GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING

GUIDANCE

Guidance is defined in so many ways by different authors, educators and counsellors. According to Jones, Guidance involves personal help given by someone designed to assist the person to decide where he wants to go, what he wants to do, or how we can best accomplish his physical, social, intellectual, and personal assets and liabilities as confronted by particular situations, so that he can make wise and intelligent choices and embark upon suitable courses of action. On the other hand, Crow and Crow defined it as assistance made available to a person of any age so that he can manage his own life activities, develop his own point of view, make his own decisions and carry out his burdens.,

Philosophical/ Legal Bases of Guidance and Counselling

The 1987 Constitutions states that “all educational institutions shall inculcate patriotism and nationalism , foster love humanity ,respect for human rights , appreciation of the role of national heroes in the historical development of the country, teach the rights and duties of citizenship, strengthen ethical and spiritual values, develop moral character and personal discipline , encourage critical and creative thinking , broaden scientific and technological knowledge , and promote vocational efficiency .”(Art. XIV Sec. 3(2).

Education Act of 1982 or B.P. 232 provides that the ‘students have the right to school guidance and counseling services for making decisions and selecting the alternatives in the fields of work suited to their potentialities.”

Purpose/Aims of Guidance

 

     Help the individual achieve up to the level of his own capacity, gain personal satisfaction, and make his maximum contribution to society.

     Assist the individual to solve his own problems as they arise.

     Assist the individual to live a well-balanced life in all aspects.

     Assist teachers in their efforts to understand students

     Offer teachers systematic in-service training

     Provide for referrals of students by teachers.


Different Aspects of Guidance (Brewer)

 

·        Educational guidance (in school, guidance focuses more on personal, educational and vocational aspects)

·        Vocational guidance

·        Religious guidance

·        Guidance for home relationship

·        Guidance for citizenship

·        Guidance for leisure and recreation

·        Guidance in personal well-being

·        Guidance in right doing

·        Guidance in thoughtfulness and cooperation

·        Guidance in wholeness and cultural action

·        Community service guidance

·        Health guidance

 

Characteristics of a Good Guidance


     Guidance is an integral part of the total education program of the school.

     Reaches all members of the academic community

     Provides for careful interpretation and dissemination of personal data to pupils, teachers, school officials, and parents.

     Provides for coordinated activity and effort.

     Recognizes and utilizes the role of the homeroom teacher.

     Provides adequate records, personnel and housing of materials

     Provides for a continues in service education for teachers

     Counselor’s relationship with counsel should be continues


Basic Principles of Guidance (Crow and Crow)

 

     Every aspect of the person’s personality constitutes a significant factor of his attitudes and behavior.

     Individual differences must be recognized

     The function of guidance is to help a person formulate and accept stimulating worthwhile, and attainable goals of behavior.

     Guidance should be a continuous process

     Guidance should be extended to all persons of all ages

     Parents and teachers should have guidance responsibilities.

     Specific guidance problems should be referred to qualified persons

     Guidance program should be suited to individual and community needs

     Periodic appraisal should be made of the guidance program

     Programs of individual evaluation and research must be conducted

     Guidance workers need special preparation and training

     Guidance workers should observe a code of ethics

     One staff member of the school should be responsible for the guidance of each student

     Counselor should be acquainted with all available guidance agencies/services

     Guidance activities are of two kinds: group and individual; not all workers are competent in both

     Guidance is concerned with prevention, not cure

     Guidance is counsel, not compulsion

     Disciplining pupils is not a part of guidance


Principle Underlying Guidance Work (Humphrey)

 

     Take time to solve problems and make decisions.

     Let the counselee develop his own insight

     Consider most individuals as average, normal persons.

     Problems arise from situations

     Problems are interrelated

     Integration of effort is essential

     Guidance must be an integral part of the organization

 

Student Personnel Services (SPS)

 

– are those specific assistance which the school makes available to the pupil as part of its total program of personnel work.

 

These include:

1.          Admission services – assist students for the furtherance of interests, aptitudes, and needs.

2.          Scholastic orientation – acquaint students and parents of the school requirements for compliance and its ability to satisfy students’ personal, social, vocational, religious and scholastic needs

3.          Attendance services – promotes the daily presence of students and prevent truancy and dropouts.

4.          Financial services – aims at assisting needy students so that they may remain in school or at orienting them to budget their funds.

5.          Housing services – intends to help students obtain living facility conducive to furtherance of educational and personal goals

6.          Food service – provides well-balanced meal in school cafeteria

7.          Health service – aims at preserving and maintaining students’ physical well-being

8.          Remedial service – intends to render special assistance to those students having deficiencies and difficulties in some subjects

9.          Guidance service – offers personal help to students to aid them in solving special problems and fulfilling their potential 

10.      Psychological service – gives assistance to students who manifest mental and emotional disturbance

11.      Spiritual service – provides opportunities for spiritual and moral development

12.      Recreational service – enriches leisure time activities in non-scholastic interest or co- curricular activities.

13.      Vocational orientation – assist in attaining an adequate understanding of the world of work and in securing self-fulfilling position in that world

14.      Coordinating service – aims at harmonizing and synchronizing efforts of the administrators, teachers, guidance workers, and staff to achieve the goals of the educational system.

15.      Guidance Services – consist of identifiable activities concerned with assisting individuals to become self-directing in making and carrying out essential choices, plans and adjustments. These include:

16.      Individual Inventory service – designed to gather all reliable data, information and records and to assemble and compile these materials for their functional use.

17.      Informative service – makes available to pupils or students kinds of information not ordinarily provided through the instructional programs. Include vocational or educational choices or in personal and social adjustment.

