Teachers’ perceptions about school-based counselling

Abstract

This dissertation presents a quantitative study where the participants, 179 in total, took part in a questionnaire that explored Maltese primary and secondary school teachers’ perceptions about school-based counselling and the school counsellors’ role. This questionnaire measured their familiarity and responsiveness to the school-based counselling referral system, their impressions about what counselling might be, their value attributed to school-based counselling, their understanding of the school counsellors’ role, and their perceived needs in working collaboratively with school counsellors. The findings from this study elicited a referrers’ profile of the teachers who made use of the school-based counselling service. The data suggest that teachers were generally positive and receptive towards schoolbased counselling and that they valued the counselling service in their schools. Nevertheless, it also seems that teachers conceptualised schoolbased counselling in terms of advice-giving and discipline suggesting that they were not always familiar with the notion of the service. This study also found a significant association between teachers’ self-rated knowledge about school-based counselling and their likelihood to connect students to the service. Thus having adequate knowledge and information about school-based counselling has been highlighted as a major aspect in increasing the accessibility of the school-based counselling services for all students.