Guidance and Counseling

Guidance and counseling is needed to help the students for optimum achievement and adequate adjustment in varied life situations. Both guidance and counseling are process used to solve problems of life.

Guidance:

Guidance is assistance given to an individual to help him adjust to himself, to others and to his own peculiar environment. Guidance helps him understand himself. It helps him in his acquaintance with the things and the world around him. It aims to prepare an individual for his future life.

In this way, guidance can be described as a process of assisting an individual with his adjustment problems.

Thus, according to Jones, “Guidance is the help given by one person to another in making choices and adjustments and in solving problems.”

Skinner says, “Guidance is a process of helping young persons learn to adjust to self, to others, and to circumstances.”

Counseling:

Counseling, which is an integral part of an overall program of guidance, is a service offered by an expert to the individual who is undergoing a problem and needs professional help to improve it.

This means the counseling situation arises when a needy person is face to face with an expert who makes available his assistance to the needy individual to fulfill his needs.

Counseling therefore is a more specialized service requiring training in personality development and handling exceptional groups of individuals.

According to Willey and Andrew, counseling involves two individuals one seeking help and other a professionally trained person helped solved problems to orient and direct him towards a goal.

Carl Rogers says, “Counseling is a series of direct contact with the individual which aims to offer him assistance in changing the attitudes and behavior.”

Counseling involves a lot of time for the client to unfold the problem, gain an insight into the complex situation.

 David V Tiedeman says, “In education our goal is guidance; our technique among others is counseling.”

Difference between guidance and counseling:

• The concept of guidance and counseling reflect a common meaning that includes awareness, assistance and change of behavior to the better, but still there is a difference between the two concepts:
• Guidance is more general and comprehensive than counseling. It therefore includes counseling.
• Guidance is a group of planned services that include counseling, while counseling is the procedural aspect of guidance.
• Guidance usually precedes counseling and paves the way for it. Counseling follows guidance.
• Guidance stresses the theoretical aspect, while counseling takes care of the practical aspect.
• Counseling is usually the relationship between the teacher and the student who comes for assistance; therefore it is an individualistic relationship.

Technique:

It is a procedure used to accomplish a specific activity or task. According to Dewey, “Techniques are only intelligent ways of getting results.”

Types of Guidance Techniques:

There are three types of techniques which can be used for guiding students.

1. Counseling—Individual and Group
2. Group guidance Technique
3. Clinical approach

1. Counseling:

As it has already been discussed above that counseling is a more specialized service requiring training in personality development and handling exceptional groups of individuals.

The goal of counseling is problem clarification and self-directed needs. Counseling does not solve the problems but helps in solving.

Levels of Counseling

1. Informal counseling: It is any helping relationship by a responsible person who may have little or no training for the work. For example, ladies helping patients in hospitals through friendly conversations with them.
2. Non-specialist counseling by professionals: It is the help provided by physicians, lawyers, teachers, ministers, and others who do a great deal of face to face work with psychological problems in the course of their other work.
3. Professional counseling: It is helping another person with decision and life-plans, whether personal or educational vocational, by a person specially trained for this work. Professional counselors are usually psychologists, or educational psychologists.

Types of counseling:

1. Individual, and
2. Group

Individual counseling can be done through interviews of different types.

(a) Interview

Interview is a give and take of views between the interviewer and interviewee. It consists of consultation, mutual interchange of opinion and deliberating together. It can be used to get information, to give information and to change behavior. Its purpose is three-fold—it involves gathering all available pertinent facts, making a diagnosis on the basis of all the evidence and formulating an appropriate plan of action.

Types of interviews:

1. Introductory Interview
2. Fact-finding interviews
3. Informative Interviews
4. Therapeutic Interviews

Group guidance

Group guidance is an integral part of the guidance program. It is a relationship in which the guidance worker attempts to assist a number of students to attain for themselves satisfactory development or adjustment to their individual or collective life situations.

Techniques of group guidance:

• Informal discussion: These discussions should center around desirable objectives and should be so guided as to result in conclusions that may be helpful to the group as a whole.
• Group reports: If the students are divided into groups which have specific issues to tackle and later these reports are presented in larger groups, they can help all the members of the group in gaining awareness of a number of problems and their solution.
• Lectures: Lectures delivered by experts can impart group guidance in an effective way.
• Dramatics: This is another good technique of group guidance. If certain topics are dramatized, the students can be given guidance in an interesting way. How to appear for an interview, how to prepare for an examination, how to prepare notes—all these can be dramatized and guidelines suggested to the students.

