Before we get into the process of vocational guidance and counselling, let us first understand what the concept means. The word ’vocational’ is synonymous with ‘career’ ‘occupation’, and ‘profession’. They can be used interchangeably. According to Norris et al (1979) career is used to describe the total composite of one’s activities throughout life. In the same vein, Olayinka (1982) defines career “as the sequence of occupations, jobs and positions occupied during a person’s working life.
This may be extended to include both the pre-vocational and post vocational positions. It comes through a process of career development– understanding self, understanding the current and future environment and bringing about maximum compatibility between the two elements”. It would not be wrong, therefore, to say that one’s career in his life and that the process by which it involves is the process of career development.
Most adults of over 40 years of age attest to the fact that they had little or no opportunity while in school to assess their personal, self-characteristics or to plan ways by which their values and goals could be achieved in life. This unwarranted development should not only be discouraged but it should be continually prevented through a sound vocational guidance and counselling programmes properly entrenched in the school daily activities. Knowledge of the vocational guidance is very necessary because, Zambia is presently facing:
(a) Increase in unemployment of school learners.
(b) Shortage of manpower in different sectors of the economy.
(c) Unutilization of potentials in the country.
(d) Vocational maladjustment among youths.
(e) Unending influence of parents on choice of career.
All these issues are problems, which bedevil the vocational life of Zambians but which activities of Counsellors and teachers alike can help to prevent in the schools. In particular, proper planning and designing of activities and services will help facilitate the career development needs of the students.
Maximum compatibility between the two elements of self-understanding and the world of work can only come through vocational counselling, Vocational Counselling is the assistance given by the counsellor or career master or mistress to another person, boy or girl, man or woman to make effective use of his/ her own resources and his environmental opportunities in the process of self-understanding, planning, decision making and coping with problems relative to his developmental needs and to his educational and vocational activities.
For proper assistance in vocational choice, the counsellor should be aware of the complex nature of the factors that bear upon the young person’s choice of occupation. Such determinants of occupational choice can be better understood when viewed from the angle of vocational theories.
Need for Occupational Information
Many adolescents go into high sounding careers without knowing actually what are the basic things involved. This may result in their moving from one job to the other in search of job satisfaction. This is what Super referred to as the ‘exploratory stage’ of vocational choice and this exploratory stage can be shortened by the guidance counsellors.
The counsellor provides information to make the client aware of the world of work, the prospects of job placement, job analysis, job development and information on when potential employment exists or will shortly be available.
The counsellor or the careers’ master help the counsellor to know the vital information required before choosing a career. Some of these are:
1. The minimum education requirements for entry into the career
2. The period of training required, if any
3. The general conditions of services. This may include:
(a) Type of reward in form of salary, fringe benefits such as free accommodation, leave allowance, over time allowance etc.
(b) Other conditions of work such as working on Saturdays or Sundays, working shifts, night duty, extensive travelling, and so on.
(c) The pension scheme, the retiring age, the gratuity and other benefits.
(d) The job hazard should also be made known to the client.
4. Social status and prestige attached to the career such as the demand for ‘the career and other prospect for social influence and advancement (Olayinka 1979).
Another thing the counsellor should do to help pupils make the correct choice of career is to help them know themselves- to understand their personality. This will enable each child to know his interest, aptitude, attitude and the level of his intelligence.
1. Interest: Bakare (1974) has a modification of the ‘Strong Vocational Interest Blank’ known as Vocational Interest Inventory. Through this the counsellor can diagnose the vocational interest of his client, which may be Outdoor, Mechanical, Computational, Scientific, Persuasive, Artistic, Literary, Musical, Social Service or Clerical. He counsels the clients to take to his strongest interest.
