Proposing a collaborative approach for school counseling

Abstract

School counseling services in Malaysia have remained unpopular since their establishment in 1963. Given the rising challenges faced by school children, there is a need to conduct a qualitative study to understand the school counselors’ experiences, their counseling approaches working with secondary school students in Malaysia, and also how the students could better benefit from their services. A total of 12 school counselors were interviewed using a semistructured interview approach. A thematic analysis was conducted to discover the emerging themes from the interview scripts. The findings revealed the voices of school counselors who yearned for better collaborative school counseling approaches. Therefore, a collaborative approach demonstrating how various educational stakeholders such as schoolteachers, parents, and the wider community can work collaboratively in the Malaysian secondary school context is proposed.