The Role of Guidance and Counseling in Enhancing Student Discipline in Secondary Schools in Koibatek District

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the role of guidance and counseling in enhancing student discipline in secondary schools in Koibatek district. The study was guided by Alfred Adler (1998) theory of personality, and humanistic theory of Albert Bandura (1995) social learning model. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Population of study was 2624students in 23 schools, 23 principals, 23 school counselors and 227 teachers. Out of those a purposive sampling was used to select 8 schools, 8 principals and 8 school counselors. Simple random sampling and stratified Random sampling was used to select 24 teachers and 262 students. The instruments used to collect data for the study were questionnaires and interview schedule. The study reliability coefficient of 0.81 was obtained. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean scores, summary tables, and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) program version 16. Findings indicated that teachers employ dynamic interactions of a group of students approach. Further, computer facilities were inadequate in guidance and counseling. From the findings, guidance and counseling has improved discipline and academic performance. There is enough proofing that lack of guidance and counseling to students leads to indiscipline in schools. However, there is lack of legal and policy framework, lack of trained teacher counselor and too much workload for teachers hence making it difficult for guidance and counseling to succeed in promoting student discipline. There is need to embrace dialogue in resolution of conflict. This can be enhanced through building a strong relationship between the students, counselors, teachers and administrators to an extent that they are free to speak out issueless the affect both parties.