The Role Of A Counselor - Research Paper Example

The Role of a Counselor College: The Role of a Counselor In the recent past, the public has mounted a lot of pressure on counselor pushing them to be accountable for their duties. Essentially, the education forums would like to see positive results from the work of counselors. Resultantly, they have designed strategies to assess the accountability of counselor as one way of ensuring that they play part in ensuring that learners achieve success. This increase in developmental challenges has increased the responsibilities of the counseling department in the recent past.

The main roles of a counselor include providing developmental guidance, facilitate learning, and intervene against challenges that arise in the life of learners. While these roles are crucial, measuring the outcome of a counseling function is hard and this makes it difficult to ensure accountability is attained. However, the role of counseling is crucial and is major determinant of the performance of a student. One of the roles of a counselor is to provide guidance to the learners by facilitating self-knowledge, guiding their attitudes, and promoting decision making.

This role requires that the counselor remains in constant contact with the learners to ensure that they benefit from these services. This is one of the challenging tasks that have made the work of a counselor complex. While there is need for constant contact with the learners, the counselor to learners ration is too high and time is limited to perform to accomplish this task. On the other hand, the responsive service role of a counselor is lighter and does not demand constant contact between the counselor and their clients (Myrick, 2010).

In response services, the counselor meets arising needs among students and tackles issues when they arise. Therefore, this task is easier as compared to the developmental guidance role. In addition, the responsibility of individual planning falls under the work of the Counsellor. A counsellor within a learning institution is endowed with the responsibility of helping the students establish their own goals and plan for the future. This role involves educating them on the relevance of school, the job environment and the changing trends in work place.

This helps learners to sharpen their job search skills and prepare to face the curriculum challenges. Lastly, counsellors are engaged in system support, which involves the design and implementation of comprehensive counselling programs that contribute to student success (Myrick, 2010). This role ensures that the counselling department remains flexible and can adapt to changes as they arise within the learning institutions. The challenges facing the counselling department have become a threat to the career of counsellor.

Evidently, there is need to shift the approaches of student guidance and counselling if the involved individuals will achieve desirable results (Lairio & Penttinen, 2006). From a personal opinion, I would accomplish tasks by using time-sensitive methods to overcome the challenges of time and shortage of personnel. To ensure constant contact with the students, I would design a weekly program when I can meet all the students and educate them on matters concerning their career, social skills and career planning, which are essential for every learner.

To handle individual problems, I would encourage the learners to report arising challenges as soon as they arise to ensure that they are resolved promptly. To ensure that the guidance and counselling programs are comprehensive and relevant, I would revise the counselling programs after every two months depending on changes and co-work with other departments to implement these changes. An effective guidance and counselling program will facilitate accountability and contribute to positive performance.

References Lairio, M., & Penttinen, L. (2006). Students’ career concerns: challenges facing guidance providers in higher education. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 6(3), 143-157. Myrick, R., (2010). Accountability. Professional School Counselling, 6(3).