ABSTRACT

This research project was conducted to investigate the perception of guidance and counselling services in Urban Secondary Schools in Uyo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State. Ten urban secondary school were randomly selected for the study. In each of these ten Schools, 20 teachers from each School making a total sample of 200 were used for the study. Two hypothesis were tested for with the use of chi-square (X2) statistical analysis at 0.05 level of significance. Analysis of the result from data obtained through the questionnaire instrument reveal that: male and female secondary school teachers do not differ significantly (P>0.05) in their perception of the role of the counsellors, whereas male and female teachers differs significantly (P <0.05) in their opinion with regards to counselors meriting special recognition, assigning counselors meriting special recognition, assigning counselors teaching subject, counselors advice to students, and information in school. From these findings, one could conclude that lack of awareness and orientation about guidance / counselors functions and services cause poor perceptions of their services.

Based on the above result, it could be recommended that, counselors should be provided with finance for various activities of the programme. Also, government and the Ministry of Education should organize seminars and workshops frequently to create conducive environment for consultation with counselors to teach or be consulted at least 1 hr every week.

CHAPTER ONE

• BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

According to the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, Guidance means “help or advice given to somebody, e.g. a child or young person, especially by somebody in authority”; while counseling in the other way round means “professional advice about a problem”.

From the above definitions of Guidance and Counselling, it therefore means that God is the supreme counselor. Biblically, facts remain that act of guidance and counseling had been right from the creation of Adam and Eve. According to Genesis 2:16-17 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying “of every tree of the garden you may freely eat”, “but of the tree of the garden you may freely eat”, but of the tree of the knowledge of you eat of it, you shall surely die”. God having seen that He has put everything in such harmonious way that man should enjoy the garden, he advised. This then proved that God himself, did not leave man to live according to his own will and dictate, but advised them on how to live and enjoy the good things from the garden.

Relating Guidance and counseling to the nation, it proves unequivocal that the word is synonymous with order and administration. It becomes paramount since its spells out the general life conduct of citizenry. At any point in time, failure to adhere to this advice always come with consequences.

Academically, the origin of counseling is traced to vocational guidance movement pioneered by Frank Parson in 1986 (Uwe, 2005). This movement initiated an idea of specialist called “Counsellor” whose main aim was to help individual understand the facts about the world of work and themselves, and tried to help them fit these two components of information together in some meaningful way.

Also, Clifford Beers in 1988 also gave impetus to the emergence of this profession. By this he intensified public interest in mental illness and how such people could be help.

For the purpose of this project, it becomes imperative that the subject matter, guidance and counseling be defined and narrowed down to educational system, and more specifically in Nigeria. Education is believed to be the bed rock of any development,  advancement and progress of any nation. No wonder this sector in recent decades has recorded unprecedented increase and expansion in Nigeria. Apart from this notable expansion in educational system in Nigeria, critical examination reveals that performance of students in our secondary schools fall bellow average. According to George (2004) not up to 20% of certified pupils of Nigerian Primary Schools can correctly spell their names, talk less of making a correct sentence. Equally, not up to 30% of certified students of secondary schools in Nigeria can correctly make a sentence, let alone write a letter. Also not up to 60% of the written communication of graduates in Nigerian Universities could be adjudged error free. One may then be forced to ask, what is the cause of this failure despite determined effort and huge resources government at different levels is invested in educational sector, all for the purpose of improving academic standard of students. Any way, that fact is not far fetch. This is sequel to the fact that one of the essential ingredients, which serves as a piloting compass in educational system in Nigeria has been ignored. According to Denga (2001), guidance and counseling in our school system is a major force in personal, social, educational development of students.

To achieve qualitative and quantitative education which has been the song chorused by every concerned Nigerian, it becomes inevitable that government introduces guidance and counseling into that most schools curriculum. It is no doubt that most school principals, teachers and even students undermined the services of counselor.

In line with this context, guidance and counseling would be defined and the aim of it services harnessed.

GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING

Essentially, guidance services are vital for the survival of the school system. According to Aziude (1995) guidance and counseling services are advisory services for the students who are adolescents with many developmental, psychological and academicals problem. These services ensure that students are assisted to make wise decision regarding their vocational, educational and personal lives. An effective principal encourages subject specialist class teacher, career teachers and house teachers to be involved in the task of counseling students need different types of guidance such as vocational guidance for choice of subjects and knowledge of occupational guidance to discover their interest, abilities and capacities in various studies. According to Denga (2001) education guidance is fundamental preparation for vocation choice and plays a significant role in career guidance generally. A person without sound educational guidance is seriously disadvantaged not only in pursuing an appropriate subsequent occupational choice and deriving genuine job satisfaction. He may only stumble into luck by accident.

Students are also given moral and social guidance for right ideas and habits of conduct and living. Health guidance assist the students to develop fundamental and emotional health and hygiene. Guidance and counseling for late developers and socially awkward students help to improve the quality of learning and living in our secondary school.

For the afore going services derived from guidance and counseling in our secondary schools it becomes imperative that this course be given its due position in the scheme of things. It is high time teachers, as well as students be made to perceive this course as one of the propelling tools for effective leaning. Orientation should be carried out to sanitize our educational system for the purpose of improving our standard of education through guidance and counseling.

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

According to Dobson (1982:42) people’s perception is highly selective since we are continually bombard by a flood of sensations light, colour, sound, temperature, skin and skeletal reactions. So for us to adequately cope with the demand of our environment, we cannot possibly attend to all the sensory charges impinging on us. Therefore, it is usual for certain details to be use to better or was to which the person response. Urban teachers are bound to have differential perceptions of teachers in elementary, middle and high schools, regarding necessary Guidance and Counselling services. Dobson (1982:42) emphasized on how these services might be delivered and teachers expectations about school counselor, contributions and working relationship. He further stated that, establishing meaningful connections between teachers and students in the classrooms as well as amongst the students themselves is essential for the mission of education to be successful, therefore, when schools attend to students social and emotional skills, the academic achievements of children increases, the incidence of problem behaviours decreases and the quality of the relationship surrounding each child improves. Therefore, the problem of this study is to examine the views of teachers in respects of administration of Guidance and Counselling in secondary school in Uyo Local Government Area.

