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Unit 20: Organizing Counseling Services at College Level

(ii) Community sponsored vocational guidance services deal particularly with the employment Notes
problems of the non-selective worker.
(iii) In the College settings in India students are the primary guidance personnel.
(iv) At the elementary school level there is particular stress on vocation and occupation.

20.9 Educational Counseling and Curriculum

The college curriculum is a systematic organization of courses of study and activities designed to
further students’ knowledge and competencies. Several types of curricula such as general, business
and vocational, and industrial arts are offered. In India curricular openings are relatively few with
little choice afforded to pupils. The curriculum is designed to help the individual pupil achieve his
potentialities and become capable of self-direction. Educational counseling is aimed at enhancing
the effectiveness with which the pupil profits from the curriculum. Counseling is also used in the
context of helping the pupil acquire efficient learning skills and practices.
The systematic planning of curricular opportunities helps the pupil by providing experiences which
strengthen the feelings of adequacy and belongingness. The curricular activities also provide
exploratory avenues through which pupils develop their interests and abilities. The curricular
experiences contribute to the knowledge necessary for educational and vocational planning.
Educational counseling contributes to curriculum development in a number of ways, one of which
is to make the goals of curricular activities congruent with the needs of pupils. Another way in
which it helps is to enable testing, planning follow-up and other counseling activities to contribute
to curricular development, and yet another is to enable the counselors assist the individual pupil to
understand and to choose different courses to suit his requirements and develop social and vocational
competencies needed for successful living in a complex society. Educational counseling also assists
administration in a significant way. The educational administrator is interested in the effective
functioning of the school/college and counseling helps in realizing this goal in a more effective
manner. However, it should be borne in mind that counseling is primarily concerned with the
achievement of individual goals.
Several factors interfere with the effective programmes in schools and colleges. The major areas of
friction lie in the differences between the stated promises and the practices adopted. The public in
general, and administrators in particular, do not understand the functions of counseling. The
administrators naturally demand that the guidance workers help them even when this may clash
with the interests of the individual students.
The counseling personnel expect the administrators to provide the necessary facilities for the effective
organization of counseling services and look forward to sympathetic assistance from the
administrators. They expect them to take a positive interest in counseling programmes.
The administrators, on the other hand, expect the counseling personnel to serve the interests of
administration. Often this causes much tension and friction between the counselors and
administrators. The administrators expect counselors to handle the discipline of the institution and
to minimize disciplinary problems. The counselors believe that such problems could be minimized
through organizing extra-curricular activities and encouraging student interests which would provide
suitable avenues for their expression as well as their cultivation. The counselors believe, and rightly
so, that a knowledge of students, an understanding of their problems and the optimum use of
educational and preventive measures could significantly assist in countering indiscipline and thus
help the institutional climate.

20.10 Evaluation of Programmes of Educational Counseling

1. One of the important criteria of a good system is a desirable counsellor student ratio. As
counseling involves both individual contact with most pupils and long term contact with some
pupils in need of counseling assistance, the counsellor-student ratio must be reasonable.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 223