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A holistic approach to schoolbased counselling and guidance

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ARTICLE in SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY INTERNATIONAL APRIL 2013
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Article

A holistic approach to
school-based counselling
and guidance services
in Malaysia

School Psychology International

34(2) 190201
! The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/0143034312453398
spi.sagepub.com

Sew Kim Low, Jin Kuan Kok and

Mah Ngee Lee
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Kampar, Malaysia

Abstract
Counselling services in Malaysian schools were first established in 1963. Several local
research studies investigated the provision of school counselling services and revealed
that they were unpopular among students and could be further improved. School-aged
children are still under the care of their family, mostly their parents, and many authors
suggested that the school counselling services for these children are inseparable from
their family and community. A qualitative research study was conducted with 12 secondary school counsellors from Perak state in Malaysia. The counsellors were interviewed to explore their experiences of working in the existing counselling services
system. The findings showed that there was a lack of collaboration among various
educational stakeholders and the resources from the community were not utilized
effectively. As a result of this study, a comprehensive integrative model for school
counselling is proposed and discussed. Some possible challenges faced by counsellors
and suggestions on ways to further improve counselling services within the Malaysian
context are discussed.
Keywords
Challenged youths, collaboration, educational stakeholders, integrative model, Malaysia,
school counselling

In Malaysia, the services provided by school psychologists are the responsibility of

school counsellors who assist school administrators with the social, emotional, and
academic development of students. The absence of school psychologists in the
Corresponding author:
Sew Kim Low, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Perak Campus, Jalan Universiti, Bandar Barat, 31900 Kampar,
Perak, Democratic Republic of Malaysia.
Email: lowsk@utar.edu.my

Low et al.

191

Malaysian school system may be due to socio-cultural, socio-political, and

historical factors. These factors include a lack of awareness regarding the
importance of psychological services for facilitating childrens development.
In addition, the socio-cultural values of a reserved society and lack of helpseeking behaviour among local families are non-supportive to self-expression
among students, and further contribute to the absence of school psychological
services in Malaysia. However, similar to school psychologists throughout
developing countries and particularly in Asia, Malaysian school counsellors
share a primary goal of enhancing the overall quality life of children
(Akin-Little & Little, 2013; Chong, Lee, Tan, Wong, & Yeo, 2013; Cook,
Jimerson, & Begeny, 2010; DAmato, Van Schalkwyk, Zhao, & Hu, 2013;
Luk-Fong, 2013; Tangdhanakanond, Archwamety, McFarland, & Beckman,
2013; Tarroja, & Fernando, 2013; Van Schalkwyk & Sit, 2013; Wang &
DAmato, 2013).
In Malaysia, before the provision of the guidance and counselling services division, classroom and discipline teachers handled the social, emotional, and psychological development of students. In 1963, the Malaysian Ministry of Education
instituted the guidance and counselling section in the Education Planning and
Research Division. This gave counselling services in Malaysian schools greater
importance in the school education system. Secondary school counselling services
are now well established in Malaysia where most of the schools have at least one
full-time counsellor. Unfortunately, current counselling are predominantly schoolbasedwhere school counsellors do not see their roles beyond solely providing
limited services to the students.
Nonetheless, the school community and others still regard the counselling
services as a panacea for social ills such as drug addiction, delinquency, and
discipline in schools (Othman & Awang, 1993). The unpopularity of counselling services among students is further supported by other local studies, which
found that students preferred to seek help from friends and family members
rather than from school counsellors (Chai, 2000). A comprehensive counselling
and guidance program should cover educational, career, personal, and social
development of students (Schmidt, 2008). However, Chai (2000) found that
only 16% of Malaysian students utilized school counselling services for emotional or psychological problems. Students seemingly only seek counselling
services for their school work and career problems, or when their primary
support system has failed to assist them in solving their problems eectively
(Tan, 1989). Gysbers and Henderson (2001), who proposed that a counselling
program should include all stakeholders of education, further supported the
need for a more comprehensive and integrative school counselling program to
meet the multicultural challenges of the Malaysia school system. Thus, this
study sought to explore the experiences of secondary school counsellors working in the existing counselling services system with the aim of proposing a
model for integrating stakeholders and the community in improving the system
for the benet of the students overall development.