Counseling Techniques:

There are two types of counseling techniques. These are:

1. Directive or counselor-centered counseling.
2. Non-directive or client-centered counseling.

Directive Counseling:

This type of counseling involves six essential steps. Following are the steps:

• Analysis: Collecting from a variety of sources the data needed for an adequate understanding of the student.
• Synthesis: Summarizing and organizing the data so that they reveal the students’ assets, liabilities, adjustments and maladjustments.
• Diagnosis: Formulating conclusions regarding the nature and the cause of the problems exhibited by the student.
• Prognosis: Predicting the future development of the students’ problems.
• Counseling: The counselor’s taking steps with the student to bring about adjustment and readjustment for the student.
• Follow-up: Helping the student with new problems or with recurrence of the original problem and determining the effectiveness of the counseling provided to him.

Non-directive counseling:

• In this type of counseling, it the client—the counsellee—who is the pivot. He takes an active part in the process of therapy.
• The counsellee gains insight into his problem with the help of the counselor. It is he who takes decisions as to the action to be taken.
• The counselor’s role is passive. This type of counseling is a growth experience.
• The goal is the independence and integration of the client rather than the solution of a particular problem.
• The principal function of the counselor is not to cultivate self understanding in the client but instead, to create an atmosphere in which the client can work out his own understanding.
• The emotional elements or the feeling aspect are stressed rather than the intellectual aspects.

Exceptional Children and Problems of Guidance:

The children who are significantly different from average and normal children and need educational guidance are called exceptional children. These children's, whether they are extraordinarily intelligent or backward, are not able to make their own future plans.

Therefore, in order to successfully implement the plans, educational guidance is needed.

For successful learning, it is necessary that children's education should go in the right direction. Before guiding exceptional children, it is necessary to know who exactly is an exceptional child.
According to Hunt (1960), "An exceptional child is one who deviates from the normal or average child in mental, physical, emotional and social characteristics to such an extent that he requires a modification of school practices or special education services in order to develop to his maximum capacity."

According to the definition, exceptional children are different from normal children in the following respects.

1. Physical differences:
   (a) Externally disabled, like maimed, lame, deaf, dumb, etc.
   (b) Internally disabled, heart problem, lungs problems, etc.

2. Mental differences:
   (a) Talent, affluence
   (b) Dullness, deficiency

3. Personality imbalance:
   (a) Emotional imbalance
   (b) Social imbalance

Talented children and guidance services:

1. Gifted children should be identified through reliable and recognized guidance services. Thereafter, appropriate information should be passed on to schools with a view to suitably modifying teaching methods and course content.
2. The second main function of guidance services is to assist these children in developing their talent further, according to their abilities, potential and interests.
3. Curricula and teaching methods should be so designed as to promote their normal and specific abilities along with powers of logic, thinking and creativity to the maximum extent.
4. Special teachers are needed to teach such students. Hence, guidance service should arrange for special teachers and analysts to devise and use special teaching methods to meet these students' requirements.
5. Some talented children, for the reason of not being identified, keep receiving ordinary education which hardly benefits them. Special teaching techniques need to be used to impart both intensive and extensive knowledge. Such students take special interest in studies; hence there should be adequate availability of relevant books in the library.
6. Students can be assisted in the development of their talents by paying special attention to them, praising them for their performance and aiding them in their endeavours.
7. Guidance service should not only encourage these students in doing self-evaluation and self-analysis but should also assist them in such efforts.
In the absence of proper guidance, a talented child can go astray and adopt anti-social way of life. Hence, a teacher should keep talented students busy in activities replete with basic values, excitement, complexity, etc.

Mentally Retarded Children:

In the field of education, certain children do not make as much progress in studies as do other children of their age.

In other words, those children whose IQ is significantly sub-average are called mentally retarded children.

Their mental age is less than their physical age. Mentally retarded children can be identified through intelligence tests and other methods.
Through ordinary training, mentally retarded children can be made to perform ordinary chores for livelihood. They can be made self-dependent to some extent.

