PRINCIPLES OF GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING
GUIDANCE
Guidance is gotten from the word ‘guide’ which means to direct, help, steer. Guidance can
be explained as the process through which a guide or a trained personnel gives directions,
information, help to another person about how to do something in order to understand
him/herself as well as things around him/her better.
Guidance can be defined as a process, developmental in nature, by which an individual is
assisted to understand, accept and use his/her abilities, aptitudes and interests in relation to
his/her aspirations.
Guidance is concerned with provision and interpretation of information. It involves
personal help and advice given by someone and thus promotes self-direction and self-
growth.
Guidance is the act of showing someone how to do something by taking them through a
process step by step.
Guidance involves:
i. Listening
ii. Giving advice
iii. Instructing and directing clients
iv. Giving suggestions
v. Is short lived
vi. Providing of personal information for an immediate situation/solution
Guidance simply shows or points the way to be followed. It is majorly concerned with
career development.
Guidance functions in an institution may include:
i. Orientation or adaptive services- acquaintance to new environment, adjustment to
new environment, building sense of belonging to new setting, building support
groups (social guidance), general familiarization with new set up (rules and
regulations, classes and lecturers)
ii. Appraisal or inventory services- use of data collection (interview, observation),
keeping of student records, analysis of student (e.g. health status), realistic planning
of a satisfying educational set-up, helping students acquire and organize useful
information about him/herself, to know his/her strengths and weaknesses.
iii. Informational or distributive services-providing students with better knowledge of
educational, vocational and social opportunities to make decisions on career, higher
education etc.
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, iv. Planning and Placement services e.g. alumni:- help students make his/her future
plans, help students acquire admission into other environment.
Guidance is based upon the following principles.
a) Holistic development of individual: Guidance needs to be provided in the context of total
development of personality.
b) Recognition of individual differences and dignity: Each individual is different from every
other individual. Each individual is the combination of characteristics which provides
uniqueness to each person. Similarly human beings have an immense potential. The
dignity of the individual is supreme.
c) Acceptance of individual needs: Guidance is based upon individual needs i.e. freedom,
respect, dignity.
d) The individual needs a continuous guidance process from early childhood throughout
adulthood.
e) Guidance involves using skills to communicate love, regard, respect for others.
COUNSELING
Counselling can be defined as a complex process in which a trained professional utilizes
appropriate resources to assist in the client’s development according to mutually agreeable
guidelines.
Counseling is an interactive process, co-joining the counselee, who is vulnerable and needs
assistance, and the counselor, who is trained and educated to give assistance.
Counseling is concerned with the feelings, attitudes and emotional dispositions of an
individual about himself/herself and the situation facing him/her.
Counseling assists individuals deal with overwhelming anxiety arising from personal,
social, academic or occupational problems.
What counseling is not:
i. Is not a conversation
ii. Is not a discussion
iii. Is not an interrogation
iv. Is not a confession
v. Is not the giving of information
vi. Is not the giving of advice
vii. Is not about influencing attitudes, beliefs, behaviours
viii. Is not discipline
ix. Is not solving problems for others
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, x. Is not guidance
Aims of counseling
The aims of counseling are broad. They may depend on the situation and the environment, and on
training. The basic aims of counseling include the following:
1. To help clients and patients gain an insight into the origins and development of emotional
difficulties, leading to an increased capacity to take rational control over feelings and
actions.
2. To alter maladjusted behaviour.
3. To assist clients and patients to move in the direction of fulfilling their potential, or
achieve an integration of conflicting elements within themselves.
4. To provide clients and patients with the skills, awareness and knowledge, which will
enable them to confront social inadequacy.
In almost all situations, guidance must involve counseling and vice versa. Hence, due to the
interactive nature of the two, the word counseling is commonly used to include guidance.
WAYS IN WHICH THE COUNSELLING DIFFERS FROM GUIDANCE
BASIS FOR
GUIDANCE COUNSELING
COMPARISON
Meaning Guidance refers to an advice or a Counseling refers to a professional
relevant piece of information advice given by a counselor to an
provided by a superior, to resolve a individual to help him in overcoming
problem or overcome from difficulty. from personal or psychological
problems.
Nature Preventive Remedial and Curative
Approach Comprehensive and Extroverted In-depth and Introverted
What it does? It assists the person in choosing the It tends to change the perspective, to
best alternative. help him get the solution by himself or
herself.
Deals with Education and career related issues. Personal and socio-psychological issues.
Provided by Any person superior or expert A person who possesses high level of
skill and professional training.
Privacy Open and less private. Confidential
Mode One to one or one to many One to one
Decision making By guide. By the client.
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, BASIS FOR
GUIDANCE COUNSELING
COMPARISON
Psychotherapy: This is a deeper, more fundamental or involving process of change with more
disturbed clients. Psychotherapy has been the term used in medical settings such as psychiatric
units (McLeod, 2005).
Counselor/psychologist: Acounselor or psychologist who is engaged in developing and
empowering others through counselor or psychology education.
Client/counselee: An individual who seeks counseling or psychological services, or is referred for
counseling or psychological service.
History of Guidance and Counselling
The history of academy counseling formally started at the about face of the twentieth
century, although a case can be fabricated for archetype the foundations of counseling and
admonition attempt to age-old Greece and Rome with the abstract article of Plato and
Aristotle.
There is additionally affirmation to altercate that some of the techniques and abilities of
modern-day admonition attorneys were accomplished by Catholic priests in the average
ages, as can be apparent by the adherence to the abstraction of acquaintance aural the
confessional.
Near the end of the sixteenth century, one of the Aboriginal texts about career options
appeared: the Universal Plaza of All the Professions of the World, (1626) accounting by
Tomaso Garzoni quoted in Guez, W. & Allen, J. (2000). Nevertheless, bookish admonition
programs appliance specialized textbooks did not alpha until the about-face of the
twentieth century.
Guidance Movement in the Western World
The guidance movement was started with an emphasis on vocational information, planning and
guidance. Vocational education was believed to be that part of both organized and unorganized
methods of securing occupational confidence and experiences by individuals for achieving
occupational proficiency. Vocational planning was regarded as a process for helping students, or
others, to develop and accept an integrated and adequate picture of themselves, and of their roles
in the world of work, to test this concept against reality, and to accept its benefits with
satisfaction. The concept emanated from the fact that:
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