Educational Guidance

Keywords; what is Guidance? What are Aims of Guidance, Types of Guidance, what is Counseling, what are Aims of Counseling, Types of Counseling, Difference between Guidance and Counseling, Problems of Secondary School Students, Educational Guidance, What is Vocational Guidance, Personal Guidance, Difference between Guidance and Counseling, Behavioral Problems of Secondary School Students?

Guidance

Guidance is as old as civilization.  In the primitive society, elders in the family offered guidance to the young and to persons in distress. It is true that a very minor percentage of our total population is capable of handling its problems independently without the cooperation and guidance of others.  We find that majority of the people do not have either confidence or insight to solve their problems.  There have always been people in the past who need occasional help from older or more experienced associates in meeting with their problems of daily life in the society.

Traditionally, in our society, the leader of the family or the local community was supposed to provide the necessary guidance and advice whenever any member of the family or the community needed it.  With the passage of time, revolutionary and evolutionary changes have taken place in all walks of life. The variety of jobs, high aspirations of the people and vocational specialization have made the work of guidance very difficult.  The head of the family or the leader of local community with the limited knowledge of changed conditions such as globalization, liberalization and consumerism is not capable of providing guidance to the youth of today. 

In the last two decades, guidance movement has spread like a wild-fire throughout the world and generated a  great amount of enthusiasm and zeal among parents, teachers and social workers who have devoted time to explore its feasibility and the utility for general population including school going adolescents. All are convinced that proper provision of guidance services should be made for children at different age levels for the harmonious development of their personalities in the larger interest of the society and the individual.

Meaning of Guidance:

Guidance is an assistance made available by personally qualified and adequately trained men or women to an individual of any age to help them manage their own life activities, develop their own points of view, make their own decisions and carry out their own burden.

Ordinary Meaning:

Ordinary meaning of guidance is help, assistance and suggestions for progress and showing the way.  In that sense is a lifelong process.  Man needs guidance throughout his life. He needs it even from his infancy. When a child is born, the world for him is big, buzzing, blooming confusion and he knows nothing.  He learns everything from the society.  From the mother, he learns how to stand on his feet, from the father, he learns to walk and from the teacher he learns to seek knowledge and education, all learning takes place through guidance.  The society guides the individual to learn, to adjust oneself to the physical and social environment.

To sum up we may say that guidance is a personal help rendered by the society to the individual so as to enable him to adjust to the physical and social environment and to solve the problem of life.

Specific Meaning:

Guidance in our society, is comparatively a new field within the larger and more inclusive field of education, and is used as a technical term as the specific meaning.  It covers the whole spectrum of education, which starts from the birth of the child and continued till his death.  This is a wide meaning of the term, which includes all types of education such as formal, non-formal, informal and vocational etc., which aims to adjust the individual in his environment in an effective way.

In the context    of dynamic inter-personal relationships, Carter V. Good has said in dictionary of education (1959), while defining guidance:

“Guidance is a process of dynamic inter-personal    relationships designed to influence the attitudes and subsequent behavior of person”.

Guidance is a help to the students in making the best possible adjustment to the situations in the educational institutions and in the home and at the same time facilitates the development of all aspects of the personality.  According to Skinner:

“Guidance is a process of helping young person learns to adjust to self, to others and to circumstances”.

Aims of Guidance:

The aims of guidance are the same as those of education in a democratic society like ours.  Just like education, guidance services are also based on the principle that the individual is a crucial importance in an educational institution.  The aims of guidance lend emphasis and strength to the educational program and make it more dynamic, specifically the aims of guidance may be laid as follows from the individual’s point of view:

1)    To help the individual, by his own efforts as far as possible to realize his potentialities and to make his maximum contribution to the society.

2)    To help the individual to meet and solve his own problems and make proper choice and adjustment.

3)    To help the individual to live a well balanced life in all aspects i.e., physical, mental, emotional and social.

4)    To help the individual to lay a permanent foundation for sound and mature adjustment.

From the point of view of the institution t he aims of guidance can be stated as follows:

1)    The guidance program should encourage and stimulate teachers towards better teaching.

2)    The program should aim at providing assistance to teachers in their efforts to understand t heir students.