2. Aptitude: Aptitude may be defined as talent or one’s potential capacity to learn and succeed in a given activity, if trained. Individuals’ aptitude exert influence on the vocational level they are likely to attain, the training they are likely to be admitted to or succeed in and the quality of work they are able to perform. To test aptitude, there are the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), further modified by Obe (1982) to Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), with these, counsellors would be able to identify pupils’ aptitudes such as verbal, numerical, spatial, mechanical, artistic, manual or musical and so guide them accordingly.
3. Attitude: Attitude is another dimension of the client which a counsellor can use to diagnose his feeling towards a particular career. It can be positive or negative. Attitude scales have been developed to access people’s attitude. The easiest one is the Likert-Type attitude scale.
4. Intelligence: Intellectual ability remains a significant factor in educational and occupational choice. Individuals who enter an occupation for which the majority of workers have a higher degree of intelligence than they possess will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Conversely, if they enter an occupation in which the majority of workers have intelligence ratings definitely below theirs, they may find that neither the work nor their associates are satisfying.
This is why the intelligence of pupils is taken into consideration by the counsellor in helping them to make occupational choice. The counsellor could give intelligence test which covers many psychological factors such as verbal, numerical, memory and reasoning. There are scholastic, artistic, business, social and military intelligence. They could be measured by the use of Standford-Binet Intelligence Scale or by California Test of Mental Maturity (C.T.M.M) which can be adapted to suit the client’s cultural background. Other areas that should be closely looked into include community, peer group and so on.
SOME METHODS OF DISSEMINATING OCCUPATIONAL INFORMATION
1. Careers’ Week or day: Organising either of them will involve a lot of activities, namely:
- Setting up a planning committee
- making contacts and inviting lecturers and exhibitors.
- Getting parental approval for the children’s attendance if the period will stretch beyond the normal school period.
- Getting the hall ready
- Making plans for transportation for the guest or students depending on the venue.
- Preparations for refreshment.
- Getting all the paper work done in time e.g. sending out invitations, programmes, etc. to expected guests or schools.
- Seeing to all the details like posters for the walls, a stand-by generating plant in case of power failure etc.
After each lecture, the students are given time to ask questions. They also have opportunities to visit the career exhibition stand and see, on the spot action on some of the professions. There should be verbal interaction between students and exhibitors/lecturers because they would gain a lot through first hand information.
The magnitude of the programme depends on the organiser- it could hold for a day or a five day period.
The counsellor cannot organise these alone.
He or she needs the cooperation of the administrative head of the organisation, the support of the principal and vice principal(s), teachers and parents.
The students’ interest should have been aroused long before this time, through short talks or lectures and film shows.
2. Vocational Exploration through Extra Curricular Activities
Vocational exploratory experiences can be provided for students in many extra curriculum activities. For example, newspaper careers, both in the area of news gathering and editorial comments can be started by work on the high school magazines.
3. Field Trips/Excursions
Visits to places of occupational interest also provide vocational information. Such arrangement will be made with the permission of the parents and all other necessity like transportation, finance etc, will be seen to be the school authorities’ responsibilities
4. Vocational Experiences through apprenticeship or try outs
Experience is the best teacher, so it is that a firsthand experience at the workshop will go a long way in giving direct information through practical and first hand experience. But again, it may have limitations according to Poppen and Thompson (1974) because the experience is brief and limited. But on the whole there are a whole world of exciting experiences and information.
5. Career’s Club:
Under the canopy of the careers’ club, a Vocational information file can be developed with cuts outs from newspapers magazine etc. according to Olayinka (1979) he suggests that such information albums should be classified under training programmes, career vacancies, entrance requirements to high institutions…and such information should be kept up to date, storing such in the library or guidance and counseling reading room for easy accessibility. A table of contents for each album will also enable the student to use them effectively.
6. Bulletin Board
This board located in a conspicuous place for easy access, should be big and broad enough for the display of various cutting which contains information on pre-vocational and occupational issues. Various cuttings from newspapers, journals, magazines should be displayed on weekly basis, then replaced with new cuttings.
