EDU 3073 assignment Guidance and Counselling for children (bimbingan dan kaunselling kerja kursus)

Table of Contents Appreciation........................................................................................................... 2 Introduction............................................................................................................ 3 Definitions.............................................................................................................. 3 Focused Problems................................................................................................... 5 Proposal of improvement....................................................................................... 7 Conclusion............................................................................................................ 12 Reflection by Akashah bin Osman........................................................................13 References........................................................................................................... 15

Appreciation 1

Thank you Allah for giving me this opportunity to complete this task. I also would to extend my thank you to my EDU 3073 lecturer for giving my friends and I guidance and also the time for us to do our best. Friends who are always there to support me in various ways and my family for their prayers and encouragement.

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Introduction Guidance and counselling has a service sought after many for its services and methods used to get humans like us to go through life little much easier. However with the mentioned issue of discipline issues in schools on the rise, something must be done and solutions must be proposed to stop or at least curb this issue from becoming much worse that it is now. Keep in mind to explore this topic I will break it into section for the purpose of easy referencing and understanding. Those will be the introductions, definitions, problems and finally proposal of improvement to reengineer the guidance and counselling.

Definitions Before we immerse ourselves into this issue, let us first redefine and reaffirm our knowledge on what is guidance and counselling. According to George and Christiani, (1995), guidance can be defined as an activity that gives information that relates to the interest and needs of a student like educational information, social or vocational. This is done for the purpose of guidance to be more prevention eccentric rather than curing a psychology problem. Meanwhile Shertzer and Stone (1974), stated that guidance as a process that helps individuals to understand themselves and their world. These individuals will be helped by the guidance teacher or a counsellor to be aware of their strengths and weakness. According to Lee et. al (2014) with that, having it in mind, individuals can further develop their abilities to a maximum level without affecting life balance that probably can cause extreme levels of stress. Alice Crow (1964) defined guidance as a help given to a person to determine short and long term life goals, planning ways to react and improve behaviours and needed aspects. McDaniel and Shaftel (1956) states that guidance is a service poll that includes orientation of educational information and career, individual inventories, counselling, placement and also follow-up. On the other hand, Lee, Ee, Nachiappan & Mukti (2014) has their own definition as they explained that guidance as a continuous educational process, organised and systematic. The purpose of guidance is to help and individual through his or her own efforts to expand his ability and also to do self-adjustment with the needs of the society, thus achievement happiness in life. Adding to the definition above Agrawal (2006) stated that guidance can also be defined as a concept and a process. As a concept guidance is concerned with the optimal development of the individual. As a process guidance helps the individual in self-understanding and in self-direction. What about counselling? Counselling also like guidance has multiple definitions according to various sources and situations. The most recent definition by Mcleod (2007) which he defines counselling as an activity where a person that is problematic invites and allows another 3

individual to build a special relationship with him or her. This allows the person to share their problems, explore, learn and finding solutions to lead a meaningful life. Another definition by Gladding (2004), he states that counselling is conducted with persons who are considered to be functioning well and those who are having more serious problems. Counselling meets the needs of a wide spectrum of people. Clients seen by counsellors have developmental or situational concerns that require help in regard to adjustment or remediation. Again Shertzer and Stone (1974) states that counselling as an interactive process that allows a person to understand himself and his or her surroundings. This will help create goals that will shape the future of the client. Corey (1977) on the other hand had an idea that counselling is a pricess where clients were given the opportunities to explore and aspect of themselves that causes difficulties for themselves. He also added that this exploration will create awareness about himself and the decisions he has made so that the person could live a better effective life. Boy and Pine (1968) defines counselling as a face to face relationship between a client trying to get help with a counsellor. This relationship relies on effective communication, mutual respect, total acceptance of client by the counsellor and also focus given to the needs and problems also the emotions of the client. Arbuckle (1965) explains that counselling is process that helps client to see their true self, what they own and what they cannot do with easy, hard to get and what cannot be done at all. Basically, it is a way to know where the limit of the client are. Cottle and Downie (1970), defines counselling as a process where a counsellor helps a client to understand and accepts information about himself and interaction between others so that he could make and effective decision in his life. Lee et. al (2014) defines counselling as a process that is educationally oriented that is carried out in a very simple social situation, where the counsellor is very well trained and tries to help the client to achieve life goals so that he member of the society is happy and productive. Meanwhle Hansen J, (1972) defines counselling as a process that helps clients to learn new ways to manage and adopt with situations in life. The client is helped by forming a decision making process either individually or in groups. This will allow for potential of the client to be well developed optimally, thus becoming a functioning individual. McDaniel and Shaftel (1956) defines counselling as a series of live meets with the client with the purpose of self-adaptation with his or her surroundings. Thus emphasises on the client and counsellor relationship. The final definition for counselling is from Lee et. al (2014) that states counselling is a process where a counsellor helps someone, a client, to interpret facts related to making a decisions, planning or even adaptation that needs to be done. 4

