An Iteractive qualitative analysis of educational psychology students' self-efficacy beliefs in career counselling

Abstract

This study focuses on educational psychology students’ self-efficacy beliefs in career counselling. The research was conducted in the Department of Educational Psychology of the University of Pretoria. An Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) as described by Northcutt and McCoy (2004) was done. The constituency comprised seven students who have provided career counselling to at least one client.</p.> The IQA approach to research postulate that the ideal in qualitative research is to create a process that invite participants to produce data while minimizing the effect of the research process on the content. With the IQA approach the participants in the research have a remarkable degree of freedom and are empowered to generate and analyze their own data with minimal external influence. The role of the researcher in this process is to facilitate the process and to teach participants the process while guiding them to generate and analyze their own data. The central assumption in IQA, namely that the people closest to the phenomenon are in the best position to report about the phenomenon was confirmed by the researcher. The main findings of the study indicate that self-efficacy develops through formal and personal development. The identification of possible areas of growth and how this is communicated by the supervisor is fundamental for both formal and personal development processes of students. A positive cooperative developmental approach during feedback sessions is conducive to the growth of the career counsellor. The importance of experiential learning and modelling as a means to develop self-efficacy was confirmed by the research participants. The reduction of anxiety with the increase of self-efficacy was reported as a very important benefit of increased self-efficacy.