the present study, the peer counselling groups were a particularly innovative and useful idea for engaging the learners in the developmental tasks of adolescence.
Peer counselling allows learners to have a more active voice in the school. Learners are recognised for their role in assisting, supporting, and encouraging one another. The school counsellor's load is relieved to a certain extent as learners assume responsibility for one another. Peer counsellors assume a "social responsibility" role in the school and encourage the value of caring for one another in a visible and recognised way.
However, it is argued that peer-led approaches cannot be the only component of the guidance and counselling aspects of the school. Indeed, ifpeer-Ied approaches are to be \ successful they must be one part ofa panoply ofapproaches (Elliott & Lambourn, 1999).
In addition, the peer counselling programme cannot develop in isolation, and requires a school context that values and supports its learners. The incorporation of peer counselling into school policy may be one such way of recognising and endorsing it as a form of help available to the learners in the school.
It is felt that the effectiveness of the present peer counselling programme has been demonstrated. A number ofrecommendations and suggestions for further development have been made in keeping with the aims of a formative evaluation.
132