Student’s Perception of the Role of School Counselors in the Choice of Career in Some Selected Secondary Schools in Maiduguri Borno State
CHAPTER ONE
Objectives of the Study
The broad objectives of this study is to investigate into the Student’s perception of the role of school counselors in the choice of career in some selected secondary schools in maiduguri Borno State.. The specific objectives include:
- To justify the effectiveness or other wise of counseling services in schools under review,
- To find out the roles of guidance and counseling to the students’ academic performance of then schools under review
- To identify the career choice of the students in secondary schools of the study area.
- To investigate the effects of career choice on the future of the secondary school students in the area under review.
- To explore the factors influencing the career choice of secondary school students in Maiduguri Borno State.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Introduction
The terms “guidance” and “counseling” have been used either individually or synonymously by various scholars. As a result, many text interchangeably used the term guidance for counseling and counseling for guidance the general consensus among the specialists is that guidance is a family name for all the helping services within the general educational and community services.
Guidance is common language involves personal help given by someone; it is designed to assist a person to decide where he wants to go; what he wants to do, or how he can best accomplish his purpose; it assist him to solve problems that arise in his life. Stone, (1981) saw guidance as the process of helping in individual, himself and his world. Oladele (1987) also sw guidance s aiming and aiding recipient to grow in his independence and ability to be responsible for him.
Counseling on the other hand, has been defined by Makinde (1987) as a services designed to help an individual analyze himself by something missing capabilities achievements, interest and mode of adjustment towards what new decision he has made or taken.
Ipaye (1983) saw counseling as a method of helping the individual utilize his or her psychological resources by focusing on that individual positive strength for development and by concentrating on the individual personality behavior and emotional asset that could be mobilize.
The Need for Guidance and Counseling in Schools
In many countries of the world, delivers circumstances prompted the establishment of guidance and counseling in secondary schools. These factors are as follows:
Growing needs of youth in this country
According to Bamgbaiye (2000), the curriculum of our secondary schools should be built around the development stage of the youths. Learning takes place if geared towards the cognitive development stages of individual children. This however, includes the sensory motor, pre-operational concrete operational and formal operational stages. Each stage has its own characteristics set of learning outcomes. Thus, there is need to plan, coordinate guidance-oriented curriculum to meet the needs of individual pupils/students. This can be done in the 6-3-3-4 system of education.
Availability of Counselling Services
Counselling services in schools have been found to be lacking (Adejimola & Tayo-Olajubu, 2009). This subsequently affects students‟ access to information about career choices at the high school level. Okeke and Okorie (2006) reported from a study in south-east Nigeria that there was a lack of counselling centres in schools. This, they noted, had affected the decision-making of students and resulted in maladjusted behavior. One-on-one counselling interactions between the counsellors and the students was found to be lacking and thus entrenched the belief of counselling unavailability. Offor (2008) concurs that counselling services in most Nigerian schools were non-exist though they are supposed to be. It was realized that though policy makers design policies on counselling and career guidance for schools, the lack of certain fundamentals like resources, administrative commitment, and expertise mitigate the realization of the aims envisaged in such policy documents.
Also, Fia (2011) undertook a study of guidance and counselling services in schools in the Ho Municipality. He reported that educational, vocational, and person-social counselling were lacking in schools in Ho even where some of them possessed clearly demarcated counselling centers to cater for the needs of clients. The absence of group school counselling of students by any counsellor in the school was noted to have created ignorance among students about counselling. Nwokolo, Anyamene, Oraegbunam, Anyachebelu, Okoye, and Obineli (2010) in a Nigerian study discovered that services for academic guidance and counselling were not available in schools. Of five states that were studied, two states-Ebonyi and Enugu- had no guidance and counselling centres in most of their schools.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This chapter, the areas of research design, sample and sampling techniques population of the study, instrumentation, validity of the instrument, and reliability of the instrument, administration of the instrument and method of data analysis were discussed.
