School counselors: importance of the personal and participatory dimension in attitudinal competences

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The current model of indirect intervention about educational guidance, based on collaborative consultation and theoretically grounded in the principles of prevention, intervention and social development, is an unquestionable quality factor in education systems. Method: The aim of this study is to understand the degree of importance that attitudinal competences hold for an effective performance by school counselors in Education Schools of Galicia. In order to measure attitudinal competences it was used the questionnaire Analysis of professional competences of school counselors. Results: The results of the investigation confirm that counselors consider attitudinal competences very important (69.1%), those with the highest rating (percentages over 75%) are those referring to “knowing how to act” (participative dimension) in contrast to a worse assessment (percentages under 55%) of those referring to “knowing how to be” (personal dimension). Principal components analysis followed by varimax rotation indicated two factors jointly accounting for 61.2% of total variance, one associated with actions involving modification of syllabuses, and the other with actions not requiring such changes. Cronbach's alphas were .94 and.80 for the two factors. Finally, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) holds that hypothesized model appears to be an acceptable fit of data. Conclusions: This study, beyond lending productionof knowledge to the field of educational and vocational guidance, is a headway to favor the acquisition of attitudinal competences in counseling training, contributing to the strengthening of counseling services in terms of quality and excellence.