Abstract
Ph.D. (Education)
Academic failure and exclusion from further study in higher education institutions are an unpleasant fact for many students in our current higher education climate in South Africa. Academically excluded students face the reality of impaired future expectations and perspectives, and for many the involuntary transitions go hand in hand with a range of negative emotions and trauma experiences. Excluded students face an uncertain future, and they need to identify alternative educational and career options, whilst dealing with negative experiences and feelings such as failure, disappointment, inferiority, depression, anxiety, and anger. These students also must deal with the burden of informing their parents and communities of their failures as well as deal with the financial consequences of their failed studies.
Academically excluded students are thus often left without support to adequately deal with their situations, to understand their situations and to reconsider their future options in a sensible manner. The result is that they might experience diminished future perspectives and difficulties in addressing their circumstances in a resilient manner. The researcher, as an educational psychologist previously practicing in a higher education institution, was therefore concerned about the individual students that were refused permission to continue their higher education studies and being excluded from the higher education institution for any other similar academic programme. The research questions that rose from this problem was: How do students experience being academically excluded at a higher education institution and what can be done to facilitate the mental health of academically excluded students during the time of transitioning out of their institution of study?
The main objective of this study was to understand academically excluded students’ experiences, to describe a conceptual framework, psycho-educational programme and guidelines to implement a psycho-educational programme to facilitate their mental health...