Unit Four: Student Support (Guidance and

Counseling)
4.1. Meaning and Nature of Guidance and
Counseling
Guidance is a broad term that is applied to a helping
relationship which may be conducted between or
among individuals who are professionally trained or
not and individuals who seek assistance so as to
pursue objectives.
Counseling is a helping relationship between
professionally trained personnel (i.e., counselor) and
an individual who seeks help (i.e., client) focusing
on influencing voluntary behaviors.
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 Differences between Guidance and Counseling
Counseling needs privacy, but guidance is more of
public.
Counseling focuses on voluntary behavior, but guidance
is voluntary and/or involuntary.
Counseling needs confidential relationship, but guidance
may not.
Counseling needs professionally competent person, but
guidance may not.
Counseling aims at identifying potential alternatives, but
guidance is educative or information dissemination.
The practice of counseling is professionally structured
theory based, while guidance may not.

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 Goals of Guidance and Counseling
•Developing coping skills: The goal may involve assisting
clients learn to cope with new and demanding situation,
becoming assertive and to be less anxious in terrifying
sphere of life.
•Remove undesirable behaviors with their symptoms: It is
assisting the client to learn how to overcome smoking,
drinking, sexual dysfunction, addiction, anxieties, low self-
concept, phobia, frustration, etc. It is development of the
skills, attitudes and perceptions of social reality fit for the
healthy growth and development of the person.
•Achieving personnel effectiveness: This is the processes
that may involve helping individuals to secure self
actualization.
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•Decision making: Counseling stimulates the individual to
evaluate , make, accept and act up on choices, which means
the client is independent decision maker.
•Improving relationship: Skills in interpersonal relationship
are considered. Problems of poor self-image, too much
defensiveness, and inadequate social skills are dealt with.
Guidance and counseling develop life skills: communication,
decision making, thinking, managing emotions, assertiveness,
self-esteem building, resisting peer pressure, and relationship
skills.
4.2. Some Basic Principles of Counseling
•Each client must be accepted as an individual and dealt with
as such (the counselor does not necessarily approve of all
behavior, but still accepts the client as a person).
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•Counseling is basically a permissive relationship,
i.e., the individual has permission to say what they
please without being reprimanded or judged.
•All decision-making rests with the client.
•Counseling is centered on the difficulties of the
client.
•Counseling is a learning situation which eventually
results in a behavioral change.
•Effectiveness in counseling depends largely on the
readiness of the client to make changes and the
therapeutic relationship with the counselor.
•The counseling relationship is confidential.

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 4.3. Guidance and Counseling in Schools
A school guidance and counseling program includes all
those activities other than instructional which are carried
out to render assistance to pupils in their educational,
vocational, personal development and adjustment.
Guidance and counseling services can assist the pupils in
knowing themselves-their potentialities and limitations,
making appropriate choices in educational, vocational and
other fields.
Educationally, guidance and counseling involve those
experiences which assist each learner to understand and
accept oneself so as to live effectively in society.

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 The Rational of Guidance and Counseling Service
in Schools
•Numerous problems (i.e., psychological, social, academic)
are creating torments among school and university students.