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School Psychology International 34(2)

Method
In this study, two focus groups were conducted prior to the research, one for the
school counsellors from each of the urban and rural parts of Perak state (one of the
14 Malaysian states). It was chosen because all the researchers are academic sta
working in one of the state universities in this region. The purpose of the focus
groups was to gather information that could be included in the design of a questionnaire. Participants were encouraged to share their counselling experience freely
during focus group discussions.
Following the focus groups, the researchers designed a survey questionnaire
comprising three sections and used both quantitative and qualitative approaches
to explore the experiences of school counsellors in Malaysia. Section A of the
questionnaire consisted of school information such as types of school, number of
students and sta, number of counsellors, and counselling facilities. Section B
consisted of counsellors demographic data and types of training. Section C consisted of both structured and open-ended questions based on counselling types,
other responsibilities, administrative and community support, and counselling service improvement. The survey questionnaire was sent to 235 secondary schools in
Perak state. The initial response to the questionnaires was insucient for dataanalysis; randomly selected schools were contacted through telephone calls and
visited for further interviews. Eventually 82 schools of dierent school sizes
responded and 12 school counsellors voluntarily participated in face-to-face
interviews.
The structured questionnaire data was analysed using SPSS while the openended questions were analysed via NVIVO to identify emerging themes and patterns. Interview sessions were transcribed and all the verbatim transcripts were
clustered via the node coding using NVIVO. The thematic analysis process followed the principles as proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994) where emergent
themes were extracted and constant comparison was performed across all the cases
in order to derive common themes.

Findings
Three themes emerged from the qualitative data analysis: (1) A multi-faceted role
of counsellors in the implementation of the school counselling and guidance program; (2) a lack of understanding and stigmatization of counselling services by the
students, school community, and parents; and (3) the need for collaboration
between schools and local communities.

The multi-faceted role of counsellors

Of the total 82 respondents, 74 counsellors (91.4%) were full-time, one worked as a
teacher (1.2%), two worked as counsellor and teacher (2.5%), and one as counsellor and administrator. Three counsellors worked as counsellor, teacher, and

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193

administrator (3.7%). As one counsellor commented, I have to teach, organize

counselling activities, write reports and collect fees. Actually, the teachers and
school administrator dont have a clear picture of what counselling is about. All
the respondents mentioned that they normally had to plan, organize, and implement programs such as leadership training, talks on relationship with parents, antidrug campaign, and presentations by police on gang activities. Besides running
their own counselling programs, most of them also handled disciplinary cases
(Gu, Lai, & Ye, 2011). Of the 82 respondents, most of the counsellors handled
academic issues and disciplinary cases, personal issues, career guidance, and lastly
family issues. The data suggested that the provision of counselling services in secondary schools are rather academic based and student-centred, while family and
other issues were receiving little attention. The frequency and percentage of the
types of actual cases handled by counsellors include, respectively, academic, 77,
(93.9%); personal, 76, (92.7%); family issues, 65, (79.3%); career, 67, (81.7%);
disciplinary cases, 77, (93.9%); and other, 22, (31.0%).

Lack of understanding and stigmatization of counselling services

There was a general lack of understanding about the nature of counselling services among school administrators and teachers. Counselling services were viewed
as part of the disciplinary system that dealt with problematic cases. Besides conducting counselling activities, some also had to play the role of disciplinarian.
Hence, some counsellors were assigned irrelevant tasks such as spot-checking of
students attires, and photocopying and delivering Ministry of Education documents and reports. As one counsellor lamented, Every day Ive got to check the
students uniforms, making sure that they wear ties and name tags . . . Everything
such as police cases, ghting problems, canteen and even toilet problems are
referred to the counsellor. Im expected to do all these things; it sometimes
hurts me even though I dont mind. Another commented that we are given
only two hours to run counselling program during school hours but some teachers are not willing to give us the time, they prefer to use those times for
academic purposes. Since not all full time counsellors were given any xed timetable, some teachers regarded them as having a more relaxed time with no need
to do anything, sitting in the counselling room writing reports and only talking to
the students. In some schools, there was also a lack of collaboration and understanding between the counsellors and the disciplinary teacher. This lack of
cooperation from school teachers increased the frustrations of some school counsellors who also had to prepare reports for students with discipline cases even
though the discipline teacher initially handled the cases. Due to a lack of clear
operating procedures in handling students problems, there is conict between the
roles of the counsellor and the disciplinary teacher. For example, When there is a
problem, they send to discipline master and when discipline cant solve it, they
push it to counselling . . . when counselling cant solve it (they) then push back to
discipline master.

