Aspects Related to Counselling and Guidance in Science Lessons

Contexts

Abstract

Choosing a profession is an important and complex process for each student. Basically, the
quality of this process depends on the individual’s entire existence, with implications on
personal, social and professional levels. But the career planning involves, in turn, a series of
related aspects: pedagogical knowledge, educational guidance, counselling and career
guidance, etc. This cannot be done only in the special offices for pedagogical assistance or in
tutoring classes. Within each disciplines, through valorising various pedagogical contents,
teachers must envisage the fulfilment of specific objectives that target the area of counselling
and career guidance. Starting from the mentioned premises, the paper aims to identify the
extent to which the teaching approaches developed in Science subject contexts (Physics,
Chemistry, Biology) contributes to the objectives related to career planning and counselling.
In this respect, the paper presents an investigative démarche, considering a sample of 185
Romanian students from upper secondary level (11th and 12th grades) who were questioned
concerning several issues to emphasize the skills / qualifications needed for specific
professions, identifying strengths and weaknesses that define the student’s personality,
highlighting key-characteristics of different professions, etc. The processing of qualitative
and quantitative data collected from the questionnaires allows us to formulate reliable
conclusions about the role and contribution of Science subjects for students, with the view of
taking relevant decisions and influencing the future career.

Introduction

School guidance represents a system of educational measures and actions undertaken by the
responsible factors from within school, as a formal training institution, in order to facilitate
the choice of a certain educational institution or of a certain study domain. This choice must
be made in compliance with a dynamic balance between the pupil’s personality profile and
the specific tuition demands of the educational institution he/she has in view. Professional
guidance constitutes a process going beyond the boundaries of school life, encompassing an
individual’s entire active existence, professionally. Just like school guidance, professional
guidance implies a harmonization of the individual’s personality shape with the demands of
the society he is part of. Actually, “school guidance is a premise for professional guidance
and professional guidance represents a conclusion and a validation of school guidance.” (Tom
a, 1996).

Professional guidance represents that component of the psycho-pedagogical counselling

related to the support given by a counsellor (teacher, headmaster, psycho-pedagogue, etc),
with a view to choose a profession, a professional domain and even a professional career.

Vocation represents an inclination, according to some authors, even native, a person has
towards a certain socio-professional activity he/she wishes to exercise and for which he/she
shows a particular interest. So, vocational counselling represents the process through which
the counsellor helps the pupil to make an optimal choice concerning his studies or his
professional career, through the use of his internal, volitional, motivational and skill-related
fervours. According to the Romanian Explanatory Dictionary (DEX), ocupaia (occupation) is
an activity, with a longer or shorter duration, that someone is doing, while profesia
(profession) constitutes a work, an activity based on a certain theoretical knowledge and
practical habits, acquired through adequate qualification and certification
(www.dex-online.ro).

We have started our investigative approach from the clarification of these concepts related to
the domain of counselling and professional guidance as we have considered it absolutely
necessary to have a clear semantic and epistemological delineation of the terms used.

2. The approach of counselling and professional guidance made in the context of the
Sciences (Chemistry,
Physics, Biology)

The pupils’ counselling and professional guidance represents an obviously interdisciplinary

process as, in this context, a multitude of psychological, social, political, economic,
ergonomic, medical or physiological aspects are taken into account.

Therefore, counselling and professional guidance need to take into account aspects such as:
the pupils’ personality features, their theoretical and methodological skills, their interests and
preoccupations, their degree of compatibility - from a medical, physiological perspective -
with a certain profession, with the labour force demand on a local, regional, national level, in
relation to the respective profession, etc. Not negligible are also a series of other aspects
concerning: the evolution of the demographic indexes, the dynamics of the employment, the
social perception of a certain profession, its social appreciation, etc.

In the process of counselling and professional guidance three significant factors are involved,
namely: school, as an educational institution, the pupil’s family and the pupil himself/herself.