•Pupils who encounter violence, substance abuse, unwanted

pregnancy, despair etc hindered from academic excellence.
•Cheating in the examination hall, ignoring academic tasks,
dropping lessons, alcoholism, destruction, violence,
ethnocentrism and breaking laws are getting.
•The numbers of students with special needs are also
increasing that require immediate follow up and support.
•Escalating number of students’ population is accompanied by
vulnerability
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 Major Service Areas of Guidance and Counseling
in Scools
•Educational Guidance and Counseling.
This aspect of counseling should concern itself with
assisting the students in their curriculum and school life
choices.
All teachers could be involved in this without any need for
specialized training in counseling.
•Vocational Guidance and Counseling
This aspect of counseling addresses the learners’ problems
as regards to vocational choices.
Again here the lecturers are best placed to give relevant
advice to learners since they know their academic
strengths and weaknesses; interests and aptitudes.
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Personal and social guidance and counseling
This aspect of counseling refers to the very personal
problems that students meet.
These problems may range from financial needs to
interpersonal relationships.
There is need for more specialized assistance from
professionally trained hands.
4.4. Qualities of Good Counselor
The following are personality characteristics that determine
the efficacy of counseling process.
•Empathy: may refer to looking client’s problem from the
client’s point of view.
•Genuineness: being real in ones own wording and action.
Genuine people can comfortably be themselves in all their
interactions.
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• Unconditional acceptance: Not labeling, giving positive
regards not for his qualities but because the client is unique
and worthwhile person.
•Ethics of counseling:
 Confidentiality: Counselors are ethically obliged to keep
clients’ communications confidential.
 Professional disclosure and informed consent- Clients
have a right to be informed about what typically
happens in counseling.
 Dual relationship: no any type of relationship excepting
the one of counseling.
 Referral and termination: Sometimes a counselor may
decide to refer the client to another counselor.

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•Objectivity: Treating all clients equally and getting free from
any judgment or biases.
•Spontaneity of expression: The counselor need to be free,
flexible and reduce rigidity.
•Competence: Effective counselors have a combination of
academic knowledge, personal qualities, and helping skills
through talking in client’s level, appearing relaxed,
providing directions to the session.
•Humor: Becoming funny, entertaining with fascinating ice
breaker, jokes etc so as to channel out client’s internal
conflicts, to stabilize clients, and establish suitable/working
alliance.

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 4.5. Strategies of Guidance and Counseling
Strategies of Guidance Services
•Coaching/ mentoring(advising) on note making, note taking,
exam preparation, exam taking, time management, etc
•Recommending relevant reference materials with clear
language, illustrations, inviting to read etc
•Conducting tutorial for academically weak students and other
disadvantaged students
•Talking about HIV/AIDS, RH problems (i.e., unwanted
pregnancy, abortion etc.)
•Exploring different study skills and orienting to students
•Training major memory skills (i.e., chunking, mnemonics,
etc)
•Orientation and sensitization on exam preparation, exam
execution
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 Strategies of Counseling Services
• Play therapy: play helps to release the hidden painful
emotions, facilitates cognitive, psychosocial and motor
development.
•Exposure therapies: designed to expose the client to fearful
situation. eg. systematic desensitization. The client is
taught relaxation techniques to cope with the anxiety.
•Aversion therapy: involves pairing the aversive behavior
such as drinking alcohol with a stimulus with an undesirable
response like a medication that indices vomiting.
•Social skills training: A treatment that involves improving
interpersonal skills through the techniques modeling,
behavioral rehearsal, and shaping.

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•Assertiveness training: Process of eliminating the anxiety
people feel helping them understand their rights and
obligations.
•Reinforcement: The process of strengthening desirable
behavior through the utilization of primary and /or
secondary reinforcers.
•Shame attacking: This type of exposure involves
confronting the fear of shame by deliberately acting in ways
the client anticipates may attract disapproval.
•Postponing gratification is commonly used to combat low
frustration-tolerance by deliberately delaying smoking, using
alcohol, sexual activity, etc.
•Role reversal: Two individuals exchange roles like teacher-
student; husband-wife, boss-employer etc which helps to
exchange roles to see the problem from others point of view.
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•Rational analysis: Analyses of specific episodes to teach
the client how to uncover and dispute irrational beliefs.
•Double-standard dispute: If the clients are self-downing
about their behaviour, ask whether they would globally
rate another person (e.g. best friend, therapist, etc.) for
doing the same.
•Devil’s advocate: This technique is designed to get the
client arguing against their own dysfunctional belief.
•Reframing: Negative events may have a positive side.
•Time projection: Ask the client to visualise the unwanted
event occurring, then imagine going forward in time.

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