Focused Problems Now that we have reaffirm our standing and we are clear of what defines guidance and counselling itself, we can step into deeper into this service. As stated in the question that guidance and counselling should develop character and discipline. In my opinion it is appropriate for us to go into the full details of what is the scope of a guidance and counselling services and responsibility in schools. According to Zarawi (2012) there are 25 specific job scope for a full time guidance and counselling teacher. A few of those, that we can relate to the terms as mentioned earlier is to develop character and discipline, is at number 9 out of the 25 is becoming a committee member of the school’s discipline board, the school planning board and also the school prefect board. Those three mentioned positions also means that the guidance and counselling teacher have and important role in determining how the school disciplines will become. In addition, for the part about building character, a guidance and counselling teacher also is in charge be default at number 11 in the list is to become a coordinator for student’s development programme such as colloquiums, motivational programmes and also leadership programmes. That shows how much the person can influence both character and discipline of students in the school. However, this still does not answer what the problem is causing the teachers to always be out of the school attending to other matters. The answer also lies in Zarawi (2012), ranking at number 7 of the duties of a guidance and counselling teacher is to be a communications personnel between the school and other foreign agencies. So this requires a lot of movement to meet such people and often the meet up is not anywhere near and may take up days to complete. To reaffirm this another reason why they are always out of the school because their job specifications also state at number 14, which is to execute any duties given to them by the head of department from time to time. Thus far we have established that the work specification or the work spectrum of a guidance and counselling teacher has very wide angle. As stated above it causes less focus are given to the students in terms of counselling. Therefore, it is crucial that this job specifications given to the guidance and counselling teacher to be revamped in order to boost the effectiveness of guidance and counselling services in schools. In order to do so, it is important to always refer to the basis if this nation education foundation, the none other than the National Education Philosophy. Having that said, let us revisit what is the National Education Philosophy? The philosophy behind it is: "Education in Malaysia is an on-going efforts towards further developing the potential of individuals in a holistic and integrated manner, so as to produce individuals who are 5

intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and physically balanced and harmonic, based on a firm belief in and devotion to God. Such an effort is designed to produce Malaysian citizens who are knowledgeable and competent, who possess high moral standards and who are responsible and capable of achieving high level of personal well-being as well as being able to contribute to the harmony and betterment of the family, the society and the nation at large."

