Get premium membership and access questions with answers, video lessons as well as revision papers.
The term counseling has been defined differently by different people.
A way of relating and responding to another person, so that the person is helped to explore her/his thoughts, feelings and behaviors to reach a clearer self understanding and then is helped to find and use her/his strengths so that he/she copes more effectively with life by making appropriate decisions or taking relevant action. (Inskipp and John1984).
It is helping process that uses the safety engendered by a special kind of relationship to help individuals to get access to a greater part of their personal resources as a mean of responding to the challenges of life. It uses specific skills and techniques in that relationship to help people become more competent, more contented and more creative. It does not deal primarily with the mentally ill but with normal individuals facing all the difficulties involved in domestic, work oriented and social life. It is about helping people grow in emotional fitness and healthy. (McGuiness, 1998).Therefore, counseling is the process of establishing a relationship to identify people’s needs, design, strategies and services to satisfy these needs, and actively assist in carrying out plans to help people make decisions, solve problems, develop self awareness, and lead healthier lives. Thus counseling refers to a wide selection of services and activities that counselors choose to help people prevent disabling events focus on and develop human potential and remedy difficult situations. School counseling on the other hand describes a broad program of services provided by professionally trained counselors who practice in schools.
School counseling describes both the profession and the programme of services established by counselors in schools. It refers to a wide selection of services and activities that school counselors choose to prevent disabling events, focus on the students overall development and remedy existing concerns. These services are rendered to teachers, parents, students and administration. Guidance is a process developmental in nature by which an individual is assisted to understand, accept and utilize his/her abilities, aptitudes, interests ’and attitudinal patterns in relation to his/her aspirations.
School guidance identifies planned activities that help students focus on a particular issue or topic. Guidance is not the sole responsibility of school counselors nor is it the domain of any single professional group. Everything done in the school can be related in some way to the concept of “guiding students”. Guidance and counseling is therefore an important service in educational institutions because it contributes to the self knowledge, determination, realization, acceptance and self development of the individual by identifying his/her abilities, interests, attitudes, values, potentialities and developing item to the fullest.
francis1897 answered the question on March 15, 2023 at 12:33