Exploring teenage mothers' experiences of psycho-social support services provided in a secondary school in KwaZulu-Natal.
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Date
2016
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Abstract
This study is an exploration of teenage mothers` experiences of psycho-social support services provided in a secondary school in KwaZulu-Natal. This study was anchored on two major research questions; what are experiences do teenage mothers have of school-based-psycho social support services provided in a secondary school, and how can these school-based psycho-social can be improved to ensure excellent performance by the teenage mother? To answer these research questions, the qualitative approach to research was used to generate deep insight around the research phenomenon. To fine-tune the research, the case study style to research was employed to give focus to the study as well as to dig deeper into the phenomenon. Exploring teenage mother’s experiences require depth and continuous digging which can only be done under the canopy of case study research. For this digging to be effective, semi-structured interviews were used to generate data for the study. This was complemented using observation to make sure that what the researchers say happened, actually happened.
The participants of the study were sampled purposively and the data generated was analyzed using grounded analyses. The interpretive paradigm and the social constructionist’s theory was used to make sense of the data generated. The data was categorized into three main themes; educational support, financial support and emotional support. These themes were further divided into six subthemes; extra classes, mentoring, financial exclusion, financial upliftment, counseling and personal care. These themes were analyzed alongside literature and direct quotations from the participants.
Secondly, the researcher also recommends that the Department of Education or the Department of Social Welfare should take full responsibility for the provision of these services to ensure that some teenage mothers don’t benefit from the services more than others. Since teachers were the ones sourcing and providing these services, those under them can only benefit from what they were able to raise or offer.
Lastly, the researcher recommends that the challenges teenage mothers facing should be the bases of the provision of psycho- social support and not the resource available to the school or that which the mentor or teachers can raise on behalf of teenage mothers.
Description
Master of Education in Educational Psychology. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2016.
Keywords
Teenage mothers - Education - South Africa., Teenage pregnancy - South Africa., Teenage mothers - Social aspects - South Africa., Teenage mothers - South Africa - Psychology., Teenage pregnancy., Theses - Education.