Challenges of School Career Counsellors Working With Pupils Remotely

Proceedings of ‏The 3rd International Conference on Future of Teaching and Education

Year: 2020

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/3rd.icfte.2020.10.15

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Challenges of School Career Counsellors Working With Pupils Remotely

Rita Burceva

ABSTRACT: 

In Latvia the organisation of study process at schools changed rapidly during the 1st half of 2020 – classroom activities could no longer be carried out because in the effort to control the spread of the COVID-19 infection, the state of emergency was declared and all schools were closed. The aim of this article is to establish and analyse the key challenges that school career counsellors experience in their professional activity under these conditions. The research questions this article seeks to answer are what professional challenges are characteristic of the school career counsellor’s work with pupils of general and vocational education institutions remotely and what are the possible ways of tackling them. The data was obtained through the use of a focus group discussion method that is a format for the design of qualitative research. There were two main questions raised in the focus group discussions: the key problems of purposefully organizing communication with pupils remotely within the scope of career education, and the potential solutions and the good practice examples worth sharing with colleagues, ensuring the transfer of knowledge and thus enriching the learning environment for pupils. School career counsellors are recommended to use and improve their pupils’ and their own management skills creatively, to be determined to trial new tools for remote work in groups and individualised counselling sessions, to do it not only under the conditions of crisis but also to combine these tools successfully with meeting various audiences in person (pupils, their parents colleagues, cooperation partners from outside of education institutions).

Keywords: career education, digital tools, good practice, individual counselling, solutions.