Advocacy has been identified as a relevant way for counsellors to respond to the social inequalities in the world of work and education in today's neoliberal context. This article draws on a ...qualitative study conducted with three groups of guidance counsellors in school settings in Quebec, Canada, to analyse their advocacy work as a world-transforming activity from a social justice perspective. Analysing counsellors' activity helps underline not only systemic barriers that guidance counsellors try to address in their day-to-day work in schools, but also the particular way they perform advocacy in line with their professional genre. The study highlights the urgent need to create collective conditions within the profession to overcome the organisational constraints associated with the ubiquity of economic rationality in education.
The work of school counsellors has become complex with the increasing technological advances and adolescents' dependency on them. There is a surprising lack of study in the Indian context, aimed at ...school counsellor's challenges in dealing with adolescents' digital use. This paper provides better understanding of the challenges of school counsellors involving adolescents' digital use in Indian schools. Three significant themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) negative aspects of digital use among Indian adolescents, (b) the need to effectively teach how to navigate the digital world and (c) the challenge of integrating technology with traditional counselling approaches to educate adolescents about their digital use. Furthermore, this paper presents implications for school counselling practice and research within Indian context.
Practitioner points
School counsellors address challenging situations involving adolescents' use of digital media.
School counsellors play a crucial role in teaching and modelling how to navigate the digital world.
Little research has been conducted in the Indian context; hence this study is a good step forward to understand and acknowledge the challenges of school counsellors.
One way to address the shortages of nurses might be if more high school students have active support from their school counsellors. The aim of this research was to explore the perceptions of school ...counsellors in Bahrain about nursing and describe current nursing-related career guidance practices. A mixed-method study involving 10 high school counsellors was used. Data were analysed descriptively, and themes were created to capture key notions. The participants held positive perceptions about nursing and implemented a variety of activities; however, nursing was not considered in their usual career counselling plans. Although the results were similar to previous research in other countries, a discouraging finding was the neglect of schools in adequately informing students about nursing as a career.
School counsellors are responsible for maintaining their well-being to provide quality service for the students. Self-care activities are the best way to preserve and enhance the well-being of ...counsellors. In this vein, this study aimed to discover the self-care experiences of school counsellors employing a qualitative approach. Fifteen licensed school counsellors (eight of whom were female) from various schools in Turkey participated in the study. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. The data analysis was carried out with an inductive thematic analysis approach using NVivo 11 software. The results of the study are presented under four interrelated themes which are self-care practices, improved wellness, increased productivity in schools, and barriers to self-care. Findings of the study are discussed based on literature and a number of suggestions are presented for future studies of researchers and practitioners.
Research suggests that school counsellors can have a positive influence on students' academic, social-emotional and career development. Although school counsellors have had long-standing direct and ...indirect involvement in providing support and services to students with disabilities (SWD), research into how school counsellors directly support SWD remains relatively limited.
In this study, we sought to review studies that examined school counsellors' support and services for SWD by analysing topic coverage, methods and findings to discern the existing research base.
A systematic identification and review of research focused on studies about school counsellors and their support and services for SWD. A thematic analysis with an inductive approach was employed to uncover studies' patterns and content.
In total, 32 studies were eligible for inclusion in the review. Analysis revealed that these studies were clustered into four themes: (a) interventions involving school counsellors; (b) school counsellors' perceptions and roles; (c) school counsellors' support of SWD through career development, transition or graduation; and (d) students' or parents' perceptions about school counsellors. Of the 32 studies, over half included surveys, primarily eliciting perceptions and attitudinal information from school counsellors, whilst fewer than one-quarter featured data about school counsellors delivering interventions to SWD.
Our review suggests that a substantial evidence base in this area has not yet been established, meaning that minimal research has taken place to guide school counsellors regarding support and services for SWD. Implications include a call to researchers to expand the supply of high-quality and rigorous studies focused on school counsellors and SWD, especially intervention studies, subsequently leading towards research-informed practices.
Partnerships between school counsellors and parents can improve students’ wellbeing and learning outcomes. School counsellors are well placed to take on central roles in the development and ...maintenance of such partnerships. However, research is limited on counsellor-parent partnerships in the Philippines, where the professional identities of school counsellors are less well developed. We interviewed 13 private school counsellors to explore how perceptions of their professional identities influence practices related to school-home partnerships and conducted a thematic analysis on the data. Our findings suggest that effective partnerships are supported by counsellors’ beliefs about the importance of such partnerships, and to some extent by schools’ recognition of the value of counsellors. However, partnerships are undermined by counsellors’ unclear and inappropriate roles and their low status. Cultural characteristics also impede effective partnerships. School counsellors in the Philippines need a well-defined role aligned with their competencies, scope of practice, and code of ethics and may need to be more empowered by principals to develop counsellor-parent partnerships in culturally appropriate ways.