Federal legislation during this period of 1960s, continued to have an impact on the counseling profession and the role of counselors, particularly school counselors. For example, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of1965 (Public Law 89-10) provided funds and supported special programs to help schools improve educational opportunities for students of low-income families. This bill also provided funds for services that would not normally be available in most schools. The 1960s saw a new, expanded role for school counselors, with movement away from an emphasis on guidance programs. The counseling literature of this time, particularly The School Counselor journal and a few major texts began to delineate the role and functions of counselors in schools. During this period, the term guidance was targeted by some authors as a vague and sometimes confusing label for counselors, teachers, and other people who attempted to define the role and functions of counselors in schools. Nearly forty years later, the discussion about guidance and the choice of an appropriate language of identity the school counselor’s role and functions continue to be important professional issues. Many programmatic concepts and goals expressed in these and other texts are similar, yet there remains this unresolved difference in language used to define and describe the school counseling profession. The confusion over the terms guidance and counseling is compounded by the absence of a theoretical foundation for guidance as a professional function.
Muro and Kottman (1995) have note, ‘’ While there is some theory available to guide counseling practice, formal guidance theory still needs elaboration and definition’’. It is difficult to comprehend how any profession could establish a credible identity on a nonexistent theoretical foundation. In the period following 1960, the role and functions of school counselors emphasized in the professional literature included programmatic and process functions. Programmatic functions emphasized strategies to develop comprehensive programs of services, such as defining goals and objectives, assessing students’ needs, aligning services with the school’s curriculum, coordinating student services, and evaluating results. In addition, educational and vocational planning, student placement, and referral systems frequently were included in this category. Process functions described specific activities by which counselors provided direct services to students, parents, and teachers. These functions included individual and group counseling, student assessment, parent assistance, and
consultation with teachers and parents.
In 1968, Miller wrote that an ‘’effective guidance program requires the cooperative effort of every teacher in the school’’. Yet, this cooperative role for administrators and teachers remained unclear because of several factors. For one, guidance continued to be associated strictly with the role of the school counselor. To this day, this perception endures in many schools where the mere mention of the word guidance has teachers and administrator stunning their heads toward the counselor’s office.
A second factor that made it difficult for teachers to embrace a guidance role was their narrow focus on the subject matter that they were responsible for teaching. This is true in today’s schools as well. Sometimes teachers, particularly in secondary schools, place so much emphasis on the instruction of English, mathematics, science, and other subjects that they forget the broader, developmental concerns of students. A historic failing in U.S. education has been the inability of our schools to infuse guidance, which is lessons of self-development and social skills – into the curriculum and daily instruction.
The emerging emphasis on the role of teachers in guidance in the 1960s and1970s highlighted specific functions for establishing a foundation of collaboration between school counselors and teachers. This collaboration continues to be an essential ingredient of today’s comprehensive school counseling programs.
francis1897 answered the question on March 15, 2023 at 13:15