Improving Guidance and Counselling in Colleges of Education: Perspectives of Teacher Trainees

Although research on guidance and counselling in schools abounds, little is known about how the programme can be improved in Colleges of Education (CoEs), particularly in emerging economies. This study investigated the perspectives of teacher trainees on how to improve guidance and counselling services in CoEs in Ghana. In this convergent parallel mixed methods study, data were gathered from 401 second year teacher trainees using questionnaire and focus group interview. The results indicated that guidance services in CoEs can be improved through ensuring confidentiality; providing facilities; retraining counsellors; sensitising key players; providing funding; and formulating policies. It is recommended that to improve guidance and counselling in CoEs and make it relevant to all students, all stakeholders should collaborate and play their roles effectively.


Introduction
Improving guidance and counselling services in schools is necessary because improved services can be used to address a myriad of issues including poverty, threats to public health, violence, educational inequity, mental health, workforce and economic development (Martin et al., 2015). Also, improved school counselling is critical to student academic achievement and adjustment to various life situations (Mapfumo & Nkoma, 2013), and helps to address educational inequities, increases educational attainment, and leads to improved student behaviour (Mulhern, 2020).
The guidance literature however reveals that globally, school guidance service delivery is generally bedevilled with a number of challenges (Brown, 2018;Kiweewa et al., 2018) including awareness and perception of help, social and cultural influences, and stigma and rejection (Seamark & Gabriel, 2018); confidentiality (Education Review Office [ERO], 2013; Pybis et al., 2012); educational policy (Martin et al., 2015); and culture (Gilat et al., 2010). Other challenges are funding (Songok et al., 2013); shortage of quality counsellors, disproportional student to counsellor ratio, and poor attitude of government towards the plight of counsellors (Bello et al., 2019); high workload of counsellors (Muola & Mwania, 2013); lack of professionally trained counsellors and the required facilities (Arfasa & Weldmeskel, 2020); qualification and experience of counsellors (Awinsong et al., 2015;Bita, 2015;Tsikati, 2018); and availability of material resources or physical facilities in Kenya (Cheruiyot & Orodho 2015. In order for us to derive the full benefits from guidance and counselling, the services need to be improved. Although some scholars have suggested various ways of improving guidance and counselling in schools (Baik et al., 2019;Gudyanga et al., 2015;Hines et al., 2020;Tsikati, 2018;Wambui, 2015), it is not clear if the suggested measures can work in CoEs in Ghana. Colleges of Education are the institutions that train teachers for Ghana's basic or elementary schools. The guidance needs of CoE students are academic, financial, social and personal (Author et al., 2018). These needs can be met adequately if guidance services are improved. Guidance services are the non-instructional activities that are designed and used to facilitate the academic success of students, to help them better understand their strengths and limitations and to help them in planning for and attaining realistic life goals. The key school guidance services include appraisal, placement, counselling, consultation, orientation, information, and referral (Author, 2016).
The extant literature suggests that although guidance and counselling at the CoEs in Ghana has received increased research attention, service delivery may not be effective (Adu & Opoku, 2020;Adzakpa, 2016;Alale, 2019;Alale, 2015;Arthur et al., 2015;Atta-Frimpong, 2013;Nyarko-Sampson 2010) and it appears research on how to improve guidance and counselling at the colleges is non-existent. The literature further reveals that research on the subject is largely quantitative or qualitative and based on settings and populations other than teacher trainees in CoEs. Given that guidance service delivery is context-specific and cultures, populations and even perspectives differ, research from the perspectives of teacher trainees on how to improve guidance service delivery at the colleges is crucial. To fill the above gaps, this study set out to examine how guidance and counselling services can be improved in CoEs. The main research question that this study sought to answer therefore is: how can guidance and counselling be improved in CoEs in Ghana?

Design
As no study seems to have examined how to improve guidance and counselling at the colleges of education level in Ghana, the present study sought the perspectives of teacher trainees on how to improve guidance and counselling in CoEs level in Ghana. In line with this objective, I used the convergent parallel mixed methods design to collect both quantitative and qualitative data simultaneously using the same or parallel variables, constructs, or concepts . Figure 1 shows a notation of the convergent parallel mixed methods design.

