Name Keith T Magaka

Reg# H160203W

Department IME

Course Code TEC 301

Title Assignment 2

Question
Discuss any 4 psychosocial factors that affect the Higher Education
learner and explain the strategies that a Higher Education
facilitator can employ to address each of the identified factors.
INTRODUCTION
There is a growing interest in factors, which predict academic performance. This interest is
Directed at creating, and improving already existing interventions and support services for
students who are at risk of having academic problems (McKenzie & Schweitzer, 2001).
Learners in Higher Education level incur several challenges that affect their learning in a
negative way; these include social, psychological, psychosocial or even economic factors.
Psychological factors are the mental factors that assist or prevent learners from being in the
right state of mind so that they can perform well. Economic factors which may include lack of
finance that might result in a Higher Education learner failing to proceed with their studies
because they will not be finances to pay. Psychosocial factors are however a combination of
psychological and social factors and of which social factors include general factors at the level
of human society concerned with social structure and social processes that impinge on the
individual whilst psychological factors include individual-level processes and meanings that
influence mental states (Stansfield & Rasul, 2007

DEFINITION OF TERMS
Psychological factors: These are thoughts, feelings and other cognitive characteristics that
affect attitude, behaviour and other functions of the human mind.
Depression: A severe feeling of gloom and dejection.
Low self-esteem: A feeling of unworthiness, incompetence and lack of self-worth.
Homesickness: A feeling of longing of ones home during periods of absence from it.
Conscientiousness: Willingness to thoroughly perform ones duties.
Motivation: Reasons for acting or behaving in a particular manner.
Social factors: Factors that affect the lifestyle of learners such as wealth, religion or family.

Psychosocialol factors affecting higher education learners include depression, low self-esteem,
homesickness and motivation.

LOW SELF-ESTEEM
Self-esteem is the individuals positive or negative attitude toward the self as a totality
(Rosenberg, Schooler, Schoenbach & Rosenberg, 1995). Grant-Vallone et al. found that
students who reported high levels
of self-esteem showed better social and academic adjustment when they examined key factors
contributing to the social and academic adjustment and institutional commitment/attachment
of students who were financially disadvantaged students. Fear and anxiety is very common in
students with low self-esteem. They constantly feel inadequate, incompetent and undeserving.
Low self-esteem is also closely associated with panic attacks. These usually occur when the
student with low self-esteem does something that they deem to be stupid and think others have
noticed. . Study has shown that students with low self-esteem rarely ask for help as they think
that this makes them look weak and inadequate. Low self-esteem is also closely related to
hypersensitivity. This is when an individual assumes that other people see them as inadequate,
are always laughing at them, do not respect them and that other people want to take advantage
of them. Lack of assertiveness is also common among students with low self-esteem. They are
afraid of upsetting others to the extent that they withhold their feelings. They end up becoming
passive. Poor relationships are also common among students with low self-esteem.
Relationships are important for success in any environmental setting. All this reduces a
students desire to learn, ability to focus on education, engagement in both academic and extra-
curricular activities as well as interaction with other students thereby negatively affecting
higher education learners, contributing to poor academic performance.
Lack of confidence is a major symptom of low self-esteem. To address low self- esteem issues
in students, educational facilitators can genuinely praise students for their work. Study shows
that students have the ability to distinguish between real compliments and insincere/phony
compliments. Praising students for their accomplishments has been shown to boosts student.
Little self-esteem in learners could leave learners feeling defeated or depressed, leading leaders
to make bad choices, fall into destructive relationships, or fail to live up to their full potential.
A learner with low self-esteem can have less desire to learn and the ability to focus and take
up risks and challenges is low as well. As a facilitator in Higher Education, working with such
learners has challenges because the facilitator can fail to restore self-esteem especially to
learners at that level.
However to mitigate with the issue of low self-esteem in learners, a facilitator can interact with
their students during their normal courses. This can be attained by realising the full potential
of a learner and hence nurture his self-esteem through a continual process of encouragement
and support and at the same time expressing confidence that he will improve in the areas that
he does not perform well.
HOMESICKNESS
Appetite changes, having sleeping difficulties, feeling like crying, nausea, dizziness and
headaches are some of the physical symptoms of homesickness. Mentally, homesickness
causes anxiousness, withdrawal and lack of concentration. Statistics show that (50-70)
percentage of students who leave their homes to attend college education in other towns are at
some point affected by homesickness. Homesick students have difficulty managing their lives.
The ability to establish new friendships is negatively affected by homesickness. International
students may also have difficulty adjusting to a new geographical area as the environment and
the weather conditions may be different from those in the former area of residence of the
student. Adjusting to a new schedule can also prove to be challenging for higher education
students who are homesick. Obsessive thoughts and behaviours may also arise due to
homesickness. Unhappiness, social problems and behavioural problems are also common for
homesick students.
To deal with homesickness, education facilitators should encourage students to participate in
campus activities. Creating a variety of clubs can be helpful as it promotes students to occupy
them-self with creative work. Counselling personnel should also be available for students who
may need them. Education facilitators should also allow visits from family and friends of their
students. On arrival, students should also be allowed to walk around the campus as well as the
surrounding neighbourhood to allow the students to familiarize with the new environment. This
reduces homesickness as students begin to feel like they fit into their new environment.
Students should also be encouraged to stay in touch with their family and friends.
DEPRESSION
Depression is an important psychological factor affecting higher education learners. Statics
show that depression is the major cause of suicide in college students. Withdrawal from
socialising, feeling inadequate, self-loathing, constant pessimism, irritability, confusion and
sadness are common effects of depression. Depression is also known to be associated with diet
changes. Depressed students sometimes have difficulty sleeping and suffer from anxiety.
Physically, depression causes digestive problems, general body weakness, fatigue and immune
system vulnerability.
In order to try to combat depression college and university students should be taught to manage
stress rather than to try to eliminate it. Managing stress can also be beneficial as it has
physiological effects such as adrenaline release. Adrenaline enables students to deal with their
daily challenges more effectively. Perceived stress may cause students to lose interest in the
course or subject thus causing truancy. Due to perceived stress students loose concentration
thus causes active learning to be rendered and in the long run the process of learning is
compromised. Perceived stress also causes students to stop doing educative work caused by
overthinking that will be occurring.

