The hidden curriculum refers to various dimensions of pedagogical activity that concern (professional) knowledge, power relations and the socio-cultural context in which educators operate. The ...article presents ways in which school counsellors understand the hidden curriculum. The findings of qualitative analysis of interviews with 37 school counsellors are presented. Focus is given to how school counsellors understand the term hidden curriculum, recognise and respond to it. While the results revealed that school counsellors know the basic definitions of the hidden curriculum, deeper analysis of their answers showed this understanding is often incomplete and inadequate. In the future, greater attention should be paid to the extent to which the hidden curriculum is recognised and present in both schools generally and the work of the school counselling service.
The characteristics of cooperation between head teachers and school counsellors are presented theoretically and empirically. Distributed leadership means that head teachers do not lead schools ...through school-based educators but rather together with them, with school counsellors playing an important role. Numerous research studies demonstrate that a strong head teacher–school counsellor relationship is a crucial component of meeting the vision, goals and well-being of the school. The findings of our research study, conducted among head teachers and school counsellors, show positive attitudes of both groups towards mutual cooperation. Both considered the cooperation to be good or very good, the head teachers rated it even better. It is interesting to observe that the head teachers found more support in school counsellors than vice versa. Also, more of the head teachers said they saw school counsellors as partners than did the school counsellors. It thus remains to be seen how school counsellors’ perception of the school leadership’s support in their work could be strengthened and how head teachers could be encouraged to support the work of the school counselling service even more, so that this relationship becomes reciprocal and that each party’s ability to perform their work will be enhanced by the strong relationship.
The article presents some essential characteristics of collaboration between the school counselling service and individuals or institutions in the community. The role of school counselling in ...Slovenia is not limited merely to counselling and providing direct assistance to students with learning and their personal development. Rather, it includes the encouragement of all participants in the educational process to create adequate learning environments. The role, however, should also be understood in broader terms as organizational and content collaboration with external environments, institutions and individuals in the community. The authors begin by proposing some starting points for collaboration between the school counselling service and the local community and, in the second part of the article, they move on to the findings of their empirical research study, conducted on a representative sample of school counsellors working in Slovenian primary schools. The results prove the need for collaboration between the school counselling service and different institutions or individuals in the community. The authors primarily focus on examining the obstacles and drawbacks to the collaboration, while they simultaneously highlight examples of good practice that enable constructive collaboration, without which schools and school-based counselling would not be able to contribute to educational processes. The described examples demonstrate that collaboration between schools/school counsellors and institutions/individuals in the community is crucial to solving the problems that students and their families face.
This paper presents the meaning and characteristics of collaboration between school counsellors, school principals, and teachers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovenia and the ...extraordinary situation in which work in educational institutions changed dramatically overnight and the community of students and professionals moved into a virtual space. In the first part of the paper, we highlight that a strong network of professionals in an educational institution is key to achieving the vision, goals and quality of educational work. In the second part of the paper, we present the results of a survey conducted through an online questionnaire among 328 Slovenian counsellors during the first wave of COVID-19 in April 2020. The results of this survey show a positive attitude of counsellors towards collaboration with principals and teachers. The emergency situation has raised awareness among all school professionals about the importance of mutual support, while providing an opportunity to reflect on ways to improve mutual collaboration and build mutual relationships that enable quality pedagogical work. One of the biggest challenges for any school community now is to maintain the sense of alliance and mutual support that was created in many schools during the pandemic.
The school counselling service in Slovenia is part of every school. Collaboration among all participants in the school community is particularly important for the quality of the work. The aim of this ...paper is to gain insight into the collaboration between school counsellors and teachers in Slovenian primary and secondary schools. The frequency with which teachers take the initiative to cooperate with school counsellors in different areas of work will be presented, as well as the specific issues of classwork and teaching in which they believe they would most benefit from cooperation with school counsellors. A quantitative research design was used, and questionnaires were designed for school counsellors and teachers. These were sent to all school counsellors, of whom 315 (32.6%) responded. The questionnaires for teachers were sent to randomly selected schools; 501 teachers responded. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The results show that - according to both teachers and counsellors - teachers most often take the initiative to support individual students who need help. On the other hand, according to teachers' open-ended responses and the perception of the counsellors themselves, teachers also need support and collaboration in their work with the classroom community. However, if the focus of school counselling is solely on remedial and service tasks, it is difficult to speak of quality collaboration. This paper reveals the importance of strengthening mutual collaboration in co-creating supportive and inclusive learning environments and classroom communities. In the future, it would be useful to examine the obstacles to such collaboration.
Prikriti kurikulum predstavlja različne razsežnosti pedagoškega delovanja. Nanaša se na (strokovno) znanje, razmerja moči in družbeno-kulturni kontekst, v katerem delujemo. V članku predstavljamo ...razumevanje prikritega kurikuluma s perspektive šolskih svetovalnih delavcev.1 Predstavljene so ugotovitve kvalitativne analize intervjujev s 37 šolskimi svetovalnimi delavci. Analizirano je, kaj šolski svetovalni delavci razumejo pod izrazom prikriti kurikulum, kako ga prepoznajo in kako se nanj odzivajo. Rezultati kažejo, da šolski svetovalni delavci poznajo osnovne opredelitve prikritega kurikuluma, bolj poglobljena analiza njihovih odgovorov pa je pokazala, da je to razumevanje pogosto nepopolno in neustrezno. V prihodnje bo treba več pozornosti nameniti prepoznavanju in prisotnosti prikritega kurikuluma, tako v šolah na splošno kot tudi pri delu šolske svetovalne službe.
This paper casts light on some formal aspects and aspects of professional ethics that bind and direct school counsellors in their work. Some basic principles of ethical treatment are presented, with ...focus on the principle of confidentiality and dilemmas that appear in its application. In striking a balance bet ween the ethical and legal aspects in counselling work with children/pupils it is important that the counsellor accepts parents, teachers, head staff and other experts as allies and partners in the counselling process, as these people most often offer assistance to the child/pupil who is in need of help.
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