Actual and expected roles of school counsellors: exploring multiple perspectives of stakeholders in South India

ABSTRACTThe study examined the perception of the actual and expected roles of school counsellors (SC) from the perspective of school administrators, counsellors, teachers, students, and parents living in South India. Stakeholders recruited using multi-stage cluster sampling (N = 1029)completed the 42item International Survey of School Counsellors Activities exploring the perception about SC roles. Results indicated a significant difference among teachers, students, and parents. Teachers were more aware than students and parents about the SCs’ actual role in Individual Works with Students, and they had higher levels of expectations of SC role. However, students were more aware of the actual roles , like Group Work with Students, College and Career Counseling, and Prevention Work. Future research should focus on a multi-faceted approach to redefining the SC role.KEYWORDS: School counsellor rolesstakeholdersschool counselling systemmulti-stage cluster samplingSouth India Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAnjali Miriam DeyAnjali Miriam Dey The corresponding author has received her Doctorate in Psychology. This is one of the first few experiences of publishing a research article and has been looking forward to getting at least some feedback about the paper. More than 90% of the work has been done by the corresponding author including drafting the research proposal, reviewing literature, collecting and analysing the data, interpreting and reporting the results.Elizabeth ThomasElizabeth Thomas The co-author is the Ph.D. supervisor to the first author. The author was responsible for guiding the direction of the research and evaluating its progress. Key contributions was to evaluate and modify the structure of reporting the results and bringing more structure into the presentation of discussion chapter.