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Proposal of improvement As stated above it is clear that if changes were to be made, the changes that need to be done is none other needs to take the essence of the National Education Philosophy, which is to have a counselling service that is holistically and integrated into the system. Starting off, the first changes that needs to be done is to make it much more integrated, the usage of Information Communication and Technology (ICT), to improve the efficiency of the service itself. In this 20th century, such use of technology is very critical. That thought is supported by Lee, Ee, Suppiah and Mukti (2014), stated that the usage of computers and technology is very effective in helping the counselling field to expand. Adding to the previous point, they also stated that the usage of computers that covers arranging and storing reports, data manipulation and word processing with the mix of usage if emails and websites is trending even amongst counsellors around the globe. Based on their statement, this will surely improve the counselling and guidance services provided by the teachers, This is due to reduced costs and time consume in preparing any such meetings and also being able to organise and reschedule and meetings and session with students or perhaps better a collaboration with other guidance and counselling teacher for any event. The second changes that need to be implemented is the reorganisation of counselling and organisation itself. This is because in my opinion, the guidance and counselling teacher holds too many responsibility. As mentioned earlier in my writing we found out that they have 25 lists of jobs in which is too general, thus specialisation in form of reorganising the job specification itself is a must. According to Sprinthall (1971), he stated that “It is probably not an understatement to say that the service concept has so dominated guidance and counselling that more basic and significant questions are not even acknowledged, let alone answered. Instead, the counsellor assumes a service orientation that limits and defines his [or her] role to minor administrative procedures.” That statement clearly indicates that such lots of job specifications may end up to messed up the service itself. Solving such problems in my opinion requires a comprehensive program in which that is in line with the National Education Philosophy that focuses on holistic and integrated system. Such methods has been implemented in the overseas and specifically the United States. This is based on Sink & MacDonald (1998), “By the close of the 20th Century, comprehensive guidance programs increasingly were being implemented as a result of the work of guidance leaders at the national and state level as well as school counsellors, 7

administrators, and boards of education at the local level.” That shows comprehensive counselling and guidance can be carried out if leaders at higher level take notice of such needs, thus validating the need for reorganising the organisation of guidance and counsellor teachers. Adding to that confidence is something mentioned by Gysbers (2011), “What began with the appointment of teachers to the position of vocational counsellor has now become a program.

Organizationally,

comprehensive

guidance

programs

incorporated

the

position/services model and have become the major way of organizing and managing guidance in the schools of the United States.” As mentioned earlier, although this solution was introduced and proven a success it does not mean that we cannot adopt and adapt such success in our own local context, thus it supports the reorganising of the structure by introducing a better job specification with comprehensive guidance program. The third suggestion that I would happily propose to the leaders of the field is to improve the accountability of the service itself. Before we indulge ourselves into this, let us understand what is accountability? Accountability is defined by oxforddictionaries.com as from the root work accountable means required or expected to justify actions or decisions; responsible. The point of this is with accountability I personally believe that if something done responsibly and every action is justify, it could increase the effectiveness in students achievement and also other development that involves counselling and guidance. According to Rothney (1958), his findings was that differences 5 years after graduation in favour of the group of students who received guidance and counselling. He also concluded his findings that is, “When so many small and a few large differences in the directions hypothesized by guidance workers can be obtained under representative high school counselling conditions, it seems likely that greater differences would appear if counselling were done under more ideal circumstances. Such circumstances would seem to require more acceptance of counselling as a regular part of secondary school experience, more enthusiastic support from parents and school personnel, and better techniques of evaluation.” The big question is, does it yet again had any reliable effect on the service and the students? Well according to Gysbers (2001), he has done an empirical research conducted in the states of Missouri and Utah during the past 5 years has shown that when certified professional school counsellors have the time, the resources, and the structure of a comprehensive guidance program in which to work, they contribute to positive student academic and career development as well as the development of positive and safe learning climates in 12 schools. Thus supporting the idea that accountability does play a big positive role in improving the guidance and counselling service, as well as giving back to the students and school improvement that can be seen over time. 8

