GUIDANCE: MEANING, NATURE

AND SCOPE
LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
Jalandhar-Delhi G.T. Road (NH-1)
Phagwara, Punjab (India) - 144411
For Enquiry: +91-1824-300360
Fax.: +91-1824-506111
Email: [email protected]

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

Objectives
After reading this unit students will be
able to:
• Explain the meaning of Guidance
• Describe the nature of Guidance
• Discuss the scope of Guidance

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

Introduction
Guidance is as old as civilisation. In the primitive
society, elders in the family offered guidance to the
young and to persons in distress. Even today, in India,
guidance, whether in educational, vocational or
personal matters, is sought from family elders.
Guidance-unorganised and informal - in all places and
at all levels has been a vital aspect of the educational
process. With the passage of time, revolutionary
changes have taken place in the field of agriculture,
industry, business and medicine etc.
Introduction
These changes in all walks of life coupled with
extraordinary growth in our population has made the
social structure very complex. Head of the family or
leader of the community with a limited knowledge of
the changed conditions is hardly competent in
providing guidance and counseling to the youth of
today. Hence, there is a need for specialised guidance
services. In this unit, we will try to interact with you
regarding the meaning and nature of guidance, its need
and scope in India.
Meaning of
Guidance
What is Guidance?
Help or advise that is given to somebody
especially by somebody older or with more
experience.
Guidance ordinary meaning
Guidance is help, assistance, and
suggestions for progress and showing the
way. In that sense guidance is a life long
process.
“Guidance is an assistance made available by personally
qualified and adequately trained men or women to an
individual of any age to help them manage their own life
activities, develop their own points of view, make their own
decisions, and carry out their own burden”
Guidance specific meaning
which starts from the birth of the child and
continues till his death.
1. Guidance as a Specialised Service whose primary
concern is with the individual and to help them to solve
their problems and take appropriate decisions in their
choice-points;