3)    It should provide teachers with systematic technical assistance and in-service training activities.

4)    It should contribute to the mutual adjustment of children and school.

5)    It should provide for referral of students by teachers.

Types of Guidance:

Guidance is the help given by one person to another in making choices and adjustments and in solving problems.  Guidance functions in all sorts of problem situations may be in educational, vocational, or personal.  Thus, there are different types of guidance programs depending upon the nature of a problem.  It is an interesting phenomenon that educationists and guidance workers have been describing types of guidance in diversified ways.  Many of them do not agree on the number and types of guidance.

W.M. Prestor described six types of guidance:

            (a)       Educational Guidance

            (b)       Vocational Guidance

            (c)       Guidance in Social and Civic activities

            (d)       Guidance in Health and Physical activities

(e)       Guidance in worthy use of leisure time

            (f)        Guidance in character building

Paterson has grouped them into five types:

1.     Educational Guidance

2.     Vocational Guidance

3.     Personal Guidance

4.     Health Guidance

5.     Economic Guidance

If we examine the classification of all the psychologists a common thread passes through mainly three types of guidance, these are:

(i)                Educational Guidance

(ii)              Vocational Guidance

(iii)             Personal Guidance

Educational Guidance:

According to Arthur J. Jones, “Educational Guidance is concerned with assistance given to pupils in their choices and adjustment with relation to schools, curriculum, courses, and school life.”It means that educational guidance is mainly concerned with such problems of education as are faced by students engaged in the study of different subjects for their vocational preparation.  There are various problems of educational guidance, which have been discussed by Brewer in his book “Educational Guidance”.  Brewer is of the view that educational guidance concerned strictly with the pupil’s success in his educational career. Keeping this in view, he stated a number of problems pertaining to educational guidance.  In educational guidance, one of the main problems is o help the individual to make desirable progress in his educational career.  Educational career obviously “the path of learning which has been to be followed by a pupil”.

In order to explain educational guidance activities, Ruth Strong says that it must include the following:

1.     Helping a student to adjust academic load to his ability.

2.     Substituting a more suitable course for one in which the student has failed, instead of requiring him to repeat the subject.

3.     Adopting methods of teaching to the individual in a class.

4.     Scheduling opportunities for counseling students as an intrinsic part of their curriculum.

5.     Placing the responsibility for learning with the students.

6.     Re-organizing student’s real interest and providing opportunities for each student’s participation in the student activities, which unless carried to access seem to have a benefit effect on scholarship.

Vocational Guidance:

            It was for the first time that the term “Guidance” came into prominence along with adjective Vocational.  All have not universally described the term.  In the same way, different scholars have visualized them in different modes.  Some have considered it as “getting a job for the child” while others visualized it as “keeping the individual happy at his work,” while still others considered it as “fitting the occupation to the individual”.  The National Vocational Guidance’ Association of USA in 1924 defined it: “The process of assisting the individual to choose an occupation, prepare for  it, enter upon it and make a progress in it,”  In accordance with this definition, the vocational guidance counselor or the vocational guidance officer is to do everything for the pupil.  This is all against the spirit of Guidance service as in this process the pupil is to be assisted to decide for himself and someone else is not to decide for him.  Keeping all this in view the Association revised the definition in 1937 and said, “Vocational Guidance is the process of assisting the individual to choose an occupation, prepare for it, enters upon it and progress in it.”  It is concerned primarily with helping individual to make decisions and choice involved in planning a future and building career decisions and choices necessarily in affecting satisfactory vocational adjustment.

Personal Guidance:

            Personal guidance is meant to provide assistance to all problems, which do not come within the purview of educational and vocational guidance.  This type of guidance starts from early childhood and continues throughout the life of an individual.  Personal social guidance has become relevant under existing problem conditions.  These day individuals are facing emotional problems, mental ill-health, attitudes towards social evils, changing values towards social system and superstition.  Such problems necessitate the importance of personal guidance.

            Personal guidance may be defined as the assistance offered to the individual to solve his emotional, social, ethical, and moral as well as health problems.  Thus, in the nature of personal guidance we find a concern for individual and social problems, which are not generally dealt with under educational and vocational guidance.

