A psycho-educational assessment of adolescents' perceptions on peer counseling

M.Ed. (Psychology of Education)Adolescence is a phase in human development that is synonymous with change, namely physical, emotional and cognitive changes. Peer groups start playing an important role in the lives of adolescents. Subsequently peer groups can be considered as a possible intervention strategy to assist adolescents through this period in their lives. A possible solution to the problems adolescents are experiencing could be to train their peers as counselors. Peer counselors are thus adolescents who have been trained by professionals with basic counseling skills. namely listening, summarizing and how to do referrals. Peer counseling systems exist in other countries, with much success. The researcher was interested to find out what the impact of peer counseling will be in II South African context, in a specific school. Thus the impact of peer counseling in a specific socioeconomic community was explored. This specific community can be viewed as a microcosm of the South African community at large