THE ROLE OF ICT IN SCHOOL GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The educational system in Nigeria is not far from the technical aspect of education in that it is all involving as a process of transmitting the societal norms and values toward the development of the nation. An overview of the colonial educational system provided, revealed gross inadequacy and unsatisfactory to the educational ingenuity, yearnings and aspirations of the nation. Thus many scholars opined that this formal educations was ―parochial, elitist, regurgitate and irresponsible to the need and aspirations of the Nigerian society [1]. In view of these, an effort to put quality into the Nigerian Education resulted in instituting a well define educational system that will be instrumental in affecting national development. It is believed that ―education goals in terms of its relevance to the need of the individual as well as in terms of the kind of society desired in relation to the environment and realities of the modern world and rapid social changes should be clearly set out (National Policy on Education, 2004). The bid to meet the nation’s educational goals and aspiration brought about the 6-3- 3- 4 system of education. It was designed to restructure and inject functionality into the nations’ school system. The 6-3-3-4 system of education was seen as a creditable program able to bring about effective changes in the direction of technological development in a nation.

Education is said to be an accumulated experience that has a determinant effect on human character and mind. As a process, through which societal values, norms, principles, ethos, and skills can adequately be conveyed. Individuals need education in order to acquire this accumulated knowledge. The essence of incorporating guidance and counseling into the school system was to eliminate overwhelming ignorance of many young people on their choices of career prospects and personality maladjustment among school children. Based on these and more, career officers and counselors were appointed to take the responsibilities in sensitizing students on the needs for effective career choice. Following the tremendous benefits of the first recipients of guidance and counseling in 1959, a group of untrained counselors were inaugurated in 1967 by the Reverend Sisters from St Theresa’s College Oke-Ado who were the first pioneers of this body.

Although these were untrained counselors but their efforts brought remarkable development in guidance and counseling in Nigeria. With more emphasis placed on guidance and counseling as far back as 1959, 1962, 1963 and 1967 respectively, the peak of getting aware of counseling profession in Nigeria was on 11th of November, 1976 following the formal launching of the body of counselors known as Counseling Association of Nigeria (CAN), with Professor Olu Makinde as the first President. In 1977, the association became ailiated to the American Personnel and Guidance Association (APGA) with Professor Ibrahim I. Kolo from Ahmadu Bello University as the current president. The Job Tribu Project (VS/2011/0083) (www.jobtribu.eu) is an initiative to provide labour market counsellors with training in regard to the use of ICT in delivering their services. In order to be able to take into account previous experiences in this field we have conducted a survey of practices. This article presents an overview of the findings of the survey, while descriptions of practices identified can be found in the second part of this publication. Historically counselling and guidance have suffered from lack of innovation and purpose built tools. If we compare this field to medicine or sports, we can easily see a marked difference in the rate of development of new tools and methods. The advent of ICT has opened the possibility to create and implement numerous new instruments specifically designed for counselling and guidance.

Exploring trends in counselling in general (CEDEFOP, 2011 & 2008) and the use of ICT in particular (Hooley et al., 2009; Watts & Dent, 2008) has been the focus of researchers aiming to support a meaningful integration of ICT in counselling for the benefit of potential clients of these services. The new technologies have oered quick and cost effective solutions to a large array of problems, from data management to guidance in the transition from school to the labour market. Sharing and accessing information is no longer something practitioners dream to do, but an everyday reality where choosing the instruments is not about whether it can be done, but rather how to do it best. Being able to keep track of clients has meant that their progress could be charted and could be used to support an evidence-based practice. We are witnessing a shiing paradigm, from facilitating access to self-help tools and raw information, to an active relationship between client and counsellor, as well as the establishment of communities for clients with similar interests (Majumdar, 2009). Clients are being encouraged to become autonomous and capable of planning their own career path, and to resort to professional counsellors when faced with challenges that require a more in-depth analysis. With opportunity also came challenges, especially in regard to training the counselling professionals and providing adequate services based on the skills and needs of the client. The oen mentioned digital divide, between those that use ICT and those with limited access, has raised questions on how much of counselling services can be provided through these media. Promoting ICT literacy is one of the goals of the counselling process which takes in account the fact that certain strata of society are being left behind by the lack of access to ICT. Opposite to ICT (functional) illiteracy, we have ICT fatigue. People trying to ride the wave of change are often faced with a rapidly changing environment which demands a lot of energy when adapting to it.

This in turn creates a feeling of being overburdened, which leads to different coping strategies: from skipping one or more generations of instruments to avoiding all new instruments that do not bring major benefits to the practitioner. While there is little disagreement that career counselling services have benefited considerably from the use of new technologies, it seems that for the better part of the last two decades introducing ICT to counselling was a process that has lacked a planned and coordinated effort. While the factors that account for this situation are numerous and depend on the local context, it seems that the less counselling is perceived as generating economic benefits, for the provider of counselling and/or the economy as a whole, the less articulated the policy behind the use of ICT.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The great importance and significance attached to guidance and counseling program in our educational system makes it necessary for an effective guidance and counseling services in our present secondary schools. This notwithstanding however, is likely to face a lot of problems in term of implementation or providing the guidance and counseling masters opportunity to function properly in the school system. The 6-3-3-4 system is generally geared towards harmonizing the society with its technological needs as it attempt to develop the society as the need arises. The problem of inferiority complex, personal confidence, self-motivation and inter-personal relationship lead to building of fellow students, this at times leads to truancy in the school. Also some students’ do not have self confidence in terms of keeping themselves and do not want help from other people. Doing of so many things in advanced country like USA, UK differs from the way things are being done in Nigeria, new tech are being used in almost everything but Nigeria still do thing manually there are so many ICT tools that guidance counselors use to make their work faster and easier, which are rarely used in Nigeria, the stated problem enhance the interest of researcher to embark on research, The role of ICT school guidance and counselling.