The next suggestion to the problem is physical in terms. Most of our local guidance and counselling unit in the school is that most students feels looking at the room as their appearance is very repulsive, not to mention dull and so on. In my opinion such of these problems came from the surrounding, environment and the layout of the place itself. Therefore I would like to suggest in order to improve the counselling and guidance services, it is crucial for the Ministry of Education (MOE) in order to reengineer the guidance and counselling services to provide more allocation to improve to room in terms of how it looks. According to Pearson (2012), a workspace of a counsellor can very much influence the customer, in this case the students by introducing factors such as light, temperature, noise, music and colour. This shows that the workspace has a very strong influence in the outcome, thus making the service much more effective. In addition to that, the office where all the service took place can also have a contributing factor in determining the success factor of the session or services provided. Pearson (2012), offices with a “warm, intimate setting tend to produce greater self-disclosure” and meanwhile small room size has also been shown to have a negative impact on counsellor and client communication. I personally believe that the statement is true as more space gives the client more resolve to let the guidance and counsellor teacher to carry out his work. This idea of mine is still supported by Pearson (2012) that states that “Planning or selecting a generous-sized room would then be useful in the effort to increase both client motivation and support a healthy working alliance. If spatial features of the environment alter a client’s perception of the effectiveness of communication.” Thus, I stand firm with my proposal to the MOE that more allocation of funds need to be given in order to reform the guidance and counselling room in our schools. The next agenda that I would like to propose in order to redesign the guidance and counselling services is to do a rebranding of the guidance and counselling teacher themselves. This is due to them being invisible most of the time in the school at one point not even the students were able to pinpoint who is their guidance and counselling teacher. Thus such problem could render their main purpose of the job to be obsolete if such of job has no clients. This problem could be arisen due to teachers themselves who are too low profile and are not attractive. Thus, I propose that guidance and counselling teacher should have a remake of their own looks and personality not to mention to have a wide range of knowledge as an added value to themselves and their service. This suggestion of mine is supported by Mohamed Sharif (2004), the good characteristics that a counsellor should possess includes honest and sincere, knowledgeable, tolerance and also patience and calm and others. That confirms 9

more how a guidance and counselling teacher presents him or herself is crucial. Also not to forget I also mentioned earlier that a guidance and counselling teacher should be widely knowledgeable by having a broad educational background and my statement is in line with Sipon (2010) that states school counsellors should have a broad educational background who can help him understand the people where he works, appreciate the values and ideas of others , adapt to changes in cultural, economic and scientific and apply counselling procedures widely. Thus, concluding this point is an introvert guidance and counselling teacher is not going to achieve much or will make it hard for students or clients to open up. Although guidance and counselling teachers have as much as 25 work specifications as mention earlier above, in reality, sadly those work specifications only involve a limited amount of interaction between them and the students and also what more the administrators in the school. Thus they have less face time with the citizens if the school. My recommendation is also supported by Sipon (2010) that state the counsellors should have a good repo between themselves with all other personals such as the headmaster, the senior assistant, discipline teacher, teachers and non-teacher staffs in the school. Although some might see this issue as something that can be swept under the carpet, however realistically if such problem kept being shunned away, it will take away the student confidence in the teacher as students loses confident. The impact of this issue is when students do not recognized their guidance and counselling teacher, less interaction would happen as they do not feel that the teacher could be the source to the solution of problems they are facing. According to Zainon (2008) states that interaction between guidance and counselling teacher and student is important to create a sense of safety and friendliness where they are able to talk and share their problems without feeling insecure. If such a case is not taken serious, there is a huge problem of students having no direction where to head if they had encounter any problem. Thus in the long run disciplinary problems will kept repeating and no solution is found. Thus to add to the rebranding mentioned and the problem stated, it is also crucial for the school to take a proactive step with the assistance of the MOE to give a circular to involve guidance and counselling teacher in weakly activities such as a motivational slot so that they could be acknowledge by the students as someone authoritative that could help and if they encountered any problems. To add to the previous idea, more one-to-one interaction between the counsellor and the students with their problem could also be a good practice for the students and also good for the teacher to give them more face value. This is supported by Sipon (2010) has outlined several proposals in an effort to address the problem of student, counsellors should master 10

