Needed Educational and Professional Re-Orientation of School Principals for More Effective Counselling Services in Nigeria (Published)
The purpose of this paper was to examine the needed educational and professional re-orientation of school principals for more support towards effective counselling services in Nigerian schools. In this endeavour, principal’s positive disposition has been conceived as a tool for successful realization of guidance programmes in schools. This paper also noted that inspite of the acknowledged or well known significance of school principals towards effective counselling services in schools, their disposition is however, not quite supportive. The paper therefore, recommends the re-orientation of school principals towards providing more support for counsellors job. Towards this goal, it examined various educational and professional ways and means of re-orientating school principals. The re-orientation of school principals would enable or facilitate more positive principal’s support for counsellors in schools. It s hoped that the points made in this paper would bring into sharper focus of educational policy makers and school operators, the desirability of re-orienting school principals for more effective counselling services in school. This could be done through (i) leadership training and re-orientation that emphasizes guidance services (ii) increasing the content of counselling course units in principal’s in-service education (iii) counselling association of Nigeria routine interface with school counsellors and principals amongst others.
Keywords: Counselling, Educational, Professional, Re-orientation, School Principal