EDUC 106

Basic Guidance
I.

Foundations of guidance

B. Meaning, goals and scope of guidance

1. Definitions of guidance
Difficulty with defining guidance
o Confusion with:
student personnel services
counseling When ASCA was founded in 1952, counseling
is one of the functions of guidance; now, it is the other way
around (Hoyt, 1993).
education John Brewer wrote the book Guidance as
Education in 1932.
o Solution
One solution to this confusion is to invent new words! (Hobbs,
1952)
COOSD - Coordinator of Opportunities for Student Self
Development
AIPP - Assistant to Individuals in Personal Planning
WANTPICU - Wheedler and Needler of Teachers and
Principals in the Interest of the Child Undivided
If not, stick to the term GUIDANCE.
Some definitions
o the act or process of guiding; advice on vocational or educational
problems given to students (Merriam-Websters Collegiate
Dictionary)
o the process of assisting individuals in making life adjustment. It is
needed in the home, school, community, and in all other phases of
the individuals environment (New York State Teachers Association,
1935)
o the science of purposeful action applied through education
(Tiedeman & Field, 1962)
o that part of the total educational program designed to foster
maximal development of individual potentialities through providing
schoolwide assistance to youth in the choices, decisions, and
adjustments each must make as he moves toward maturity (Iowa
State Department of Education, 1963)

Key concepts from definitions (Hoyt, 1993)

Guidance is a part of education.
Guidance is a developmental effort.
Guidance is carried out by many kinds of persons.
The basic goal of guidance is to protect individual freedom of
choice.
o Guidance centers its primary attention on the normal problems of
normal youth.
o
o
o
o

Terms related to guidance

o Advising Often used as a synonym for counseling, offering advice,
recommending, suggesting, informing, and notifying.
o Clinical psychology The area of psychology concerned with
aberrant, maladaptive or abnormal human behavior. Within the vast
umbrella of clinical practices are diagnosis, evaluation,
classification, treatment, prevention and research.
o Counseling A generic term that is used to cover the several
processes of interviewing, testing, guiding, advising, etc. designed to
help an individual solve problems, plan for the future, etc.
o Instruction Directing, teaching, or imparting knowledge.
o Philosophy The critical examination of the grounds for
fundamental beliefs and an analysis of the basic concepts employed
in the expression of such beliefs.
o Psychology Psychology is what scientists and philosophers of
various persuasions have created to try to fulfill the need to
understand the minds and behaviors of various organisms from the
most primitive to the most complex.
o Psychotherapy The use of absolutely any technique or procedure
that has palliative or curative effects upon any mental, emotional or
behavioral disorder.
o Sociology The discipline that focuses on the study of human
behavior from the perspective of the social dimension.
o Special education The area within the field of educational
psychology that is concerned with the special child.
Models of guidance
Guidance as identical with education (John M. Brewer)
o Brewers Education Guidance
o Both mean assisting young people in living
o Basis Guidance as a means for implementing the so-called seven
cardinal principles of education (health, fundamental mental

processes, home membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of

leisure time, and ethical character)
Matching individual characteristics with job requirements (Frank Parsons)
o Factors in choosing a vocation
Individual analysis
Job analysis
Cooperative comparison of these two sets of analyses
Guidance as distribution and adjustment (William M. Proctor, Leonard V.
Koos, Grayson N. Kefauver, and Harold C. Hand)
o Guidance helps students match their choice of school and curriculum
with their own abilities, interests and purposes
o Objectives
Efficiency and satisfaction in activities
Contribute to social welfare & individual happiness
Formulate appropriate goals
Secure information
Guidance as clinical process (M. S. Viteles, Donald G. Paterson, E. G.
Williamson, and others)
o Stress on use of psychological tests, clinical processes, and analytical
diagnostic studies
o What it represents
Protest against shoddy methods
Attempt to develop analytical techniques
Introduction of order
Definition of counselor roles
Adoption of systematic procedures
Guidance as decision making (Arthur J. Jones, George Myers, and Martin
Katz)
o Guidance situation only existed when the student needed help in
making choices.
o Guidance personnel tasks
To help students identify and define their values
To provide students with information
To mobilize predictive data
Guidance as a constellation of services (Kenneth B. Hoyt)

o Guidance is that part of pupil personnel services aimed at maximum

development of individual potentialities through devoting schoolwide assistance to youth
o School counselor activities
Relating directly with pupils ()
Relating with others contributing to guidance ()
Assembling, studying and interpreting data ()
Developmental guidance (Wilson Little, A. L. Chapman, Herman J. Peters,
Gail Farwell, and Robert Mathewson)
o Stresses help to all students at all stages of their lives.
o Characteristics of developmental guidance
Gets inside the pupil
Cumulative
Comprehensive
Interpretive
o Developmental guidance enhances individuals
Guidance as science of purposeful action (David V. Tiedeman and Frank L.
Field)
o Guidance exists within an educational process that liberates, in
contrast to conditioning education
o Purposeful action is used to describe (a) behavior that counselors
hope to encourage on the part of the individual student; (b) behavior
that is practical for the individual guidance professional; and (c)
behavior that is not random.
o The practitioner of the model would (a) bring together student and
information, pupil and teacher, client and counselor, patient and
therapist; (b) hold a concept of the ideal student making ideal
progress through or within an ideal system; (c) possess the ability to
see where the individual fell short of the ideal; and (d) possess the
necessary knowledge to marshal the special skills and/or information
most relevant to an individuals problem.
Guidance as social reconstruction (Edward J. Shoben, Jr.)
o The major task of guidance is to emphasize individual growth and
help students find socially appropriate ways for expressing their
distinctiveness.
o New functions of the counselor
Human feedback function
Catalyst for the clarification of the character of the school
Guidance as personal development (Chris D. Kehas)

o Education is redefined as involvement with learning.

o Teaching and counseling are two ways of relating with students.
o Nature of personal development
Continuing development of intelligence about self
Consideration of personal meaning systems of individuals
Human experiencing
Guidance as psychological education (Gerald Weinstein)
o Psychological education involves programs for training learners in
those skills, concepts, and attitudes that will expand their self
knowledge concerning their own unique style for being in the world.
o By training learners to perceive more accurately their relation to
themselves, others and the world and to anticipate more accurately
the phenomena of their personal experience, their intentionality, or
power to choose their own ways of being, will be increased.
Activist guidance (Julius Menacker)
o Stresses environmental manipulation and intervention, counselorclient participation, and student advocacy, stimulated by the growing
judgment that guidance is least effective among the poor urban
students who need it the most.
o Major principles
Activity focused on concrete actions
Mutual counselor-client identification
Distinction between goals and values of client and of the
school
2. Principles of guidance (Shertzer & Stone, 1981)
Principle I. Guidance is concerned primarily and systematically with the
personal development of the individual.
Principle II. The primary mode by which guidance is conducted lies in
individual behavioral processes.
Principle III. Guidance is oriented toward cooperation, not compulsion.
Principle IV. Humans have the capacity for self-development.
Principle V. Guidance is based upon recognizing the dignity and worth of
individuals as well as their right to choose.
Principle VI. Guidance is a continuous, sequential, educational process.