THE UNIVERSITY OF ZAMBIA
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
ZAMBIA INSTTUTE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION
GUIDANCE AND COUSELLING IN SPECIAL EDUCATION
LECTURE NOTES/ HANDOUTS
Lecture Three
GUIDANCE
BY
Mrs Chikwanka H.K.C
Mrs. Chikwanka H.K.C
DEFINITION OF GUIDANCE
According to Makinde (1988) the word guidance is delivered from its
root word ‘guide’ which means:





Direct
Aid
Lead
Inform
Interact
According to Kochhar (2013) Guidance is a process of helping an
individual to understand himself and his world. The following are
the key elements in the definition of guidance.
1) Process
This implies that guidance can take more than a single contact or
steps, progressively moving toward a goal. However, a single event
can also suffice if it meets the needs of a client.
2) Helping
Guidance is aiding, assisting, or informing
3) Individual
It refers to pupils in a school or clients in other settings.
4) Understanding
Guidance aims at helping a client to understand himself or herself
and the environment.
 An individual is helped to understand his/ her strength and
weakness.
Mrs. Chikwanka H.K.C
 Guidance is broader than counselling and counselling is an aspect
of guidance.
 Kochhar (2007) made a logical separation of the terms guidance and
counselling
by
using
two
process
called
Adjustive
and
Distributive.
 In the Adjustive the process emphasis is on social, personal,
emotion problems of a person.
 In the distributive process, the focus is upon the client education,
vocational and occupation problem which can also be described as
guidance.
NEED FOR GUIDANCE SERVICES IN SCHOOLS
1.
To help in the total Development of the Learner:
Schools need to emphasize the importance of all subjects in the
school curriculum because they are meant to contribute to the
total development of learners.
2.
To help learners choose, prepare, enter and make
progress in the career: In a highly complete and rapidly
changing world of work job requirement keeps on changing,
market conditions altered and many other changes occur and
these make selections of careers and other labour market
trench complex.
3.
To help learners in vocational development: A person
passes through various stages of vocational development it
includes:
Mrs. Chikwanka H.K.C
 Growth
 Exploration
 Establishment
 Maintenance
 Decline
a) Growth
Learners desire knowledge about themselves in terms of their
abilities interest and weakness on one hand and knowledge about
the world of work on the other hand.
b) Exploration stage
People tend to explore occupations they can best get in and
resignation may be a common symptom. The goal is to establish
oneself in the work and work places.
c) Establishment
The goal is to establish oneself in the work and work places.
d)Maintenance
This is an achievement he or she moves to maintenance level to
keep the roles and regulations of the work in order to maintain
the job.
e) Decline
Mrs. Chikwanka H.K.C
After overstaying in one job or company compliance creeps in here
at play may be the adage that familiarity brings contempt walk
input desire to work and output decline.
At times the desire to work can be there but due to poor health or
old age the output declines.
4)
To help
learners make possible adjustments
to
situations in the school.
Many learners do not know how to study
How to prepare for examination relating with peers, siblings,
parents and so forth.
5)
To supplements the efforts of home.
The home environment should be one that supplements where
education and society have failed. Today a large number of
learners come to school from homes that are not able to provide
them with adequate support in dealing with problems. There is
a gap in the adults who could have- provided support but in
steady some became abuses of those children. Homes are not
equipped
to
be
sources
of information concerning the
qualification required for different kinds of careers and besides
the majority of the parents are not trained for helping their
children to develop sounds study techniques.
6)
To identify and help learners in need of special help.
There are large numbers of learners
Mrs. Chikwanka H.K.C
 The gifted
 The slow learner
 Those with special educational needs.
 They need special opportunities in school.
 Some arrangements need to be provided to identify the needs
and provide help according to their requirements guidance
services can fill the needs here.
7)
Increase the holding power of the school
Desire of the parents to have their children in school has posed
many challenges to schools.
It brings to school not only those children who wants school also
those if left alone would not want to come school.
To make the second category of children stay in school education
has to be made meaningful and relevant. Guidance services can
do this effectively.
8)
To ensure proper utilization of the time spent outside
classroom
The manner in which learners spend their non-class hours clearly
affect their success in achieving both academic competence and
personal development. It is therefore, essential that some positive
direction be provided to the learners through the provision of
guidance services.
Mrs. Chikwanka H.K.C
Mrs. Chikwanka H.K.C