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Other than a lack of cooperation among discipline and classroom teachers, some
school counsellors also face tremendous diculty due to lack of support from
school administrators. Since the Malaysian school system is examination-oriented,
schools are rated according to students academic achievement. In their quest to
raise students academic achievement, some school administrators focus on academic work rather than utilizing counselling services. This failure to realize the
positive eect of counselling in promoting students growth and development,
including academic development, resulted in the appointment of teachers who
were untrained in counselling. Of the 82 respondents, 11 (13.6%) were unqualied
as counsellors yet were appointed by school administrators to provide school
counselling services.
Furthermore, in the Malaysian school setting, students attending counselling are
also stigmatized. Students and parents are reluctant to seek counselling services
because they consider these services as only for problem students. This stigmatization causes a great deal of frustration for school counsellors. Some of the respondents were of the opinion that even students thought the services were unhelpful,
while some parents viewed it negatively and were fearful of being stigmatized (Van
Schalkwyk, 2011). Parents therefore refused to cooperate with the counsellors, and
if we invite them to come in when their children have behavioural problems, they
feel we are against their child and they do not think they can play a part in their
childs development. Another counsellor who also felt and shared the same view
said that some parents have this misunderstanding that having to meet with
school counsellor is quite problematic . . . Its no use, let my child just go through
the disciplinary procedure. In short, stigmatization is seen as a serious problem
faced by most counsellors. Of the 82 respondents, 55 of them (70.5%) felt that
stigmatization is one of the main barriers that restricted students and parents from
seeking counselling services.

Need for collaboration

All the respondents mentioned that the root cause of students problems was in the
family. They hoped parents could keep an open mind about counselling. They
lamented that letters and messages sent to the parents were ignored or responded
negatively. They believed that engaging parents in the school counselling activities
would give them a feeling of participation and belonging. The need for collaborative relationship with school classroom teachers was seen as important in helping
the counsellor create a safe, nurturing and eective school environment that was
conducive to students learning (Fagan & Wise, 2007). One counsellor claimed that
teachers have the advantage of identifying students problems since they have to
manage students inappropriate behaviours in the classroom. Teachers responses
and actions aected students behaviours in the classrooms more than school
policy (Marachi, Astor, & Benbenishty, 2007). Besides, parent and classroom teacher collaboration, there was also a need to promote collaboration with other
local community resources. These included government agencies, religious

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195

organizations, educational institutions, hospitals and the police. As one counsellor

claimed, the school engaged the help of the local police to take actions on students
who loiter in cybercafes during school hours.

Discussion
The ndings exhibited a scenario of lack of cooperation and collaboration from all
stakeholders involved in the growth and psychological development of Malaysian
schoolchildren. All of the 82 counsellors acknowledged that in order to provide
eective school counselling services, collaboration among all the stakeholders from
the educational and local community needs to improve. In order to enhance the
provision of public school counselling services in Malaysia, the researchers propose
a partnership model between the dierent stakeholders. Adopting the holistic
model that acknowledges the school community, family, the local community,
and the government would allow for the greater integration of school psychological
services in Malaysia. It was evident that eective utilization of community
resources and collaboration would contribute signicantly to students successful
educational experience (see Nastasi & Varjas, 2011). The concept of community
collaboration originates from Bronfenbrenner (1979) and has been supported by
many authors for the holistic development of children and the development of
coherent school psychological services (Chong et al., 2013; Schmidt, 2008; Sink,
2005). This model of partnership involvement will be used as a framework to
advocate for ways in which school counsellors in Malaysia could better integrate
and collaborate with stakeholders in the planning and implementation of schoolbased mental health and counselling services.

Collaboration from the school community

The Malaysian school community comprises the administrators, teachers, and students. Collaboration and cooperation from all school members are essential to
ensure successful implementation of counselling programs and activities. Of the
82 respondents, 68 (84%) felt that the school management provided sucient support such as basic amenities and nancial assistance for the guidance program,
which allowed them to conduct safety- and mental-health campaigns, and provide
anti-drug and anti-smoking presentations. As one counsellor commented, the
school administrator gives a lot of support in providing a conducive work environment such as providing a counselling room equipped with computer, printer and
photocopy machine, thus making our work easier, faster and more ecient.
However, since school counsellors do not have daily interaction with classroom
students, they need to collaborate with classroom teachers in order to develop a
comprehensive partnership program to meet students needs (Mitchell & Bryan,
2007). Teachers were able to identify problematic students whom they could not
handle and could refer these students to the counsellors. Classroom teachers could
also assist the counsellors by taking necessary actions in correcting students who

