The powerful student counselor

The pupil counselor is the key figure in the field of care in a school. In addition to its crucial role in care policy, it acts as an anchor point in relation to all complex relationships between all actors involved.

In educational practice, we notice concerns and inability to act among student counselors as a result of the introduction of the decree. What exactly is their new role in the school? Which competencies are expected? We notice that the professionalization offer is generally fragmented and sometimes limited to the needs of the student counselor. We establish a common search among various professionalization partners in function of shaping a powerful professionalization offer for student counselors.

Within this PWO, in the first year we examined how pupil counselors in mainstream secondary education describe their current assignment, which professionalization needs are associated with this and what their current learning questions are. This was done on the basis of semi-structured interviews with 8 student counselors. During the second research year, we worked together with the Pedagogical Guidance Service of the Municipal Education Ghent and the Municipal Art Institute as a co-financing partner through the project of the Province of East Flanders on learning coaching. We investigated which professionalization initiatives meet the learning questions, mapped out success factors and bottlenecks in relation to professionalization for student counselors and collected good practice examples. The researchers carried out a form of job shadowing during professional development initiatives with student counselors and learning coaches, and this led to in-depth discussions with them. A focus group was also organized with student counselors from Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen region East Flanders, in collaboration with their pedagogical counselor.