1.3    PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The study aim at finding out if secondary school teachers’ male and female differs in their opinion with regard to the functions, status, and assignment of teaching subject to school counselor. Specifically, the study aim at finding out if:

1. male and female teachers in secondary school differs in their perception of the role of the school counselor.
2. Male and female teachers in secondary school differs in their opinion with regard to the status of the school counselor.

• Male and female teachers in secondary school differs in their opinion as to whether counselors should be given teaching subject.

1.4    RESEARCH QUESTION

The following research questions were raised to guide the study on:

1. How male and female secondary school teachers perceive guidance and counseling services in their schools?
2. Do teachers understand the function of school counselors?

• Do teachers feel that counseling merits special recognition in the school?

1. Do teachers feel that counselors should be given course to teach in addition to counseling?

1.5    RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

The following hypothesis were formulated:

1. Male and female secondary school teachers do not differ in their perception of the role of the counselor
2. Male and female teachers do not differ significantly in their opinion with regards to counselors meriting special recognition in school.

• Male and female teachers do not differ in their opinion with regards to giving counselors teaching subject in school.

1. Male and female teachers do not differ in their opinion in respect to counselor’s advice to student in school.
2. Male and female teachers do not differ significantly as regards counselor information in school.

• SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY:

This study will reveal the thought of secondary school teachers in Uyo Local Government Area as regards to their school counselors to enable them realize the importance of school counselors to students and teachers. These findings will also bring improvement to the administration of secondary schools as well as promoting the relationship between teachers and counselors in Uyo Local Government Area.

This finding would also provide conducive environment for learning and teaching using guidance and counseling services in the school system in Uyo Local Government Area.

1.7    DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The study was limited to the defined target population which involved only urban secondary school teachers in Uyo Local Government Area. The inference from this study would only be applied to the target population in Uyo L.G.A. only teachers with appropriate teaching qualification will be used in the study.

1.8    ASSUMPTION OF THE STUDY

1. It is assumed that teachers generally in Uyo Local Government Area have some kind of perception for guidance and counseling in secondary school.

1. Teachers under consideration have some kind of problems in due of Guidance and counseling

iii.      The teachers considered are not at least performing well in secondary schools with or without Guidance and counseling.

1. It is assumed that the project supervisor would co-operate with the researcher by making useful suggestion were necessary in this project
2. The researcher was also optimistic that at least 75% of questionnaire sent out would be completed and returned so as to justify the conduct of the study.
3. It was further assumed that the sponsors of the researcher will co-operate financially to enable her complete the project on time.

1.9    DEFINITION OF TERMS:

For the purpose of clarity in this work, it is pertinent to use some of the key in the researchers’ conceptual setting for better understanding.

PERCEPT: Is the representation of what is perceived, but the basic component in the formation of a concept is a way of conceiving something. The process of perceiving is knowledge gained by perceiving, a man admired for the depth of his perception, sensing which is becoming aware of something via the senses. In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting and organizing, sensory information (en.wikipedia:org/wiki/perception). But to it all, perception is a dynamic searching for the best interpretation of the available data. It also involves the operation of the sense and is effected in the shadow of the expectations, hopes, needs, fears, and members that make up our internal world. The analysis of perception and the attempt to deal with skeptical arguments about perceptual knowledge are central philosophical topics. Perception as it is involves both our capacity to be sensorily affected by external objects and our ability to bring these objects under concepts, although other capacities might also have a role to play (Wordnet. Priceton.edu/perl/webwn).

GUIDANCE:

The term guidance could mean different things to different people depending on the extent which the word is used. To this write-up guidance is:

• The act of guiding or showing the way,
• Guidance means receiving instruction from a qualified superior involving method of work dealing with difficult or complex issues.
• Guidance is help in right choices. As a concept, guidance involves the utilization of point of view to help an individual. As an educational construct, it refers to the provision of experiences that help students to understand themselves. As a service guidance refers to the organizational procedures and process to achieve a helping relationship.

Guidance involves help or advice that is given to somebody especially by an older or someone with more experience. It serves as a road map that guides a person to reach a destination. Guidance is also a cluster of formalized educational services designed by the school to assist student to achieve self knowledge or self understanding which is necessary for them to attain the fullest self development and self realization of their potentials.

COUNSELLING

As the name implies, is an extensive one-to-one sessions carried out by especially trained staff which aims at enabling patients to understand emotional support and to help the patient cope with the consequences of treatment.

Also counseling is a process where clients are helped in dealing with their personal and interpersonal conflict by a third party therapist. More so, counseling is for helping the client resolve conscious conflicts with the focus on setting goals and problem solving. A therapy in which a trained person listens to our problems and anxieties, and advices without judging to help us find our own answers. It is a confidential dialogue between a client and a care provider aimed at enabling the client to cope with stress and take personal decision. Finally, counseling is a process which takes place in a one-to-one relationship between and individual faced by problems which he/she cannot cope with, alone and a professional worker whose training and experience quality him to help other to arrive at solutions to various an individualized personalized and permissive assistance in developing skill in attaining and retaining socially enlightened skill in attaining and retaining socially enlightened self understanding and self direction.

URBAN TEACHERS: Urban teachers here could be referred to as some one who teaches in a school that is situated outside rural area, whose fundamental goal is to identify with the need of his pupil or students, as well as that of the community.