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misbehave and in promoting and encouraging students to participate in activities

organized by the counsellors. In the Malaysian school system, most students were
only able to attend counselling sessions during school hours. Hence, teachers
should permit those problematic students to see the counsellors during their teaching hours. Teachers may be quite cautious if students were seen as using the
counselling services as an excuse to escape from classes. However, this problem
could be solved if there was better communication and coordination between the
school counsellor and teachers. Research ndings revealed that the inuence of
student problem behaviours on their academic achievement varies across countries
(e.g., Gu et al., 2011).
Counsellors could also incorporate the assistance of peer group helpers. These
would be students who were trained with appropriate helping skills to assist peers,
intervene in conicts between peers, and to provide supportive alliances for youths.
Peer helpers can aid counsellors in promoting outreach programs such as an
Education Fair, a Mental Health Exhibition and other activities. They can assist
in the development of resistance and refusal training through role play and discussions to help peers avoid negative social inuences (McWhirter, McWhirter,
McWhirter, & McWhirter, 1998). Together, school administrators, teachers, students, and counsellors could work to plan for and promote peace, tolerance and
understanding of dierences in the school environment (Fusick & Bordeau, 2004).

Parental collaboration
Parent intervention would help overcome the barrier to help-seeking and stigmatization; recent research suggested that parental involvement is a core component
in school psychology and counselling (e.g., Koutrouba, Antonopoulou, Tsitsas, &
Zenakou, 2009; Van Schalkwyk, 2011). School counsellors should involve parents
in forming parent support groups. Support groups could provide an avenue for
parents to share and explore alternative strategies in handling psychological stress
faced by their children. In addition, support groups could assist other parents in
skill-building, understanding school and learning strategies essential to their childrens academic achievement. In a situation where family members are unable to
come to school to discuss their childrens problems, members of this parent support
group could assist the counsellor in conducting a home visit. A home visit could
also enhance trust and communication between school sta and families (Cicero &
Barton, 2003, cited in Mitchell & Bryan, 2007).
This open communication would also help parents to understand the school
policies and availability of other community services and resources that they
might need in assisting their childrens development and education. One interviewed counsellor who commented also emphasized this need for parental cooperation and involvement in dealing with students problems, indicating that a lot of
time when doing counselling is guessing what the students have gone through. Its
so much better if parents come and explain what the students are facing at home,
outside and in school. They are the ones who know their children best. Other than

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the introduction of parent support groups, school counsellors could also involve
the school/parent/teacher association. In fact, it could be compulsory for all
Malaysian public schools to set up the parent teacher associations where the committee members are elected from parents and teachers (Baba, 1993). Through these
associations, school counsellors could engage in their discussion of issues related to
social and educational development of the school children. These associations
would serve as critical resource for school counsellors in their outreach program
to create awareness of the counselling services among the school and local community. These associations could also assist counsellors and parent support groups
in raising nancial assistance such as conducting parenting workshop, family
camps, and other parenting activities.
School counsellors need to reach out to parents to ensure that they understand
the importance of their collaboration when organizing activities to promote their
childrens mental and psychological development (Mitchell & Bryan, 2007). Results
from over 30 years of research suggest that pupils of all ages and economic background benet from parental involvement in their childrens education in both their
academic skills and their social behavioural prole (Koutrouba et al., 2009). The
purpose of parent-based intervention would be to facilitate strong bonds between
home and school to prevent further alienation and mistrust of mental health services (Fusick & Bordeau, 2004). Furthermore, parents who are more aware of
issues related to psychological well-being may help in developing more balanced
socio-emotional environment for their childrens functioning and development
(Haron, Jaafar, & Baba, 2010).

Local community collaboration

School counsellors should also promote collaboration with non-governmental and
professional organizations, business, libraries, radio stations, colleges, universities,
and faith-based organizations. They should identify and mobilize community
resources to help meet the needs of students and their families (Epstein, 1995).
Activities provided by these local communities might consist of communitybased tutoring and mentoring program, school-linked services, career partnership
and sponsorship (Tarroja & Fernando, 2013). Local colleges and universities are
potential resources for the provision of mentoring and tutoring program. These
educational institutions could also provide academic enrichment, pre-college academic preparation, and orientation programs for schoolchildren. For example,
some Malaysian school counsellors have collaborated with private universities
and colleges in organizing Education Fairs. These provided students with career
information and guidance as evidenced by one interviewed counsellor, universities
and colleges will come, they have their own booths and we give time to dierent
classes of students to attend this Education Fair.
Furthermore, some university students choose to do their practical training in
schools, thus learning and assisting the school counsellors in the organization and
implementation of counselling services. School counsellors should also collaborate

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School Psychology International 34(2)

and coordinate programs with counsellors from other schools within the same
town in order to form a cluster system. For example, counsellors from neighbouring schools could coordinate programmatic activities that use the same resources,
such as venue and professional personnel for their Career Faireliminating redundancy, reducing costs and increasing sta in the organization of activities.
Community partnership is not only a social responsibility of our society, but is
an important part of comprehensive school psychological services (Mitchell &
Bryan, 2007). It brings together the involvement of the whole community and
creates an awareness of the need for collaboration in planning and facilitating
activities for the holistic development of children, youth and families in school
and school-related settings.