Guidance for mentally retarded children:

There are many individuals in society whose IQ is below normal. Their problems are different from those of normal individuals. In this context, two facts that surface are as follows:

1. First, such individuals because of their low intelligence cannot make as much progress as normal individuals.
2. Secondly, because of low intelligence they face discrimination in society leading to adjustment problems.

Therefore, there should be special guidance programmes for such individuals. It is equally important to organise special diagnostic classes for mentally retarded children.
The main aim of guidance program should be to identify the causes of their low intelligence and take rehabilitative measures. These measures could be establishment and provision of special schools, special classes, special curricula, special teaching methods and special teachers.

Provision of Special Schools: There should be a provision of special schools for mentally retarded children where their development can be taken care of better than in ordinary schools. There are separate schools for mentally retarded, deaf, dumb and blind children, established by the government.

 Provision of Special Classes: Special classes should be held for mentally retarded children. Students should be of the same mental level, their number should be limited and speed of teaching should be slow.

Teachers should be specially trained, experienced and qualified. Periods should not be long, and for different subjects there should be different classes. Classes should be based on syllabus and there should be arrangement for physical and creative activities as well in the school.

Special classess will have a cushioning effect on mentally retarded children who would feel themselves secure in these classes.

Special Syllabus: For mentally retarded children, a special syllabus should be designed according to their intelligence quotient. They should be provided vocational education like painting, carpet weaving, chair seat and back weaving, gardening, etc.

Special Teaching Methods: For such children, special teaching
techniques should be used.
   -- Teaching should be slow and there should be frequent revision.
   -- Teachers should simplify teaching by using teaching aids so that
children enjoy learning.
   --Instead of giving bookish knowledge, they should be given practical
knowledge to foster their personality development.

Special Teachers: For mentally retarded children, there should be
specially qualified teachers.
   -- Teachers should be trained with complete knowledge of child
psychology and behavioural psychology.
   -- Teacher's behaviour should be free from bias and full of compassion.
   -- Teacher should have knowledge about the problems and weaknesses of
mentally retarded children.

The counselor should very carefully find out these childrens' interests and aptitudes so as to provide them educational and vocational guidance commensurate with their interests and aptitudes.
Mentally retarded children need vocational education. Hence, their education should be closely related to their life.
While providing educational, vocational, personal and family guidance to mentally retarded children, care must be taken to ensure that their maladjustment does not increase because of special guidance programme.

Special care is needed in this area. Self-confidence should be aroused
in mentally retarded individuals so that they are able to cope with
the pressures of mainstream life.

HEARING IMPAIRMENT:

Youngsters suffering from hearing problems can be divided into two categories.

   (a) Those who are completely deaf.
   (b) Those who are hard of hearing.

Those who are completely deaf cannot hear anything. Some are born deaf. Others lose their hearing power because of ear diseases or accidents. Generally, those who are deaf from birth are dumb too.
Those who are hard of hearing fall into different categories depending on their degree of deafness. Those who are simply hard of hearing can overcome their problem with the help of hearing aids. They can be educated by the teacher. The itinerant teacher helps in the use of hearing aids and imparts auditory training in lip reading and language development.
Those who cannot be cured through surgery or with the help of hearing aids need guidance. They can neither hear anything nor they can speak anything by copying lip and other vocal movements. They express their feelings through indistinguishable voice.
A teacher can organised lip-reading classes where she can deliver lecture slowly in well-punctuated words and clear cut accent with the help of aids. In these classes, students should be encouraged to watch their teacher's lip movement and speak out the words uttered by him. These lip-reading classes should be small so that each student can cope easily. Thus, trained teachers with adequate knowledge of
language signs are needed.

EYESIGHT DEFECTS (VISUAL IMPAIRMENT):

Eyesight defects too are of many kinds, like inability to see clearly, near-sight weakness, distance-sight weakness, inability to see in bright light, colour blindness, complete blindness.
Defective eyesight affects a student's performance, adjustment, personality and interest which give rise to many problems.
For completely blind students, there are separate classes, while those with defective eye-sight study in the normal class along with other students.

Because of defective eyesight they find difficulty in reading words in their books, hence they cannot study properly. They should be taught through recorded cassettes and at the time of examinations they should be provided writers.