Browsing by Author "Zurakat, Ganiyat Olushola."

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Challenges of school counselors in the provision of psychological services in high schools.
(2015) Zurakat, Ganiyat Olushola.; Muribwathoho, Henry Nkhanedzeni.
Access to a variety of psychological services that cater for the emotional, psychological, personal/social and other needs of learners within the school setting no doubt enhances their academic and general achievement in life. This is why there is a need to focus on barriers that might mitigate against the availability of such services. This study explored one such barrier, in the form of challenges to school counsellors in the provision of psychological services in high schools. Positioned within the interpretivist paradigm, the study adopted a qualitative method, using semi-structured interviews with four counsellors from four schools within the Durban metropolis, to investigate the challenges of the counsellors and their coping mechanisms. The ecosystems theory and transactional model of stress and coping served as frameworks for understanding the phenomenon under study. Findings from the study indicated that top among the challenges which school counsellors experience are time and financial constraints, lack of support from the Department of Education, parental involvement, and challenges emanating from their teaching colleagues. On the other hand, enthusiasm and passion for helping, support from the school head/management, organisations and professionals, improvising and adapting to the situation as it is, are some of the major coping mechanisms counsellors reported that they adopted to manage the situation. Based on these findings, the appointment of individuals whose sole duty would be counselling, establishment of discussion forums for counsellors and strategies for involving parents are some of the recommendations made to reduce, if not completely eradicate, the challenges.
Dynamic assessment of cognitive ability: investigating the construct validity of the Learning Potential Computerised Adaptive Test (LPCAT) within an academic context.
(2018) Zurakat, Ganiyat Olushola.; Mitchell, Carol Jean.; Munro, Nicholas.
No doubt, intelligence testing is vital for placement, intervention and other academic purposes, however, when factors that might disadvantage the individual, such as their impoverished socio-economic backgrounds are not considered in the process, such endeavours might further disadvantage the individual. In a bid to fill this assessment loophole, which is more peculiar to the static approach, the psychological assessment community witnessed the emergence of the dynamic approach to assessment, which gives hope for fairer assessments through its test-train-test approach. Although several measures using this approach have been developed, the dearth of empirical evidence on their psychometric properties still limits their popularity and acceptance across the globe. This study therefore investigated the construct validity of a locally developed dynamic measure of learning potential, the Learning Potential Computerised Adaptive Test (LPCAT), by comparing scores on it to those obtained on the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM). The intent of this endeavour is for findings to lend credence to the use of the LPCAT within the South African context and invariably, the dynamic assessment approach. The study also investigated the influence of demographic factors (race, gender, socio-economic status (SES) and English language proficiency) on the LPCAT, with the intent of verifying its culture-fairness. The study adopted a quantitative approach and the sample included 92 undergraduate students, conveniently drawn across the Pietermaritzburg campus of the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Findings indicated a strong positive relationship between the LPCAT and the SPM, while none of the variables tested had a significant effect on the LPCAT scores, aside from English language proficiency. The study therefore affirmed the construct validity and culture-fairness of the LPCAT with a caution that the language proficiency of the examinee be considered to ensure a culture-fair assessment. Keywords: Dynamic assessment, cognitive assessment, static approach, construct validity, culture-fairness, intelligence, zone of proximal development, learning potential