What interests us in the present study is to highlight the role of school in general and of the
training approaches made in the Sciences disciplines (Chemistry, Physics and Biology) in
particular, in the sense of the realization of the objectives of counselling and professional
guidance for pupils.

It is unanimously accepted that the educational process, during which knowledge is

assimilated, skills get shaped, interests and aptitudes are cultivated, personality features are
modelled, etc., constitutes at the same time an important context and tool for achieving the
objectives of counselling and professional guidance.

A defining feature of counselling and professional guidance is its educative, formative

character. Seen from a psycho-pedagogical perspective, the activity of counselling and
professional guidance implies, par excellence, the education, formtion and training of the
pupil in order to make a realistic scholar and professional choice.

Here we are dealing with a long term training process, in the pursuit of knowledge, formation
and development of the pupils’ personality, in order to realize some adequate school and
professional options and optimal socio-professional integration. School, by means of the
teaching staff, directly influences the young people’s professional options through its
organizational structures, through the contents it bears, through the didactic strategies and
forms of organization used, the pedagogical relations developed during the lessons and in the
class of pupils, the teacher’s charisma, etc.

Regardless of the discipline they teach, teachers constitute an important factor of counselling
and guidance, everywhere in the educational systems. So, during the lessons, the objectives
of counselling and professional guidance are realized, even though not always in an explicit
manner. Numerous studies attest the fact that the preference for an educational discipline
triggers the choice of a certain professional category and, vice-versa, the interest for a certain
profession increases the pupil’s interest for the disciplines closest to it.

Consequently, the teachers who teach disciplines from the domain of Sciences can contribute
to the counselling and the professional guidance of the pupils through activities aiming at: a
good psycho-pedagogical knowledge of every pupil, highlighting each pupil’s dominant
features of personality, interests, motivations, attitudes and skills, informing pupils about the
professions having to do with the discipline taught (physicist, chemist, biologist, etc.),
training and developing the specific, theoretical and methodological, skills needed to exercise
this profession, permanently counselling, advising and guiding the pupil in the process of
choosing a profession.

Next, in relation to the basic components of the educational process we shall formulate a few
ideas with a value of applicative principles, which the teachers of Sciences (Chemistry,
Physics, Biology) should keep in mind, in order to attain certain objectives specific to
counselling and professional guidance:
● They should be permanently concerned by the creation of a positive and stimulating
educational environment during the lessons and at the level of the class;
● They should demonstrate at the same time professional-scientific skills, pedagogical
tact and psychopedagogical knowledge;
● They should often use interactive-participative methods, meant to determine the pupils
to interact, to actively participate to the activities, using all their potential strengths;
● They should permanently adapt the lessons’ content (within the limits allowed by the
school program) and the didactic strategy used, to the pupils’ interests and needs;
● They should have a thorough knowledge of their pupils and of the class as a whole;
● They should design and use learning experiences meant to familiarize the pupils with
the specific approach of a scientific investigation;
● They should organize educational contexts allowing the pupils to make the transfer
from theory to practice, from science to profession;
● They should encourage the pupils to have a positive attitude towards science and
towards the professional activities related to it;
● They should focus on the development of the skills of communication, interrelation and
learning through cooperation, on the level of the class of pupils;
● They should be permanently concerned with the development of the pupils’ spirit of
observation, analytical, critical and self-critical spirit, and with the cultivation of their
logical reasoning, specific to sciences;
● They should turn to good use and they should develop, in the context of the lessons of
Sciences, their own and their pupils’ multiple intelligences, empathic capacities and
socio-emotional skills;
 ● They should be open to what is new, to change, demonstrating flexibility in relation to
the contens taught, the teaching-learning strategies and the evaluation tools used (Mo
oc, Popa, and Petrescu, 1999).