18.      Counseling service – services offered not only by the counselor but also teachers and administrators.

19.      Placement service – helps the child secure the most effective relationship to a job or the next step in his educational or personal program. It may be educational, vocational and curricular in character.

20.      Follow-up service – is concerned with what happens to pupils while in school or after they have left school.

 

Methods and Techniques of Guidance

 

The efficient guidance worker tries to get an accurate picture of the child/student she helps. Specific areas include: General Information, Health, achievement, aptitudes, Personal Adjustment, interest, Plans for the future and Family Background. Techniques for gathering information about these areas are:

 

1.          Administrative records contain facts about each student’s background, health and school history.

2.          Informal teacher reports can supply helpful guidance information gathered from observation.

3.          Interviews with students and parents enrich information gathered from other sources.

4.          Autobiographies may be required of intermediate pupils and above

5.          Use of standardized tests reveal aptitudes and other characteristics which can serve as guide in improving the instructional program

6.          Conducting survey through the use of questionnaire can cover a wide area of research and quite a number of respondents

7.          Observation should be conducted by the teacher and the counselor in and out of the classroom

8.          Anecdotal record should be prepared by the teacher on significant incident or event that happened to the student in school

9.          Case study is the most comprehensive and thorough technique of gathering information about a person with a serious problem

10.      Case conference is a cooperative conference devoted to the intensive study of an individual

 

Role of the Teacher in Guidance (Lee and Pallone)

 

1.          Know each student

2.          Understand each student

3.          Empathize with each student

4.          Be warm to each student

5.          Accept each student completely

6.          Establish a friendly, permissive classroom climate.

7.          Give each student the freedom both to be and to become

8.          Utilize discipline to help each student grow and develop.

 

Three aspects of discipline:

 

A.          Prophylactic – consist in the establishment of classroom conditions in which the pupil is assisted to self-actualization

B.          Remedial – involves assistance which helps in overcoming weaknesses and developing strengths.

C.          Punitive – include those functions intended forcibly to induce the student to modify his behavior

9.          Make each lesson learner-centered.

10.      Plan lessons jointly with students

11.      Be alert to guidance “openings” during the course of the lesson

12.      Foster the development of positive attitude

13.      Assist each student to improve his study habits

14.      Individualize teaching or adjust lessons/activities to individual differences

15.      Utilize group techniques.

16.      Serve as model

 

Kinds of Teacher/Parent Conference

 

1.    Direct contact would include face to face interviews and counseling; while indirect would include the child as the intermediary, the written note or telephone conversation.

2.    Scheduled conference would include the uniform system of conference for all parents at a definite limited time. Unscheduled conference would include incidental school visitation, sometimes on invitation by the teacher and at other times spontaneous and informal.

3.    In-school contact would include committee or child-study groups, parent- teacher meetings or special programs and assemblies


Principles of Organization and Administration of Guidance Program

 

     Prepare a clear out statement of objectives of the program of guidance services 

     Determine precisely the functions of the guidance services program

 

     Assign specific duties to those who are to participate in the program

     Give each person assigned to a task in guidance services authority commensurate with his responsibility

     Setup a form organization that is best suited to the school’s purposes, personnel, size, financial resources, and other characteristics.

 

Guidance and Discipline

 

Discipline means instructing the child in the ethical principles (right from wrong) why or Why not, and How to decide and act according to principles. Discipline imposes external standards of control on the child’s conduct; but the end goal of discipline is to motivate the child to internalize self-discipline.

Classification of Child-Rearing Practices

1.    Authoritarian – views the child as a mini-adult which sets unrealistic expectations and goals for the child. This involves psychological manipulation and/or punishment. Authoritarian teachers/parents undermine values education because they:

     criticize and find fault

     shame, belittle, and tease negatively

     nag and complain, believing only in their own opinion

     treat the child with annoyance and impatience

     communicate with anger, sarcasm, shouts, screams and a condescending tone without explanations or reasoning.

     dominate, impose, pressure, demands and are over bearing

     threaten, intimidate, punish, reward or bribe frequently

     provoke and antagonize

     establish overly rigid rules and limitations

     may spank or use other corporal punishments


2.    Permissive- allows the child to grope through situations too difficult for him to cope with no guidance and control. This type of discipline works against values education because teachers:

 

·        overindulge, spoil, pamper

·        give immediate gratification and let the child have his own way

·        overprotect and shelf from work and responsibilities

·        encourage dependency behavior by doing for the child what he can do for himself

·        avoid conflicts, ignore or let things pass without teaching or guiding

 

3.    Ambivalent style occurs when:

 

·        opposite or conflicting values exist in the parent/teacher himself

·        consistency in good child-rearing practices begin to demand daily heroic effort of the parent/teacher, i.e when teachers fluctuate between using authoritarian and permissive techniques

·        one set of moral values is followed in contrast with the other

·        parental moral values do not coincide with the values of other authority figures or persons who influence the child, e.g teacher, peers, religious leaders, entertainers, political figures.

 

4.    Role modeling – role is the part assumed by anyone and modeling is the art of one who acts as a standard of imitation. Parental or teacher modeling is that very special craft of knowing what or what not to say or do at the right time when dealing with a child in order to instruct and draw forth the best in the child. It requires sensitivity and demands the practice of virtues to be worthy of imitation

 

Role modeling is worthy of imitation if the parents/teachers;

·               continually struggle to seek truth and do good

·               set the example by practicing what they preach

·               learn from mistakes, rectify and explain

·               are willing to change and improve

·               preserve with optimism and determination

·               given proof of the value and meaning of life

·               pray to God’s grace and inspiration



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