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