            The purpose of personal guidance is to help the individual in his physical, emotional, social, moral, and spiritual development and adjustment.  As regards physical development; play activities of the children have to be properly organized likewise for emotional development; children have to be provided with opportunities for self-expression.  In matters of social development, children have to plan to get along with others.    

Counseling

Counseling is a process of helping individuals or group of people to gain self-understanding in order to be themselves.  Counseling is a process designed to help clients understand and clarify personal views of their life space, and to learn to reach their self-determined goals through meaningful, well informed choices and a resolution of problems to an emotional or inter-personal nature.  It believes that every human individual has the potential for self-growth, self development and self-actualization.

Aims of Counseling:

Counseling aims at helping the clients understand and accept themselves “as they are”, and Counseling is to help the client to himself.  The main aim of Counseling is to bring about a voluntary change in the client.  For this purpose the Counselor provides facilities to help achieve the desired change or make the suitable choice.

According to Dunsmoor and Miller, the aims of student counseling are:

1)    To give the student information on matters important to success.

2)    To get information about student which will be of help in solving his problems?

3)     To establish a feeling of mutual understanding between student and teacher.

4)    To help the student work out a plan for addressing his difficulties.

5)    To help the student know himself better his interests, abilities, aptitudes and opportunities.

6)    To encourage and develop special abilities and right attitudes.

7)     To inspire successful endeavor toward attainment.

8)    To assist the student in planning for educational and vocational choices.

  

Types of Counseling:

There are five types of counseling as under:

(1)         Directive Counseling:

This type of counseling is directive in its nature.  The counselor plays an important role in it. He / She is the authority which states a judgment over any problem.  In this type of counseling student has not any important role but counselor has problem in his/her main focus.  Student has to cooperate to his/her counselor.  Since it is an authoritative type of counseling so students communicate a little and counselor does most of talking.  In it we cannot see democratic environment.  Student has to work under the counselor not with him.  We can give counseling regarding intellectual aspects in it.

(2)         Non directive Counseling:

In this type of counseling, student is provided a great opportunity for free expression in which he/she could give information to counselor completely. In this type of counseling student works with counselor not under him/her.  It is democratic in behavior where counseling develops further insight, a more complete and accurate understanding of the problem.  Since student plays a central role in it so we can also say it client centered counseling.

(3)   Eclectic Counseling:

In this type of counseling, counselor offers many alternative solutions of a problem from which student could select the most appropriate one.

Counselor has the need of individual in his/her vie at the time of counseling.  Counselor has the effect of counseling on student in his/her mind.

A teacher should use this type of counseling according to need and nature of students as well as problems.

(4)         Individual Counseling:

This is referred to as one to one counseling.  It occurs between the professionally trained counselor (Therapist) and his client (Counselee).  The goal of this is to help the client to understand himself, clarify and direct his thought, in order to make a worthwhile decision.  Through this, client’s problems are alleviated. 

(5)         Group Counseling:

This is a counseling session that takes place between the professionally trained counselor and a group of people. Number of this group should not be more than seven, or at least ten, in order to have a cohesive group and an effective well controlled counseling session.  Members of the group are clients/counselees whose tasks or problems that are meant for resolution are similar.

Difference between Guidance and Counseling

Writers in most cases find it difficult to distinguish between the two words. According to Shertzer and Stone (1976), the attempt to differentiate between guidance and counseling has not met with any measure of success because it is difficult to make distinctions between the two terms. On this basis of similarities, the terms could be interpreted to mean the same thing because in terms of people’s welfare the two words are out to achieve the same goals. Although they are both educational services but contextually, they can be differentiated.  The table below shows some differences between the two terms:

S.No.	Guidance	Counseling
1.	Counselor directed. Locus of Control remains with the Tutor (Counselor).	Student (client) directed. Locus of control moves towards student (client). This means the client is more involved at every stage in counseling.
2.	The Tutor (Counselor) is information/advice giver.	The Tutor (Counselor) is a facilitator/enabler. He is not the decision maker.
3.	Counselor determines objectives and methods.	Client and Counselor jointly negotiate a contract about agenda and methodology.
4.	Assessment/diagnosis and evaluation is in the domain of the counselor.	Client participates in assessing needs and evaluating progress.
5.	Concern is with decision (decision seen at product). The way it is reached is not regarded as especially significant.	Concern is with the process of decision making. Understanding how decision is reached is as important as the content of the decision.
6.	Learning is seen as specific to the problem in question.	Learning is seen as transferable.  What is learnt in one context is seen utilizable in another e.g., the learning of a skill such as breaking down problem into its component parts.
7.	Feelings are not regarded as important in learning.	Learning is seen as an emotional as well as a cognitive process.  This means the behavior and the thinking are important.
8.	Learning about a subject is not seen as involving self-discovery.	Learning about a subject is seen as involving a process of learning about self.