Research Design
In conducting this research, a questionnaire has been designed to help the researchers acquire the needed information. The questionnaire has section A, B, C, and D, section ‘A’ contains students information, section ‘B’ contains subjects offered in the schools, while section ‘D’ contains career choice and aspiration of students.
Population of the Study
The population of this study is secondary school in maiduguri Borno State.
Sampling and Sampling Techniques
The respondents (student) of the study were randomly selected. The researchers made sure that the students to be selected as sample, studied different subjects offered in secondary schools under review.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS
Introduction
In this chapter, the result of the investigations are presented. The data collected was analyzed using the frequency distribution table and simple percentage.
In other to find out the career choice of the students, the respondents were asked whether they had decided on a career they hope to pursue in future. 98% of the students responded positively, while the remaining 2% indicate they had not decided on any career.
The question asked the respondents to select three careers in order of preference from the many careers in Nigeria. the respondents were first grouped and regrouped for analysis, and based on this information.
From the table it can be seen that the careers female students choose to pursue indicate that 32% of the students prefer health and related professions, while 27.5% and 15% liked teaching and engineering professions respectively. With 10% going for law and 10% for business and related professions. The last which represents other professions recorded 5.5%.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction
This chapter presents the conclusions and recommendations of the findings for the research.
Summary
This research is derided into five chapter, chapter one contain background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research question, significance of the study, scope and delimitation.
Chapter is review of relate literature where we look at the various works done by other scholars which are directly or indirectly related to this work.
Chapter three is research methodology which presents populations of the study, sample and sampling techniques, method of data collection, reliability of the instrument, validity of the instrument and administration of the instrument.
Chapter four contains presentation and analysis of data, summary of the major findings and discussion of findings.
Chapter five entails summary, conclusion and recommendation.
Conclusion
It has been established in this study that science and medical professions were more sought careers by the students. In this aspect, even the female students are not left out at all. There is no much differences between careers sought for, by female and male students. This development as earlier pointed out is a welcomed one especially in the area where this study had been conducted. It was also observed that most of the student choose their careers base on personal interest and ability.
Furthermore, students aspire for careers different for that of their parents which means that with the necessary from parents, school authority, society, and government students will do well in their chosen career.
The researchers have seen a good prospect for student in senior secondary schools in the area of job acquisition.
Recommendations
As a country Nigeria is blessed with children that possesses diverse ability .it is the responsibility of the country to harness these talents. One of the ways of harnessing these talents is through qualitative education because no nation can rise above the quality and strength of it is educational system, great economy demands great education systems. It is in the realization of these needs that the following suggestion and recommendations are made.
- Students shall be properly guided in making the right careers choice by the authorities concerned. Qualified teachers should be employed to teach the students in other for them to make their dreams a reality .
- More female students should be encouraged to aspire for careers in medical profession especially in the northern Nigeria. this is very important because the female gender will be more disposed and comfortable to confide her problems in a female doctor or nurse
- Selection of students to read\study science subject shall be based on merit and not
- The government, school authority and the other stakeholders should provide funds to adequately equipped the existing
- The confidence reposed on schools by parents can be reinforced by the improvement of guidance and counseling activities through:
- Effective and functional guidance and counseling unit in the school
- Improved Incentives to career masters in terms of guidance, personal welfare, imposed physical working condition, constant supply of information materials, related to career in order to broaden the search for career opportunities and to allow the guidance masters to guide the student honestly.
- Sponsoring for in-service training and workshop should made to guidance and counseling masters to broaden their knowledge of new career opportunities in the
- school management should organized various guidance and counseling activities in the schools, resource persons shall be made to give lectures in various profession especially to final year
- Parents should cooperate with the school and guidance teachers who are acquainted with the children’s’ performance and capabilities to assist them to select appropriate career without gender
- School shall supervise these students and ensure that relevant subjects are taught in schools without gender
- The perception of existing domination of science and the related careers by males should be discarded from the mind of the female students, this is very important to female student indigene of maiduguri Borno State and the state at large as it will make them more ready for the competition.
References
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