An investigation into secondary school teachers counselling skills when supporting students with psycho-social problems
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Date
2018-08
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Publisher
National University of Lesotho
Abstract
The well-being ofstudents is ofglobal concern. Secondary school students‟ are
often confronted by complex problems emanating from developmental
problems, psycho-social and academic challenges. Underachievement and
career disorientation are some of the problems that overwhelm students.
Counselling is perceived as in important measure that teachers use to address
students‟ problems. This qualitative study aimed to explore the Lesotho
secondary school teachers‟ perceptions of their counselling skills when
handling students‟ problems. Semi-structured interviews, field notes and
documents were used to collect data from secondary school teachers selected
by purposive sampling. The researcher used content and thematic approaches in
analysing data. The findings revealed counselling strategies employed by
secondary school teachers when counselling students. Such strategies included
use ofgroup counselling, one-on-one and role play. The findings also indicated
challenges that secondary school teachers encounter when counselling students
with problems. Such challenges included, the inability for some students not to
open up to the counsellor and the fact that some counsellors‟ immoral character
was questionable by their clients were obstructions to adequate performance of
the general exercise. At the heart ofthe revealing findings were the lack of
funds by school in pursuing the counselling project and the inability for some
counsellors to detach themselves from students‟ private problem. The findings
further provided an insight into how teachers deal with the challenges they
encounter when counselling students. Chiefamong these were the fact that
teachers were able to look for alternative space for counselling in the absence
ofcounselling rooms, used integrated approach by merging counselling into
other school activities as well engaging parents into some desirable
orientations. The study recommends that teacher-counsellors training be
strengthened and that educational psychologists should be deployed in schools
as well as serious improvement in infrastructure.