Problems of Secondary School Students

·        The main problem to cope is the poor passion for the job demonstrated by the students involved in initial vocational training, which is caused by their lack of motivation when they had to choose the training career, mostly because of guiding mistakes.  Sometime the pupils receive a wrong guidance.  The causes appeared to be linked with the criteria of evaluation of the possibilities of the students, which are mainly based on the progress at school of the students.  When the students finish the lower secondary school, they usually know in which school they should go, but they do not know which profession they can do.

·        It is difficult to interact with the students for the guidance operators of the upper secondary schools because it is difficult to find and develop specific tools for guidance settled for each target of students.  With the students with special needs the guidance plays an important role as they are moving towards the transition to the vocational education.  The guidance at comprehensive school gets often continuation in form of the preparatory education lasting from one year to even two years. Otherwise, it is difficult to organize individual meetings with students.  There is not school time scheduled for this purpose.

·        It is hard to organize guidance in the classrooms because the expressed needs vary from student to student.  For this reason, it is not easy to involve each student in the guidance activities.  Every partner expressed a common problem concerning the different level of participation and motivation of the students of each class.  While some students participate to the proposed activities, another part of the class is not interested.  Furthermore, the pedagogical approach, used in the individual meetings, cannot be used in the classroom.

·        The students do not have enough information about: the training profiles, the risks of the professions and the criteria of selection of the job.  They have a wrong perception of some job because many professions are subject to stereotypes and prejudices.  The trainers do not guide girls and boys in the same way.  They do not encourage them when they would like to choose a job which is made traditionally by the other sex.  The students reject guidance because it is difficult to understand the offer and the channels of guidance.  There is a difficulty to know the services of guidance of the territory and in some area of the partnership there is a poor diffusion of them.

·        The students find difficult to imagine what they want to do in their future because they do not know their personal wishes/attitudes, having a poor attitude to analyze themselves.  They do not will to play the game because the tools/instruments used in the guidance activities are not very effective.  The guidance with special needs students faces similar challenges.  More intensive, personalized and holistic approach to guidance and assistance in the second transition would carry the student to the next level i.e., to vocational studies.  The risk in the transition phase is that students (mainstream or special needs students) drop out entirely from school.

·        The families do not stimulate their pupils and sometimes they are not interested in the school progress of their sons.  The problems analyzed in the guidance sector have a strong influence also in the didactic field, analyzed by the partners but not included in the partnership activities which focus mainly in guidance.  The poor passion for the job makes more difficult to involve the students in the classroom and laboratories activities, improving the difficulties to make classes for the trainers. In order to understand who and how many people might benefit directly and indirectly form the results of the project, we can consider them divided by countries.

Behavioral Problems of Secondary School Students

Most human problems arise from life situations and significantly affect the development of individuals.  There are various reasons of behavior problems among the students. There may be hereditary, environmental factors which include home environment, defective discipline, unwanted home atmosphere, school environment, etc.  Other factors are physical abnormalities, adolescent period, and poverty of parents and lack of suitable recreational facilities.

 The following are the some common behavioral problems of Secondary School Students:

1-    The student is attracted towards anti-social elements.

2-    He fails in the examination.

3-    He shows frequent nervousness.

4-    He does not show interest in his studies.

5-    The students make false excuses in the school.

6-    The student remains absent in the school.

7-    He is shy by nature.

8-    He is cut off from the group.

9-    The pupil may project emotional disturbances through nail biting, head scratching, thumb sucking, etc.

10-                       Truancy

11-                       Stealing

12-                       Cheating

13-                       Bullying

14             Lying