2. Guidance as a General Service and is considered to be

synonymous with education and educational processes;
and

3. Guidance as a Sub-Process of education in which

developmental needs of the learners are considered the
basic points.
Shirley Hamrin (1947)
“Helping John to see through himself in
order that he may see himself through”, is
a simple and practical but challenging
concept of guidance
Jones (1951)
“The focus of guidance is the individual not
his problem, its purpose is to provide the
growth of the individual in self-direction
providing opportunity for self-realisation
and self-direction is the key-note of
guidance. “
Downing (1964)
Guidance is an organised set of specialised
services established as an integral part of
the school environment designed to
promote the development of the students
and assist them toward a realisation of
sound, wholesome adjustment and
maximum accomplishments
commensurate with their personalities.
Downing (1964)
Guidance is a point of view that includes a
positive attitude towards children and
realisation that it is the supplement,
strengthen and make more meaningful all
other phases of a youngster’s education.
Ruth Strang (1937)
explains that guidance is a process of
helping every individual through his own
efforts to discover and develop his
potentialities for his personal happiness
and social usefulness
Mathewson (1962)
defines guidance as the systematic
professional process of helping the
individual through education and
interpretative procedures to gain a better
understanding of his own characteristics
and potentialities and to relate himself
more satisfactorily to social requirements
and opportunities in accord with social and
moral values.
Arthur, J. Jones (1963)
thinks that guidance is the help given by
one person to another in making choices
and adjustments and in solving problems.
Traxler (1957)
considers guidance as a help which
enables each individual to understand his
abilities and interests, to develop them as
well as possible and to relate the life-goals,
and finally to reach a state of complete
and mature self-guidance as a desirable
member of the social order.
B.L. Shepherd
stated that (1) the immediate objective in
guidance is to help each pupil meet and
solve his problems as they arise; and (2)
the ultimate objective of all guidance is
selfguidance.
Secondary Education
Commission (1964-66)
“Guidance involves the difficult art of
helping boys and girls to plan their own
future wisely in the full light of all the
factors that can be mastered about
themselves and about the world in which
they are to live and work.“
Nature of Guidance
What is Nature?
The basic qualities of a thing.
“Guidance seeks to create within the child the need
and power to explore and understand himself in
order to prepare a balance-sheet of his assets and
liabilities so that is able to plan out his future growth
and activities in a manner that offers maximum
likelihood of success and satisfaction. “
Basic elements
• Pupil Information or Appraisal Service
• Educational and Vocational Information Service
• Counseling Service
• Placement Service, and
• Follow-up Service.
Four things :
(i) Where he has been,
(ii) Where he is now,
(iii)Where he is going, and
(iv)What he has with which to get there.
These definitions indicate the
following aspects of Guidance :
(1)Helping people to make wise choices when faced
with various alternatives available.
(2) Helping people to solve their educational,
vocational and personal problems as efficiently as
possible.
(3) Helping people to make adequate adjustments in
life’s situations.
(4) Helping people to develop a more realistic
understanding of themselves and their environment.
These definitions indicate the
following aspects of Guidance :
(5) Helping people to know their potentialities, to
acquire a knowledge of their level of intelligence,
their interest and aptitudes, their self-concepts,
values and level of maturity.
(6) Helping people to develop their potentialities
optimally.
(7) Helping people to acquire more reliable
information about the world of work.
(8) Helping people to contribute their best to the
development and welfare of the society
These definitions indicate the
following aspects of Guidance :
(9) Helping people to live a balanced and tension
free-life with full satisfaction under the
circumstances.
(10) Helping people to satisfy their needs most
effectively and efficiently in most desirable way.
(11) Helping people to bring excellence in their
according their abilities and potentialities.
Scope of Guidance
What is Scope?
The range of things that a subject
Crow and Crow
” As now interpreted, guidance touches
every aspect of an individual’s personality-
physical, mental, emotional and social. It is
concerned with all aspects of an
individual’s attitudes and behaviour
patterns. It seeks to help the individual to
integrate all of his activities in terms of his
basic potentialities and environmental
opportunities.”
Kothari Commission
“Guidance services have a much wider
scope and function than merely that of
assisting students in making educational
and vocational choices. The aims of
guidance are both adjustive and
developmental, it helps the student in
making the best possible adjustments to
the situations in the educational
institutions and in the home. Guidance,
The scope of guidance has been increasing with the
advancement of science and technology, embracing all
spheres of life and providing facilities for it. Therefore, it
will be difficult to put a fence around it. While discussing
the scope of guidance we may think of some specific or
specialised areas of guidance. Even though the guidance
programme is addressed to the whole individuals treated
as an integral unit. It is possible to classify an individual’s
problems broadly into educational, vocational and
personal.
(1) Educational Guidance:
It is a process concerned with bringing about a
favourable setting for the individual’s education and
includes the assistance in the choice of subjects, use
of libraries, laboratories. workshops, development of
effective study habits, evaluation techniques and
adjustment of school life with other activities :
(2) Vocational Guidance:
It is the assistance rendered in meeting the problems
:
(i) relating to the choice of vocation (ii) preparing for
it (iii) entering the job, and (iv) achieving
adjustment to it.

It also aims-at helping individuals in the following

specific areas :
(a) making individuals familiar with the world of work
and with its diverse requirements and, (b) to place at
the disposal of the individual all possible aids in
(3) Personal Guidance:
Personal guidance deals with the problems of
personal adjustment in different spheres of life.
Mainly it works for the individuals adjustment to his
social and emotional problems. Jones has put the
following aims of personal guidance :

(i) to assist the individual gradually to develop his

life goals that are socially desirable and
individually satisfying.
(3) Personal Guidance:
(iii) to help him grow consistently in ability to adjust
himself creatively to his developing life goals.

(iv) to assist the individual to grow consistently in

ability to live with others so effectively that he may
promote their development and his own worthy
purposes.

(v) to help him grow in self-directive ability.

Mathewson
stated that the focus of guidance is improving the
capability of the individuals to understand and deal
with self-situational relations in the light of social and
moral values. The scope of guidance operation in
school is to deal with :

— personal and social relations of the individual in

school.
— relation of the individual to the school curriculum,
and
“Papel”
A Gabay Guro Short Film
QUESTION:
1. What is the meaning of guidance ?
2. Give the nature of Guidance ?
3. Explain the scope of Guidance in India
?
GUIDANCE: MEANING, NATURE
AND SCOPE