how to tackle discipline problems, engage actively in policy formulation and policy issues related to discipline, control programs related to discipline and working with teachers and administrators. Finally, I would like to add a final proposal to improve the guidance and counselling is to improve student’s perception towards guidance and counselling teacher. This proposal has a strong connection to the previous proposal, and to make it easier to remember take it as the side B to the side A cassette. As we know Malaysia is well known its multicultural ethnicity and thus the multicultural school, albeit we have national type schools, both the national type school and the national school contains students of various cultural backgrounds. According to Azlizamani (2002), reports shows that students prefer to meet with counsellor that is much older, of the same ethnic, the same race, the same sex and the same religion. This will give the students more confidence and trusts. In addition to that previous point of view, it is also very important to remember worldview has an influence too. Azlizamani (2002) states that worldview influences the students perception towards the teacher is due to it acts as a critical variable in either helping the process or stop it completely on its tracks. In addition, he also said that the worldview in which translates to the belief system of the client, problem solving, decision making and conflict resolve. He also added although such problems are more prominent in the United States, but the issue is still the same and the young counselling world in Malaysia could learn a lot from it. Thus, it is important to overcome it. I therefore suggest in overcoming such a hurdle, it would be very logical if guidance and counselling teachers are being assigned according to their worldview and multicultural background. This will not only reduce inefficiency due to student’s doubt but also makes any program suitable as the guidance and counselling teacher will understand what is okay and not to be followed.

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Conclusion The guidance and counselling in Malaysia is still in its infant years if we were to compare it to other huge players such as the United States, Australia or even United Kingdom. We have much more to learn and many more to improve on. As mentioned above we ourselves are all aware of what is happening in our local guidance and counselling arena in our schools. The lack of focus in job specifications was the greatest amongst all, though not all there is, all of the other small ones when accumulated could bring a huge disaster towards out guidance and counselling services in school. Thus, the need to reengineer the guidance and counselling services in our school is must to improve the services more. The suggestions that I made above was also for the sake of the services, as I strongly believe it would transform the service to become more prominent and important in our local classroom. Suggestion such as improving the guidance and counselling teaching appearance and also the government to allocate more money to be spent at renovating the workspace and also the place where the services take place, will definitely bring a huge sudden effect towards the view of others towards the guidance and counselling teacher. It is all my hopes that my ideas and what literature that I have read to complete these assignment may one day taken into serious consideration to really make an evolution to improve the guidance and counselling services in our schools, not for us though, but for our children of the future.

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Reflection by Akashah bin Osman This assignment of EDU 3073 has gave me a lot of new, surprising and refreshing experience that I would never had even think off. The experience of learning this subject, albeit I have to admit at first it seems a bit off from my cup of tea, finally I found it interesting. During the mission of completing this task given, through the literature I had to go through, the experience of finding these resources is the most challenging of all. Due to the timeframe of this task is required to be done, I had little time to access any hard literature. Thus, I had to scavenge the e-book libraries and the e-journal systems to gather information needed. While we are on the topic, I also found it is very tough to find any recent updated local content that I could use for this task. They do exist, but the search for them would need to be extensive. This has taught me the value of patience and also to be consistent in trying to get the resources. This method of me getting information through digital media is supported by Renner (2007) that eBooks simplify and enhance the research process by allowing users to search within documents, across specified groups of documents, and across entire catalogues within seconds. During the whole course of EDU 3073, I also receive new inputs that I deemed would be very useful in the future. As the course progresses and the task was handed out, inputs such as the technics and methods of how to handle students can be adapt and adopt to be use for any situation if I face any in the classroom. Those input would make me a much better teacher in the future. Furthermore, I also learned that communication is very important while finding and proposing new ideas in this task. Communication in this course has taught me the correct way to talk with students, what and how to react during certain situation, whether it is individual or group. I also felt that during the time taken for me to complete this task, it had given me new ideas of how to improve my class control and how to better get student’s attention. These ideas that was generated and adopted will surely be something that I will carry forward through my teaching years to come. As an educator, this task had shed new lights for me as an educator. Prior to this, I would just assume that teachers have a responsibility towards students, but it is very limited to what I can do as an educator. However, this task, through its materials and generated ideas had

