Students’ perception of the impact of Guidance and Counseling programmes on the Satisfaction of Vocational needs in selected Kenyan secondary schools.

Abstract

The need to have vocational guidance and counseling integrated into the secondary school curriculum has become more necessary in the modern times than it was several years ago. This could be so due to changing nature of job opportunities, job scarcity, explosion of knowledge and new technologies. Vocational Guidance and Counseling is offered to meet learners career needs, aspirations and job mobility. The objective of the study was to determine students’ perception of the impact of guidance and counseling programme on the satisfaction of vocational needs. The research study was guided by Gestalt theory of perception. The theory was appropriate because of the complex psychological backgrounds which informed the respondents’ perceptions. The target population for the study was all students drawn from secondary schools in North and South Rift Valley region of kenya. Four hundred and fifty students were selected through stratified random sampling from ten secondary schools. Self – developed questionnaires were used for data collection. Ex post facto research design was utilized for the study. The reliability of the instrument was SPQ = 0.893. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) used to test null hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The content validity was ascertain through expert judgement opinion. The findings indicated that the respondents perception on the impact of guidance and counseling on satisfaction of vocational needs was uncertain (neutral perception) which meant that the impact was not significant. Students were not convince that the guidance programme has had any effect on self-employment skills, learning about talents, career available outside Kenya and career mentoring. The Category of School (Mixed Boarding) was found significant in its influence on perception of students of on the impact of guidance and counseling on  vocational needs while age, gender, school type and class levels was found insignificant. This paper recommends reviewing the vocational guidance programmes to be more practical and consumer friendly for it to be more appealing to learners in order to satisfy their career needs. The paper concludes with a suggestion that vocational guidance can be entrenched in the regular school curriculum for it to be more visible and creation of awareness on the value of vocational guidance and counseling.

Key Words: Students, Gestalt perception, guidance, counseling, satisfaction, vocation needs