3. Methodology

The counselling and professional guidance gains a real value in Science lessons context.
Generally, Science subjects really emphasize certain aspects strongly related to professional
guidance. In this respect, in the frame of the training programme “PROFILES - Education
through Sciences”, organized with the support of the FP7 European Research Project
“PROFILES - Professional Reflection-Oriented Focus on Inquiry-based Learning and
Education through Science” (PROFILES Consortium, 2010), it was tried to be expressed the
extent to which the teaching approaches developed in Science subject contexts contributes to
the objectives related to the career planning and counselling. In this sense, 185 Romanian
students from upper secondary level (11th and 12th grades) were asked to level the
importance of various issues, through specific questionnaires for assessment of the
Motivational Learning Environment - MoLE (Bolte, 2006).

The practical part of this research tried to identify the role of the instructional approaches
taken within the Sciences disciplines (Chemistry, Physics and Biology) towards the
objectives of counselling and professional orientation. The students answered by checking the
related level from a six-level assessment scale: fully disagree, mostly disagree, rather
disagree, rather agree, mostly agree, and fully agree. The students took into consideration
their answers in relation to the same scale and same issues, addressed from two perspectives:
the importance of the issues mentioned and the specific role of that issue registered in the
Science lessons contexts.

The limits of the research derived from the impossibility to capture all the detailed aspects
that offer an image to the extent to which Science disciplines contribute to the achieving of
the professional counselling and guidance objectives. In this research, qualitative data are
processed, more specific to an observational study and research, targeting to the quality of the
pedagogical relations, curriculum management and valorisation of the emotional intelligence
from both perspectives: students and teachers.

4. Results and Discussion

The discussion is oriented on performing a comparison between student’s opinions related to

the importance of certain aspects for themselves and personal life, and student’s opinions
concerning the roles of those aspects in the Science lessons.

In this respect, figures 1-5 target to take into consideration the following issues: awareness of
what should be good at in respect of different occupations requiring formal training (figure
1), knowing the main tasks of different occupations requiring formal training (figure 2),
knowing what is expected from the trainees in different occupations requiring formal training
(figure 3), knowing the personal strengths (figure 4) and the personal weaknesses (figure 5).

In the first two cases, the students’ feedback is grouped to the “right” area (rather agree -
mostly agree – fully agree), with a slight account for the role of the analyzed aspects in
Science lessons oriented to the central area (rather disagree - rather agree - mostly agree). In
the following cases, the students’ feedback is strongly oriented to the “right” area (rather
agree - mostly agree - fully agree), the Science lessons playing an important role. More than
that, for knowing the personal strengths and weaknesses, Science lessons are seen to cover
almost two-thirds of the scale, which means that the related theory, methodology and
practical activities form an important basis for starting to advise and guide the students for
choosing a profession.

On the whole, the results illustrate that Science lessons underline the act of counselling and
guidance, offering the possibilities of enriching various experiential backgrounds and also to
train the students as the future good specialists and leaders in their area of expertise related to
Science areas.

5. Conclusion

The analysis of qualitative and quantitative data collected from MoLE questionnaires offers
the possibility to formulate some conclusions about the role and contribution of Science
lessons in order to lead the students to relevant decisions that may influence their future
career. In this respect, the students’ opinions proved that they are really aware of certain
aspects, such as: what one should be good at in respect of different occupations requiring
formal training, which are the main tasks of different occupations requiring formal training
and what is expected from the trainees in different occupations requiring formal training.

In addition, the students’ answers emphasized that most of they admitted that in order to take
a serious decision concerning their future career they have to identify not only their strengths,
but also their weaknesses and the way that those points can influence throughout their career.
A great part of the questioned students agreed that Science lessons can play an important role
in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, but there are also other students who are not
making the connection between those aspects and the topics studied during the Science
lessons. For the last of them, even the counselling and guidance performed in connection to
Science lessons remain very important.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded through the Seventh Framework Programme “PROFILES -
Professional Reflection Oriented Focus on Inquiry-based Learning and Education
through Science” No. 5.2.2.1 - SiS-2010-2.2.1, Grant Agreement No. 266589, Supporting
and coordinating actions on innovative methods in Science education: teacher training on
inquiry based teaching methods on a large scale in Europe. The support offered by the
European Commission in the fields of research and innovation, through the project mentioned
above, is gratefully acknowledged.

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