An investigation into secondary school teachers counselling skills when supporting students with psycho-social problems

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.