Government collaboration
The Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, police, and other government
agencies should also be included in the design of a comprehensive school counselling programs. Although it is compulsory for all secondary schools to have full time
counsellors, with the ratio of one counsellor for every 500 secondary school students, the uneven distribution of trained counsellors by the Ministry of Education
results in some large schools not having sucient provision of counsellors.
Furthermore, of the 82 respondents, 59 (71.9%) were not trained as school counsellors, either in school psychology or educational psychology. However, some
have attended short weekend training courses (79.3%) with limited exposure to
actual school counselling practices. Hence, the Ministry of Education should set
the standards for the provision of psychological services to schools and provide
continuous professional development opportunities. The standards should comply
with the school psychology frameworks to ensure best practice and eective services to all children. Through training, conferences, seminars and workshops,
school counsellors will be better able to provide the services needed and have the
opportunity to learn new skills and interventions. In addition, these opportunities
could create space for peer discussion and open communication between policy
makers and practitioners. These favourable conditions could further improve the
counsellors self-ecacy and the provision of psychological services in school and
school-related settings in Malaysia.
School counsellors could also incorporate the assistance of other government
agencies such as the police, home and welfare ministry, anti-drug and anti-smoking
agencies. These government agencies could assist the school counsellors in planning
proactive and prevention-based programs. For example, as one respondent commented, we understand that students need motivation . . . many of the social welfare ocers from the Perak Family Planning want to train the younger generations
with programs such as motivational camps. Furthermore, in handling discipline
cases such as school bullying, truancy, and gang ghts, school counsellors could
engage the assistance of the local police (e.g., James, Logan, & Davis, 2011).
Students who were caught gang ghting outside the school grounds could be

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199

given stern warnings by the police before they were referred to the school counsellor for further intervention. Police personnel could also assist in conducting talks
regarding the dangers of drug use and the importance of self-safety for students,
school sta, parents, and the community. This model of inter-agency collaboration
would further facilitate stronger bonds between the school, home, and community
and is a way of avoiding alienation and mistrust (Fusick & Bordeau, 2004).

Conclusion
It takes a whole community to raise a child. The overall psycho-socio-emotional and
cognitive development of children is the responsibility of the whole community.
Malaysian schools should provide an environment that is conducive to and supportive of all areas of development in order to improve the mental health, academic
performance, and personal growth of all children. Coordinated services could help
to promote communication and interaction, a sense of belonging and self-fullment.
More eort is needed, in the absence of school psychologist, to create a holistic
approach in the provision of school-based child and family counselling services in
Malaysia. Continuous integrated eorts are needed to collaborate and coordinate
with all stakeholders. School community, parents, local community, and government agencies are important to the planning and implementation of ecient and
appropriate school counselling programs and activities. In Malaysia, school counsellors have an integral role to play in working with school children and their
families. These roles include teaming, collaborating, and creating partnerships
with local and government communities. Counsellors self-ecacy and proactive
attitude in searching for best practices through research are necessary in sustaining
the eectiveness of psychological services and counselling in Malaysian schools.
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Author biographies
Sew Kim Low, MEd, is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology. She is a
Malaysian registered Counsellor, and her research interests include counselling,
education, youth development, coping, motivation, emotional wellness, and experiential learning. Address: Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Universiti,
Bandar Barat, 31900 Kampar, Perak Malaysia. Email: lowsk@utar.edu.my
Jin Kuan Kok, EdD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department Psychology and
Counselling. Her research interests include social and cultural issues such as suicide, youth culture, education, and counselling. Address: Universiti Tunku Abdul
Rahman, Jalan Universiti, Bandar Barat, 31900 Kampar, Perak Malaysia. Email:
kokjk@utar.edu.my
Mah Ngee Lee, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology
and Counselling. Her research interests include youth studies, resilience, character
development, motivation, instructional improvement, education, and counselling.
Address: Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Universiti, Bandar Barat, 31900
Kampar, Perak Malaysia. Email: leemn@utar.edu.my