Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Psychology)
Time of academic assessment can bring about high levels of stress and anxiety which
could have an impact on the performance of students. This can mostly be attributed
to the fear appeal messages used by faculty and educational management, as a form
of prevention of failure or encouragement, but which ultimately leads to an increase
of the level of anxiety experienced by the student and lead to fear of assessment.
Research has indicated how peers influence the construction of meaning (Leal, 1992)
and how knowledge can be gained, changed and reconstructed through social
interaction (Leal, 1992). The negotiation of new meaning can be achieved through
interaction and talking with peers.
This study aims to investigate how the theories of peer interaction and collaborative
learning can be utilised and applied in a group counselling conversation, for the
purpose of creating new understanding or changed understanding. The focus of the
study is the use of talk to share an understanding of the fear of assessment.
An interpretivist qualitative paradigm within and ethnomethodological research design
was followed for this study. This allowed the researcher to provide a detailed report
and discussion of data that was captured within a natural setting, observing and
recording the actions of the participants. Data was collected through a video-recording
of a solution-focused brief counselling session. A verbatim transcription of this
recording was analysed on Clayman and Gill’s four levels of Conversational Analysis.
The findings of this study indicated that group counselling conversations do not follow
a predetermined organisational sequence. This would be expected from SFBT as the
participants play an equal role in the control of the session and creation of meaning.
The interruptions and overlap of talk in this study positively contributed to the
conversation as it served to enhance the level of agreement, acknowledgement, and...