“STUDENTS PERCEPTIONS OF SCHOOL COUNSELOR ROLES AND FUNCTIONS”

The study entitled “Students Perceptions of School Counselor Roles and Functions by
Laura A. Kuhn was a study aims to know the students perceptions of school counselor and the
functions, associated with those roles. The author administered 20 item questionnaire to students
at two urban high schools. The said questionnaire instructed the students to rate the importance
of 15 student counselor functions based on the five school counselor roles which are to be a
leader, advocate, collaborator, counselor, coordinator and data utilizer. Each role was assessed
according to the 3 categories of development: academic, career and personal-social. Furthermore,
the students rated the importance of 5 non counselling functions that school counsellors often
perform as test administration and registration. These counselling functions were categorized
under the term manager for this study. Both the counseling and non-counselling functions were
rated according to 5-point Likert Scale (1-not important, 5-extremely important).
Three research questions were posed for this study first is, what school counselor roles do
students perceive to be important to their academic success, career development and personal-
social growth? The result suggest that students perceived counselor/ coordinator and leader to be
the two most important roles for school counselors. Second, what school counselor role-related
functions do students perceive to be important to their academic success, career development,
and personal-social growth? The result suggest that students perceived the following to be the
two most important role-related functions for school counselors: assisting all students in
registration and scheduling. Third, do students’ perception of school counselor roles and
function differ by grade level? The result suggest that tenth graders perceived the non-
counselling functions of assisting in maintaining order in the school through disciplinary
intervention as more important compared to twelfth graders. The students assessed perceived the
most important school counselor roles as counselor/coordinator and leader. In fact, the students
rated the roles in the following order from least to most important: advocate, manager, data
utilizer, collaborator, leader, and counselor/coordinator. It might be expected that non
counselling functions would be rated low in importance due to the fact that they are functions
that counselors often perform but are not necessarily school counselling functions. However, it is
interesting that the students rated advocate as the least important role. This may be in part a
result of the fact that students do not fully understand the advocate role.
On the other hand, I’ve come to realized that this kind of study is really good and very
timely. The author clearly discussed and came up with a good result to the questions he/she was
looking for. He/she used a useful literatures that supported this study. But I’ve found out that in
this study, that the respondents which are the students least rated the school counselor as an
advocate, first why is that they rated it as least? Is the author stated clearly the true meaning of an
advocate in counselling? The counselor must explain what is being an advocate. There is no
definition of terms that would help the reader understand what is being taught and so that the
respondents will not misinterpret the meaning of every word stated. Moreover, in this study I’ve
saw that the author stated “stakeholders”, aside from family, what other stakeholders, he/she is
referring to? I’ve expected that aside from family, there is peers or co-workers like that, I wanted
it to be more specific of what or whom he/she is referring to. If I’ll be writing a study in line with
this, I wanted to include the expectations of the students to school counsellors as well as with the
counselors to the students in gathering the data I needed. I may include the students experiences
with their school counsellors, that would address some issues and concern within the school, I
think it sounds more realistic and significant. I’ve came up with the idea that professional school
counsellors must identify personal beliefs and philosophies as to how all students benefit from
the school counselling program and act on these beliefs and philosophies to guide the
development, implementation and evaluation of a comprehensive school counselling program.
They must create a mission statement that will support the school’s mission and collaborate with
other individuals and organizations to promote all students’ academic, career and professional-
social development and help the students in maximizing their achievements.