School Counsellors’ Perceptions towards School Social Work in Turkey

Abstract

Social work in the context of schools has been attracting growing interest in the Turkish education field over recent years, as evidenced by discussions and a significant body of literature regarding introducing social work services in schools alongside counselling services. However, while social workers and social work academics debate over the practicalities of social workers working in schools for various reasons including new employment opportunities and better education environments, it appears that none have examined counsellors’ perceptions about the possible future collaboration with social workers in schools. From our perspective, it is vital to know what and how counsellors think of social workers with regards to a possible future professional partnership. In this sense, our research investigated what counsellors, who were currently working in state schools, knew about social work, particularly in a school setting. Quantitative descriptive methods were employed to understand school counsellors’ perceptions. The study’s population consisted of 295 school counsellors that were working in state schools in Altındağ, Çankaya and Yenimahalle; three provinces in Ankara, Turkey. The study showed that although the counsellors’ reports suggested that they were self-assured in working with social workers in schools, they were not satisfied with their understanding of the social work profession, school social work in particular. The participants emphasized that familial problems and low levels of motivation towards school were prevalent problems for the students. The counsellors were not opposed to working with a social worker in schools; in fact the vast majority of the participants believed that working as part of a psychosocial team in schools could enhance school psychosocial services. Lastly, counsellors’ perceptions about social workers were dominantly positive despite their self-reported inadequate information of the social work discipline in general.

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