Programs of Guidance

Abstract

THE NUMBER of recent articles and monographs describing programs of guidance is fairly large, but the amount of research in this area continues to be small. Numerous difficulties beset any attempt to appraise guidance programs either by means of a carefully controlled experimental procedure or through rigid statistical analysis. The complex of variables in any normal guidance situation is rather baffling even to trained research workers. It is not surprising, therefore, that counselors who write in this field usually present general surveys or enthusiastic reports of their own guidance practices accompanied only by subjective appraisal of the results. It is encouraging to note, however, that the three-year period covered by this review probably has produced more significant research pertaining to guidance programs than any similar earlier period. The American Youth Commission, the New York Regents' Inquiry, the Implementation Commission of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals, the Study of the Relations of Secondary and Higher Education in Pennsylvania, the Educational Records Bureau, and other groups have issued reports that have important implications for the guidance and personnel programs of secondary schools, and perhaps of colleges. The published reports on programs of guidance tend to fall naturally into the following divisions: (a) elementary-school guidance, (b) guidance in secondary schools, (c) personnel programs in higher institutions, (d) out-of-school and adult guidance, and (e) programs of guidance in other countries. The second and third groups, which contain the bulk of the reports, can be subdivided into (a) surveys of guidance practices and procedures, (b) studies of the value of certain guidance procedures and of various means of appraisal, (c) studies leading to identification of problems of interest to counselors and personnel workers, and (d) descriptions of programs usually confined to a single institution or school system. The present report will follow the organization just outlined. It is realized that the descriptions of programs as indicated in the fourth subdivision as a rule contain little or nothing of a research nature, but it is believed that some of these articles by their very concreteness may offer more real help to counselors in service than do some survey studies which present a formidable array of statistics from which only fairly broad and rather vague conclusions can be drawn.