Abstract
The purpose of the research study is to identify opinions and experience of adolescent learners who are affected by the scourge of alcohol abuse. It is currently surfacing in many Secondary schools in Gauteng Province and it is slowly becoming a critical challenge that is affecting teaching and learning within schools. Adolescents learners abusing alcohol show deviant behaviours in schools, at home and in communities where they live. Academic performance of these learners is deteriorating to a point where some of them drop out of school, and those who do not drop out are performing poorly academically. The study adopts a qualitative research approach, exploratory case study and descriptive research design, capable of being an unravelling the experienced and opinions of the participants through addressing the research questions. A purposive sampling techniques was employed to sample the participants according to the school record book from the School Based Support Team coordinator. The sample includes Grade 10 adolescent learners, who are between18 and 19 years, repeaters, have police record and absenteeism with poor academic performance. The semi-structured individual interview was used to collect data and for data analysed. Ethics were also taken into considerations to assists in guarding the researcher to produce the best ethical complaint research (Lincoln and Guba, 2002). The research study also aims to explore and describes the root causes of alcohol abuse amongst adolescent learners in secondary schools in the Gauteng province. The envisaged outcome of the research is to formulate possible intervention strategies and guidelines for the SBST. The data analysis methodologies and analytical frameworks (such as bio-ecological theory and the alcohol theories) will be integrated into findings for the understanding of why adolescent abuse alcohol? The outcomes of this examination points to the fact that alcohol abuse is primary located at the learners’ family settings and secondarily located at their respective schools. As a result, alcohol abuse is generated due to five major themes as contributors to both extrinsic and intrinsic factors:
a) Theme #1: Weak family structure or Settings; which are generally caused by lack of parental/guardianship supervision, child-head household...
M.Ed.