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gave me a new spirit that I could do something to help the students even though he or she is suffering from a personal problem. This has made me to be more aware of my surroundings and signs shown by my students that could indicate they are having problems either in school or from their home. Overall, it has aspired me to give more to my students and aspired me to be sensitive and give much more care to them. Going through the literature to complete this task, looking through how far first world country had gone and mature to develop and improve their guidance and counselling, it is in my hopes that one day, Malaysia with our current state of the guidance and counselling services is still in its infant years, that one day, just one day we would be the next giant in this field. With that said, it also means in the future, no longer guidance and counselling are to be taken lightly in the school organisations, but a unit that is always referred to, and respected by all and the community to. I also have high hopes, that the future of guidance and counselling will create the High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) as mentioned by our prime minister in the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025, (2013) that stated in order to become a developed country not only the economy needs to be transform but also the way future Malaysians think. Thus, I hope the guidance and counselling will be that stepping stone in aiding Malaysia to achieve greater heights in the future, maybe not for us, but the generation to come.

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References Agrawal, R. (2006). Educational,Vocational Guidance and Counselling. New Delhi: Sipra Publication. Arbuckle, D. S. (1975). Counseling and Psychotherapy: An Existential-Humanistic View. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Boy, A. V., & Pine, G. J. (1963). Client-Centred Counseling in the Secondary School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Corey, G. (1977). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy. n/a: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co. Cottle, W. C., & Downie, N. M. (1970). Preparation for Counseling. New Jersey: Prentice-Hal. Crow, A. V. (1964). Vital issues in American education. n/a: Bantam Books. George, R. &. (1995). Theory Method and Process of Psychotheraphy. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs. Gladding, S. (2004). Counseling: A Comprehensive Profession (5th edition). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Gysbers, N. C. (2001). School Guidance and Counseling in the 21st Century: Remember the Past. Professional School Counseling,Dec2001, Vol. 5, Issue 2, 1-16. Hansen, J. C., Steric, R. R., & Warner, R. W. (1977). Counseling: Theraphy and Process. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Inc. Lee, K. C., Ee, A. M., Nachiappan, S., & Mukti, T. A. (2014). Bimbingan dan Kaunselling Kanak-Kanak. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford Fajar. Mark Pearson, H. W. (2012). Soothing Spaces and Healing Places: Is there an Ideal Counselling Room design? Psychotherapy in Australia, 46-53. Mc Leod, J. (2007). Counselling Skill. New York: Open University Press. McDaniel, H. B., & Shaftel, G. A. (1956). Guidance in the Modern School. New York: Holt-Dryden. Ministry of Education Malaysia. (2013). Malaysia Education Blueprint Plan 20132025. Putrajaya: Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia. Mohamed Sharif b. Mustaffa, Z. b. (2004). Komuniti Remaja dan Permasalahan Sosial: Peranan Guru sebagai Penolong Pembantu di Sekolah. 1-7.

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Renner, R. A. (2007, July 11). eBooks – Costs and Benefits to Academic and Research Libraries. Retrieved from Springer.com: http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=0-0-45-415198-0 Rothney, J. W. (1958). Guidance practices and results. New York: Harper & Beothers. SALIM, A. B. (2002). PERSEPSI PELAJAR TERHADAP GURU KAUNSELING DARI. Serdang: UPM. Shetzer, B., & Stone, S. C. (1974). Fundamentals of counseling,. Michigan: Houghton Mifflin. Sink, C. A. (1998). The status of comprehensive guidance and counseling in the United States. Professional School Counseling, 88–94. Sipon, S. (2010). Pengurusan Perkhidmatan Bimbingan dan Kaunseling Sekolah. 38-46. Sprinthall, N. A. (1971). Guidance for human growth. New York: an Nostrand. Zainon Omar, A. E. (2008). Persepsi Guru terhadap Hubungan Pihak Sekolah dengan Ibu Bapa : Proposal. Seminar Kebangsaan Pengurusan Pendidiikan PKPGB.

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