Guidance counseling expectations of secondary school educators: A preliminary test of the three dimensional model of Turkish guidance and counseling

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to test the appropriateness of theThree Dimensional Guidance and Counseling Model developed by Oner (1988)to the Turkish education system.twelve high schools with well-functioning guidance services in Istanbulwere selected for the study. Seven of these schools were private and five of themwere public schools. Nine,principals, 63 assistant .principals, 50 counselors and43 teachers constituted the sample. The Expectations From Guidance andCounseling Services Questionnaire, specially developed for this study, wasadministered to the entire sample (N=165).There were four hypotheses of the study. The first hypothesis stated thatguidance - counseling expectations of school administrators, teachers andcounselors would show congruence with the conceptualization of the ThreeDimensional Model. In order to test this hypothesis, the Spearman Brown RankOrder Correlation technique was used. The guidance-counseling expectations ofeducators as a group where found to be congruent with the conceptualization ofthis model, and the hypothesis was supported.The first part of the second hypothesis predicted that there would bedifferences between the school counselors' expectations and other educators'(school administrators, teachers) expectations from guidance and counselingservices because of differences in the background training of these educators.The school counselors' expectations from these services were predicted to bemore congruent with the Three Dimensional model than the schooladministrators' and the teachers' expectations. To test this hypothesis, TheSpearman Brown Rank Order Correlations, ANOVA, and t tests werecomputed. It was found that educator groups (principals, assistant principals,teachers, counselors) varied in their guidance expectations. The three of thesubtest mean scores of counselors were higher than some of the other educatorgroups and the counselors' derived median score tended to be the highest amongeducators. But there were no significant differences between the rank ordercorrelation of any of the other educators. Therefore the hypothesis was partiallysupported.It was stated in the second part of the second hypothesis that theschool counselors would emphasize matters related to personal and psychosocialdevelopment whereas the teachers would emphasize academicachievement and the administrators would emphasize disciplinary matters. Inorder to test this hypothesis the educators' rank ordering of subtests weredetermined. It was found that counselors emphasized psycho-social developmentof the student, as expected. However, teachers and school administrators alsoemphasized psycho-social development rather than academic achievement anddisciplinary matters. Therefore, the hypothesis was partially supported.The expectation of the third hypothesis was that private schooleducators would demonstrate a higher degree of congruence with the ThreeDimensional Guidance-Counseling Model than the public school educators. Totest this hypothesis the Spearman Brown Rank Order Correlation technique wasimplemented. Analysis of data revealed that private school educatorsdemonstrated higher degree of congruence with the Three DimensionalGuidance-Counseling Model than the public school educators, supporting thishypothesis.The fourth hypothesis stated that the problem - oriented objective of theThree Dimensional Model will be emphasized more than the prevention -oriented objective. In testing this hypothesis, the frequency counts of preventiveand problem-oriented items of the total questionnaire are tabulated andpercentages are determined. Findings showed that both problem-orientedobjective and prevention-oriented objective were emphasized equally. Therefore,the hypothesis was not supported.These results revealed that the conceptualization of the ThreeDimensional Guidance-Counseling Model proved to be relatively congruent withthe Turkish educators' conceptualization of guidance-counseling in general.One limitation of the present study is the technique used in testing thehypotheses. The Three Dimensional Model which is basically not hierarchicalwas tested by hypotheses based on hierarchy of content areas, and using a rankorder procedure. One implication of the findings, however, is that this modelcould well be considered hierarchical when I if one is interested in determiningthe degree of importance of the content of Turkish guidance-counseling andexpectations.Another limitation is the nature of the sample schools and subjects. Itmay be more informative on, and provide more valid test for the model if schoolswith poorly-functioning guidance services were also included and students andparents were added to the sample group.