As outlined earlier help seeking approach and help seeking type are different entities. Help seeking approach is a more underlying aspect of participants‟ help seeking, whereas help seeking type is reflective of participants‟
behaviour in the videoed learning support sessions. „Help seeking approach‟
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is a stable aspect that the participants brought to the sessions, whereas „help seeking type‟ varied as the learning support sessions unfolded for each participant.
Relationship
Figures 5.1, 5.8, 5.11 and 5.15 have the same structure. In each case an aspect of the overall structure of a help seeking session either produces an executive and executive/instrumental help seeking type or all four types. The overall structure can be observed in Figure 5.17. This table also includes aspects such as mastery and performance goals, which I am equating with a wish for „basic skill development‟ and a wish for „help with an assignment‟ respectively. However, mastery and performance goals were not measured in this research, but aspects that seemed to relate to them were elicited and the same help seeking types occurred. This is an argument based on „reverse engineering‟ (Pinker, 2009).
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Figure 5.17 Relationship between needs, goals, views, approaches and help seeking type used in help seeking sessions Needing to improve basic skills
Instrumental/executive
Instrumental Executive
Executive/instrumental
Needing help dealing with academic problem Mastery Goal Orientation
Performance Goal Orientation Viewing help seeking as
positive
Viewing help seeking as having cost
Dependent help seeking approach
Independent help seeking approach
Viewing self as a help seeker Viewing self as someone who
would not seek initially
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Each of the aspects that produce the same type of help seeking could
possibly be classified together. Needing to improve basic skills, viewing help as positive, viewing oneself as one who would not necessarily initially seek help, and dependent approaches to help seeking, all produced executive and executive/instrumental types of help seeking. At first glance, these aspects could all be seen as manifestations of dependent help seeking; however, some participants displayed various combinations of these in their help seeking. Moreover, needing help with specific academic problems, viewing help seeking as having costs, viewing oneself as a help seeker and
independent approaches to help seeking produced all four types of help seeking. These aspects could all be viewed as an independent approach to help seeking.
Consequently, dependent and independent approaches to help seeking seem to link the disparate aspects of motivation, views of self as a help seeker and views of help seeking. So, if a student has a dependent approach to help seeking then it is possible that he or she will exhibit the majority of the other three aspects that are related to it; that is viewing oneself as someone who would not initially seek help, seeing help as positive, and wanting to improve their basic skills. However, this does not mean that help seekers would exclusively exhibit these aspects. They may also exhibit some aspects from the other approach. For example P4, a dependent help seeker saw help seeking as positive, felt the need to improve her study skills, yet always saw herself as being a help seeker. Additionally, P3, an independent help seeker saw her need as dealing with an academic problem, saw help seeking as having costs but did not view herself as a help seeker initially. Furthermore, P2, a dependent help seeker, at different times reported that help seeking was positive, and also had costs.
It seems clear that dependence and independence do not rely on the reasons that participants reported for seeking help, but seem to be related to the type of help they did seek. So, for example seven out of the eight participants reported that they saw themselves as help seekers, and this did not rely on the approach that they took to their help seeking. This may have been
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because all eight participants in this study were seeking help, and were confident enough to allow their help seeking session to be videoed.
All four dependent help seekers saw having help as positive, whereas this was only the case for two independent help seekers. However, two dependent and two independent help seekers saw help seeking as having costs.
Perhaps dependent help seekers reported help seeking as positive because of the affective nature of dependency; that is, if they are asked to work alone they become anxious. Having help alleviates their anxiety. Conversely, independent help seekers may be able to work alone, as long they feel that their goals are being met.
Two out of the four independent help seekers reported that they did not always see themselves as help seekers initially, whereas none of the
dependent help seekers reported this. Additionally, independence seems to relate to participants seeking more help for academic problems rather than basic skills, whereas dependent participants sought help for both equally. Dependent help seekers in this study sought executive and
executive/instrumental help more often than independent help seekers, who used all four help seeking types. Since independent help seeking seems to relate strongly to the achievement of individual goals and needs, and the external environment is negotiated in terms of the achievement of these goals, needs and desires then the use of all four approaches to achieve this would seem reasonable. In contrast, more dependent help seekers may have different aims; that is to facilitate strategies to strengthen attachments to others (Bornstein, 2005, p.17) by allowing the tutor to run the learning support session and achieve the tutor‟s aims for the dependent participant. In this case executive and executive/instrumental help seeking may help the participant achieve this.
The relationship between participant approaches to help seeking and help seeking type is clearer than between motivation and help seeking approach and type. It could be thought that because of the similar arrangements to the diagrams between needs, approaches, views and help seeking type that each
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aspect of the needs and views could be categorised as either dependent or independent; that is as a help seeking approach. For example, in Figure 5.17 each of the aspects „needing help with an academic problem‟, „viewing help as having costs‟, and „viewing oneself as a help seeker‟ related to all four help seeking types. This was also the case with participants who exhibited an independent approach to their help seeking.
Consequently, each of the first three aspects could be seen as a facet of an independent approach to help seeking because each represented itself in terms of all four help seeking types. Similarly, a dependent approach could be linked to „needing to improve basic skills‟, „viewing help seeking as positive‟ and „viewing oneself as someone who would not seek help initially‟. However, the participants in this study belie this by providing too many counter
examples for this to be an adequate description of the help seeking
relationship. Rather, help seeking approaches appear to be a background within which motivations and help seeking types sit. In order to examine this further, it is necessary to look at the composition of the help seeking that occurred in the videoed learning support sessions.