To resolve the issue of perceived stress the facilitator has to set goals for a particular class that
are not to high it tends to give relieve most students of perceived stress by fact that they would
have met some goals in the given course or subject thus raising up morale.

MOTIVATION
The amount of effort a person applies on a certain objective directly depends on how motivated
the individual is to achieve the objective. Lack of motivation therefore results in students losing
interest in education. This leads to poor performance of students in both academic and
extracurricular activities. Students become less motivated when they believe that their efforts
will not result in improvement, do not see the value of the course they are studying and when
students have other priorities that compete for their time and attention. Therefore, for a Higher
Education facilitator, lack of motivation as a psychological factor that affects leaners could
engage group work as a learning process to motivate those learners who tend to be motivated
by interaction with their colleagues.
There are two ways that a learner can be motivated with; these are; extrinsic and intrinsic. The
individuals outside surrounding and specific tasks determines Extrinsic whilst intrinsic
motivation can be found within the individual since the task can be viewed as valuable. Thus
a facilitator could allow open discussions in the class such that those learners who perform best
through participating and giving contributions can be motivated as well. Furthermore, Higher
Education learners should be motivated to make personal investment; the facilitator could
attain this by giving learners challenging work to do.
Lastly, cognitive development, which is a field of study in psychology focusing on a childs
development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources and other aspects of
brain development and cognitive psychology, compared to an adult's point of view. Generally,
cognition refers to how learners think, pay attention, learn and remember. A learner in Higher
Education the way learners think and learn can be developed with their surroundings and the
environment in which they are learning. For example if a learner is in a technologically
advanced environment, their mind set and way of learning is affected accordingly.
The facilitator, however as a way to mitigate for this psychosocial factor could improve the
learning environment to develop the mind-set of the learners.
CONCLUSION
From the discussion above it can be noted that psychosocial factors have a great effect in a
learner in Higher Education, but the facilitator can improvise to cater for the learners who might
possibly be affected by these factors.

REFERENCES
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http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/untreated-depression-effects#1
2. How motivation affects learning and behaviour (2014, April 30). Retrieved from
https://www.education.com/reference/article/motivation-affects-learning-behavior/
3. Homesickness can affect anyone (2008, June 26). Retrieved from
https://www.nus.org.uk/en/advice/freshers-and-settling-in/homesickness-can-affect-
anyone/
4. Psychological aspects that affect the learning process (2016, March 09). Retrieved from
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/psychological-aspects-affect-learning-process
5. Psychological factors that affect student performance (2013, October 29). Retrieved
from https://prezi.com/3ipgrtrw0me6/psychological-factors-that-affect-student-
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