7. Use of Audio Visuals
Participation in their use extends from students of all classes to specific programs of films, slides and other aids for use within groups of students interested in particular vocation, and for use with all students in dealing with occupational information, education and vocational planning.
8. Parents teachers’ association
Parents play a vital role in giving occupational information to their children. Olayinka (1979) suggested that the P.T.A is also forum which can be utilised to enlighten parents about job opportunities for their children and how they can motivate them to be achievement oriented. Sometimes the best way to help pupils is to conduct discussion groups for them, for example, parents of gifted children often need help in understanding their unique responsibility to them and providing a stimulating environment for the development of their potentialities. Students (gifted or handicapped) will then be stimulated by the ir parents’ enthusiasm and interest.
9. Cumulative record
The cumulative record provides a great deal of information to the counsellor who in turn can counsel his client by giving him all the necessary information on either to go ahead with his plans or direct him in seeking other alternatives.
INFORMATION REQUIRED FOR VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING
Types of information Methods of obtaining Information
A. (i) Psychological Needs
(ii) value Patterns A. Observation, Interviewing Value Inventories;
B. Occupational Preference and Reasons for Preference B. MOPS (Motivation for Occupational Preference Scale)
C. Interests C. Vocational Interest Inventory (VII)
D. Aptitudes D. Aptitude Tests
E. Academic Achievement E. Class Records, Cumulative Records
F. Personality attributes F. Observation, Teacher’s Reports or Ratings; Cumulative Records, Psychological Tests.
Approaches to Counselling
There are many approaches to Counselling, but these approaches can be grouped under the following three headings:
(a) Indirect Approach: The indirect approach to counselling is also regarded as the client-centred approach. In this approach, the counselee is allowed to express self while the counsellor only listen with rapt attention and intermittently, when necessary, approach rely on the tenets of the client-centred theory as their major counselling skill.
(b) Direct Approach: This is just the opposite of the indirect or client- centred approach. In this counselling approach, the talking is done by the counsellor who uses questions and various counselling skills to elicit responses from the counselee about the problems at hand. Here, the counsellor dictates the pace and directs the counselee based on what can be made out of the sparing responses gathered from the counselee.
(c) Eclectic Approach: This approach to counselling does not rely totally on either the indirect or direct approach. Rather it finds the two approaches named above with any other suitable one handy during counselling sessions. It thereby relies on chosen skills that suit the counselling session at hand, from all the available approaches, to resolve the counselee’s problems.
Theoretical Development of Vocational Guidance
There are three basic stages in vocational development. These are: fantasy, tentative and realistic.
1. The Fantasy stage refers to the period when one is still day- dreaming about many careers that are attractive to an individual. At this stage, a person acts like a child who wants to have everything shown to him/her. It is a period that is filled with indefinite decision, because vocational decisions taken are constantly changed. For example, you want to be a doctor today but by the next day you have changed your mind and so now, you want to be an engineer. At this stage, decisions are constantly being changed.
2. Tentative stage is another stage when the individual begins to settle down in his vocational development based on the decision to stick to an attractive vocation. For example, if you are to be in a fantasy stage and ten vocational areas are opened to you, and they are all attractive, you may begin to reduce the number using the principle of preference one after the other until you are left with few which you still drop to one or two later.
3. The Realistic stage: It is at this stage that you are regarded to be matured enough to make a concrete decision on the type of vocation you feel is good for you. By this stage, all the factors that affect vocational choice (i.e. ability, interest, aspiration, parental background and societal needs) have been considered. You are now convinced that choice of teaching as a vocation is best for you since you would have considered the type of subjects taken, training needed and possibility of getting quick employment.
The choice is more realistic at this stage since proper consideration has been given to the above mentioned factors. It is important to note that as you transit from one stage of vocational development to the other, you need to be in constant counselling interaction with your counsellor who is in a good position to guide you as you weigh the options that are opened to you before taking decisions.
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