The Effect of Group Counseling Program on Dealing with School Exhaustion of 7th Grade Students

Abstract

In this research, the effect of Group Counseling Program on coping with school exhaustion was investigated. The study was conducted with 7^th grade students attending Private Bogazici Educational Center in Bakirkoy, Istanbul during 2016-2017 academic year. “the School Burnout Scale for the Second Level of Primary Education”, which was developed by Aypay (2011) was used to assess school exhaustion levels. Sixteen (8 males and 8 females) out of 96 students with high school exhaustion levels and willing to participate in the study was selected randomly. 8 of them were randomly assigned as experimental group (4 males and 4 females) and the other 8 students were randomly assigned as control group. In this research, pre-test post-test control group design was used. In the study, group counseling was applied to the experimental group for 8 weeks and no treatment was given to the control group. For the analysis of the data, Mann-Whitney-U test was used for intra-group comparison; and Wilcoxon test was used for inter-group comparison. As a result, it was found that group counseling program was effective in decreasing school exhaustion; however, it was not effective in family originated exhaustion and school inadequacy, which are sub-dimensions of school exhaustion. The results showed that there was a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of total exhaustion scores. Obtained data was interpreted and recommendations were given in the scope of the literature.

Keywords: school exhaustion, group counseling, 7^th grade students