The impact of group counseling program for secondary school students academically at risk on their academic motivation levels

This research was carried to investigate the impact of Solution Focused Brief Therapy Based Group Counseling Program on academic motivation levels of secondary school students who were academically at-risk. The research was conducted in a private boarding middle school in the 2nd-semester of 2018 -2019 educational year. Eigtheen sixth gade students, nine in the experimental group with five boys and four girls and nine in the control group with the same gender distribution participated in the study. Academic Motivation Scale developed by Vallerand and colleques (1989) and adapted by Yurt and Bozer (2015) was used to measure the motivation levels of the students academically at-risk. Academically at-risk students were nominated according to the grade passing regulations of the school. Solution Focused Brief Therapy Based Group Counseling Program designed by the researcher was conducted in six weekly sessions which were lasting for 55 minutes to the experimental group. No program was conducted for the control groups. The research design was quasi-experimental with pretest and posttest and control group. Mann-Whitney U tests and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests were utilized for analysis of the data. According to the findings of the data analyzed, no significant change was recorded after execution of the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Based Group Counseling Program on academic motivation levels of the students academically at-risk. Increase in academic achievement of the students was recorded. The findings were evaluated according to the current studies and existing literature. Keywords: Academic Motivation, Academic Achievement, Adolescence, Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Academically at-risk