Professional Guidance and Counselling
Senior 6 · Psychology
Professional Guidance and Counselling
Lesson 1 of 4
25 min
Nshuti, an S6 student, loves drawing and wants to study fashion design, but his parents expect him to apply for medicine. He goes to three people. His uncle says: "Do medicine. Artists starve." His school's guidance teacher gives him information about design courses, entry requirements and job prospects, and a short interest questionnaire. A counsellor at a youth centre listens as he talks about his fear of disappointing his parents, and helps him work out what he really wants and how to talk to them. (An illustrative case.)
The uncle gave advice; the teacher gave guidance; the counsellor offered counselling. They are often confused, but they are different kinds of help, and knowing the difference is the first step in this unit.
Definition
Guidance: a process of helping individuals to understand themselves and their opportunities, mainly through information, assessment and planning, so that they can make wise choices about education, careers and personal life.
Counselling: a confidential, professional relationship in which a trained counsellor helps a client to explore thoughts, feelings and behaviour, understand a problem and find his or her own ways forward.
Psychotherapy: longer or more intensive treatment, by a qualified therapist, of psychological disorders and deep-rooted problems.
Advice: telling a person what you think he or she should do. Counsellors rarely give advice, because decisions belong to the client.
Client: the person who receives counselling. Counsellee is an older word with the same meaning.
| Guidance | Counselling | Psychotherapy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main aim | Informed choices and planning | Understanding and resolving personal problems | Treating disorders and deep, long-standing difficulties |
| Typical focus | Education, careers, life skills | Feelings, relationships, decisions, coping | Personality, trauma, severe symptoms |
| Who gives it | Teachers, career officers, mentors, counsellors | Trained counsellors | Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists |
| Format | Often groups and classes; information | Usually individual or small group; confidential | Individual, group or family; often many sessions |
| Who leads | More directive: the helper informs and suggests | Mostly client-led | Depends on the approach |
The lines are not sharp: guidance often leads to counselling, and counselling may lead to a referral for psychotherapy. Two other helping roles are related. A mentor is a more experienced person who shares knowledge and supports someone's development; a coach helps someone improve performance towards specific goals.
| Type | Concerned with | School example |
|---|---|---|
| Educational guidance | Learning: study skills, choosing subjects, adjusting to a new school, learning difficulties, exam preparation | A session on planning revision; helping a student choose a subject combination |
| Vocational (career) guidance | Knowing oneself and the world of work; choosing and preparing for a career | Interest questionnaires, career talks, visits to workplaces |
| Personal-social guidance | Self-understanding, relationships, emotions, conflict, adjustment, values | Lessons on managing peer pressure or resolving conflicts |
| Health guidance | Physical and mental health: puberty, nutrition, preventing HIV and substance misuse, stress | A talk by a health worker; a stress-management workshop before exams |
Guidance can be given individually or in groups. Group guidance reaches many students at once and lets them learn from each other; individual guidance suits personal or sensitive matters. A complete school guidance programme usually offers several services: orientation (helping newcomers settle in), information, appraisal (gathering information about students, for example through tests and records), counselling, placement (helping students into the next course, school or job), referral (to health or specialist services) and follow-up.
Frank Parsons, who opened a vocational guidance bureau in Boston in 1908, set out a three-step trait-and-factor approach in Choosing a Vocation (1909): understand yourself (abilities, interests, values); understand the requirements and prospects of different kinds of work; and use "true reasoning" to match the two.
John Holland (1959, 1997) proposed that people and work environments can be described by six types, RIASEC (Figure 1). People tend to be more satisfied in environments that match their type. Evaluation: the model is simple, widely used and supported in many countries, but the match between a person's type and his or her job predicts satisfaction only weakly in meta-analyses, so it should open a conversation rather than dictate a choice. Neither model fully captures pressures such as family expectations, money and the jobs actually available, which a counsellor must take seriously in Nshuti's case.
Figure 1. Holland's RIASEC hexagon (after Holland, 1997), with example occupations. A person's "Holland code" is usually written as the two or three types he or she most resembles, for example "SAE".
Warning
A test result is not a verdict. Interest and aptitude questionnaires are useful starting points, but no questionnaire can tell you what you must become. Use the results to explore, check them against real experience, and discuss them with a guidance teacher or counsellor.
Tip
Advice tells, guidance informs, counselling explores. For Holland's types, remember the order of the hexagon with "Rwandans Invent, Artists Sing, Entrepreneurs Count".
Important
Discuss. Nshuti's parents want medicine; he wants design. What would advice, guidance and counselling each offer him? Which do you think he needs most, and why?
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the text, the diagram (Figure 1), the tables and the exercises.
