Page 11 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Unit 1: Guidance: Meaning, Nature and Scope

every aspect of an individual’s personality -physical, mental, emotional and social. It is concerned Notes
with all of an individual’s attitudes and behaviour patterns. It seeks to help the individual to integrate
all of his activities in terms of his basic potentialities and environmental opportunities”.
These definitions indicate the following aspects of Guidance :

(1) Helping people to make wise choices when faced with various alternatives available.
(2) Helping people to solve their educational, vocational and personal problems as efficiently as
possible.
(3) Helping people to make adequate adjustments in life’s situations.
(4) Helping people to develop a more realistic understanding of themselves and their environment.
(5) Helping people to know their potentialities, to acquire a knowledge of their level of intelligence,
their interest and aptitudes, their self-concepts, values and level of maturity.
(6) Helping people to develop their potentialities optimally.
(7) Helping people to acquire more reliable information about the world of work.
(8) Helping people to contribute their best to the development and welfare of the society.
(9) Helping people to live a balanced and tension free-life with full satisfaction under the
circumstances.
(10) Helping people to satisfy their needs most effectively and efficiently in most desirable way.
(11) Helping people to bring excellence in their according their abilities and potentialities.

Guidance is accepted as individualized help. Through the guidance an individual’s
personal development is provided a direction and not to a group. Hence, it is a process
of individualized assistance.

Guidance As a Service
Guidance is one of the student personnel services which are getting important day by day. Student
personnel services are non-instructional and non-administrative functions of the school. The classroom
teaching and the administrative functions of the Principal are not considered student personnel
services. These services are unique in nature and are provided to the students on individual or
group basis. These services are provided to all categories of students such as talented, gifted and
well adjusted on the one hand and retarded dull handicapped and problems children, on the other.
According to Lefever, Tussel and Weitzil, “Guidance is an educational service designed to help
students make more effective use of the school training programme.” Guidance, hence, is an integral
part of pupil activity. A broader opinion about guidance as a set of services is expressed by G. E.
Smith who described Guidance as a process consisting of “a group of services to individuals to
assist them in securing the knowledge and skills needed in making adequate choices, plans and
interpretations essential to satisfactory adjustment in a variety of area.” These areas may be
enumerated as educational, vocational, personal of some other ones which produce problems before
the individual. Hence, Guidance is a service that is universal and continuous. It is not restricted to
school or the family. It is situational and all pervasive and, is present wherever there are people who
need help and wherever there are people who give help. The main purpose behind these services is
to help the individual make satisfactory adjustment to his environment and thus give a significant
account of himself.
Patterson defined personnel services as those which are provided outside, which are non-instructional
in natural in nature and, which are provided to the individual students on an individual basis.

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