Qualities
1. Competencies Needed to Work with Pupils:
The ability to:
1. Advise a pupil concerning his choice of curriculum and of electives.
2. Select and interpret information to the pupil.
3. Direct the pupil to sources of information concerning educational, occupational, and personal problems.
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4. Determine what information should be collected for all pupils.
5. Make case studies.
6. Appraise the work habits of the pupils.
7. Evaluate the personality patterns of the pupil and to determine both strong and weak areas.
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8. Evaluate the socio-economic status of the pupil and of his background.
9. Give group tests of scholastic aptitude, reading, and achievement.
10. Appraise the pupil’s present and past academic achievement.
11. Appraise pupil’s interests and present activity patterns.
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12. Help pupils identify and resolve problems.
13. Use and interpret techniques that measure pupil adjustment.
14. Make and interpret sociograms.
15. Describe significant pupil behaviour by use of anecdotal reports.
16. Evaluate the information a pupil possesses in relation to his educational occupational and personal problems.
17. Create a satisfactory counselling setting.
18. Organise and direct a systematic testing programme.
19. Select or devise forms for the economical gathering and recording of information.
20. Organise records and establish procedures for effective and economical utilisation.
21. Utilize school resources to provide adequate remedial work.
22. Match job requirements with pupil abilities in individual pupil placement activities.
23. Use group procedures for guidance purposes.
24. Organise and direct a systematic programme of evaluation of guidance services.
25. Plan and develop an effective pupil follow-up programme.
26. Deal with emotionally upset pupils at least to the extent of recognising their situation and, if necessary, referring them to others.
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2. Competencies Needed to Work with Staff Members
The ability to:
1. Gain the confidence and respect of the administrative, supervisory, and teaching staff.
2. Cooperative with others responsible for non-instructional services.
3. Organise, initiate, or improve a guidance programme.
4. Give leadership in guidance committee work.
5. Conduct teacher group conferences on problems related to guidance services.
6. Organise and lead group and forum discussions on pupil problems.
7. Organi se and carry out a programme of in-service training.
8. Interpret and present effectively the results of a follow-up programme and attendant curriculum needs or changes.
9. Assist individual teachers with specific pupil problems.
10. Conduct research and evaluation studies on all phases of the guidance programme.
3. Competencies Needed to Work with Parents
The ability to:
1. Conduct effective home visitations.
2. Gain the confidence and respect of the parents.
3. Enlist the cooperation of parents in the solution of pupil adjustment problems.
4. Work with both pupil and parent in the pupil-parent conflict.
5. Organise and direct parent conferences.
4. Competencies Needed to Work with Community
The ability to:
1. Know when and how to make referrals.
2. Participate effectively in number of community activities.
3. Explain the entire school programme and to show how the guidance programmes is a part of this programme.
4. Develop effective relationships with employers and other community groups.
5. Plan and direct community occupational surveys.
6. Explain in an effective manner the school’s guidance programme to groups of adults.
7. Gain support of the community for the guidance programme.
8. Identify other guidance agencies in the community and to develop a guidance programme that utilizes the available services of these agencies.
The consultant role:
Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a consultant as “1. a person who consults another person. 2. a person who gives professional or technical advice, as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, editor, etc.”
However, the word consults, as a verb, means “to deliberate, consider, ask advice to call together…” It is this latter connotation which is intended when the word consultant is used in this book.
The role is not that of expert or specialist who gives advice but that of expert in human communications and in interpersonal skill who uses dialogue in the study of a situation and continues with dialogue in proposing a solution.
He is one who calls others together to deliberate, to consider, and to plan, cooperatively, programmes for pupil development.
The word consultant is often used to refer to the expert, the specialist who enters a situation for a few days, evaluates it, and makes some pertinent recommendations.
Boy and Pine have given a description of the counsellor- consultant under the heading “Elementary School Counselling Consultants.” They describe this professional as having five major areas of work:
1. Working with children in terms of assessment placement, and individual and group counselling,
2. Working with principals and teachers conducting conferences relating to pupils, in-service courses, interpreting the objectives of the pupil personnel programme,
3. Working with other school personnel such as instructional materials managers, librarians, nurses, reading consultants, and speech therapists,
4. Working with parents to consider educational programmes and problems, counselling with parents, organising workshops and discussion groups, and interpreting pupil personnel services, and
5. Working with community agencies on referrals, participating in staff conferences, and being active in professional organisations.
Stripling and Lane in surveying the history and scope of guidance, indicate that one of the most effective ways of accomplishing guidance objectives is through consultation with parents, teachers, and other adults who are concerned with pupil growth.
The role of the counsellor-consultant has expanded as emphasis had shifted from the child to those who deal with child most intimately and for the most hours per day In addition to working with parents and teachers, some see the evolving role as having responsibility for coordinating the pupil personnel services of the school.
Others see the one who exercises such leadership as being the one who should interpret the pupil personnel services to the public, not only so that the work can be done more effectively but in order to counteract successive waves of suspician and undue popularity and high expectation.
Certainly, it seems much too early to attempt to formulate a concept of exactly what the role should be.
Today’s school counsellor is involved in so many activities that often times he isn’t sure what he is or what he is supposed to be.
He bears the title counsellor but usually he hasn’t time to involve himself in an inter-personal counselling relationship with a troubled student since he is too busy with programming, interviewing students who are academic failures, handling discipline problems, checking absences, arranging a co-curricular activities schedule, and handling a variety of other administrative duties.
The emerging role of the counsellor is that of concern about the network of interactions which characterise a learning milieu. Danskin, Kennedy, and Friesen refer to the circularity of learning processes as student ecology.
This student ecology takes cognizance of research results which indicate that the key determinants in the pupil’s learning success are:
1. The socio-economic status of the home in which the pupil was reared,
2. The reference groups (peer groups) from which the pupil so largely derives his values, and
3. His intelligence and the manner in which it is used.
If this emerging role is to be effectively performed some modifications of the counsellors increases are required. It will be necessary for the counsellor to:
Spend much less time planning future educational and vocational programmes for students while spending much more time in exploring and probing current educational experiences of students. Planning for the future will flow from being alive to the present experiences.
Invest a much larger part of his total resources in observation of systematic research into the learning climate of the school.
For this he will need time to reflect, discuss, and write, without the pressure of having to do the highly visible guidance functions.
Greatly enlarge the scope of his contacts with teachers and administrators. He would become the important “human development consultant” in issues concerning curriculums, activities, policies, etc.
Acting as a counsellor-consultant means dealing with people as the major forces in improving the learning environment of the school. Such action means that a generalist in interest of knowledge uses his specialist skill in dealing with’ people.
This specialist skill is the ultimate outcome of the counsellor- consultant’s preparation and orientation.
While most school workers are concerned with cognitive skills—the acquisition and methods of acquisition of subject matter—the orientation of the acquisition and methods of acquisition of subject matter—the orientation of the counsellor is toward the pupil.
To the counsellor the pupil is the subject matter to be learned. The counsellor must, however, remember that he himself is very much a part of that subject matter, he is irrevocably involved.