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (QUAL)
Source: Adopted from Creswell & Plano Clark 2011(as cited in Creswell & Clark, 2018. In Figure 1 above, "QUAN" and "QUAL" stand for quantitative and qualitative respectively. The capital letters indicate that both forms of data have equal priority or weight. Priority or weighting refers to the emphasis that is placed on the data forms. In this design, both quantitative and qualitative data are equally emphasised .
The goal for using this design was to collect both quantitative and qualitative data that would help in describing and making generalisations as well as understanding better, explaining adequately and providing clarifications on how guidance and counselling services can be improved in CoEs. Through this design, I could use the qualitative data to enrich the quantitative data, and triangulate the data as a way of crosschecking the results. The design helps to better understand a research problem by triangulating broad numeric trends from quantitative research and the detail of qualitative research .

Participants
Participants for the quantitative part were second year teacher trainees (N=401, 256 males and 145 females) who were sampled from three randomly selected CoEs. The three colleges constituted 50% of the six mixed-sex Colleges of Education in the Volta region of Ghana. Second year teacher trainees were included because they were patrons of the guidance services and their perspectives on how to improve service quality to benefit them was crucial. First year trainees were excluded on grounds that they did not do one full academic year at the time of data collection to qualify to participate in the study. The third year trainees who would have been qualified to participate in the study were doing their one-year mandatory internship outside the college campuses and so were unavailable.
In this study, there were pre-existing subgroups based on college and sex which were of interest to me. To increase the likelihood of representativeness for these subgroups and ensure that key characteristics of individuals within the population of each CoE were included in the sample (Fraenkel et al., 2019), stratified sampling was employed to select the respondents. First, I determined the sample size for the study using Krejcie and Morgan's (1970) Cohen et al., 2018). Then, I worked out the number of trainees to be selected from each stratum (college and sex). After determining the strata and the number of subjects to be selected from each, the subjects were selected randomly.
For the qualitative part, I selected 24 teacher trainees, eight from each of the three selected colleges and organised a focus group interview for them. The 24 participants had filled the questionnaire and agreed to participate in the focus group discussion. After they had filled the questionnaire and expressed willingness to participate, I hand-picked four males and four females to join the focus group discussion.

Materials
A 15-item questionnaire adapted from Alale (2015) was used to collect quantitative data from teacher trainees on how to improve guidance services in the Colleges. The questionnaire was sectioned into two. The first section solicited information on respondents' demographics followed by statements on how to improve guidance services in CoEs. Based on the arguments for and against the use of a mid-point scale and the accompanying recommendations (Asún et al., 2016;Chyung et al., 2017), the questionnaire items were anchored on a Four-Point rating scale ranging from '1' = strongly disagree to '4' = strongly agree. The respondents were required to indicate their level of agreement to each of the questionnaire items addressing the broad issues of funding, training and retaining of counsellors, confidentiality of counselling information, guidance and counselling policies, awareness creation and sensitisation, and facilities for guidance and counselling. Item 1 on the questionnaire was used to measure funding; items 2, 9, 13 and 15 measured training and retraining; items 3, 11, 12, and 14 measured awareness creation and sensitisation; item 4 measured confidentiality; items 7 and 8 measured physical facilities; and items 5, 6 and 10 measured policies.
To ensure face and content validity, the questionnaire and interview protocols were submitted to three experts for advice. Two of the three were experts in the field of guidance and counselling whilst the third was an expert in educational measurement and evaluation. A pilot testing of the questionnaire was done, involving 41 second year teacher trainees (21 males and 20 females) of a college which had characteristics similar to those of the sampled colleges. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the questionnaire after pretesting was 0.732.
In addition, a focus group interview was used to gather qualitative data from 24 selected trainees. The focus group interview was used to triangulate data from the questionnaire because focus group interviews yield insights that are not possible with questionnaires (Cohen et al., 2018). The interview protocols were designed to address the same research question as the survey. The main question was, how can guidance and counselling be improved in the colleges? There were prompts woven around the provision of facilities, funding, training and retraining of counsellors, policies, confidentiality and sensitisation. Focus groups are useful to triangulate with more traditional interviewing, questionnaire, or observation (Cohen et al., 2018).

Data Collection Procedure
The quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently but analysed separately (side-by-side). However, during the results interpretation and discussion, they were combined in order to seek convergence or similarities among the results . Before data collection, I obtained permission from the Principal of each college. I visited each college and assembled the selected second year teacher trainees in a lecture hall. After explaining the purpose of the study to them and seeking their consent, I hand-delivered the questionnaires to them to fill. Out of the 422 questionnaires, 401 usable questionnaires were filled and returned by the teacher trainees, giving a return rate of 95%.
After the questionnaire administration, I conducted a focus group interview for eight teacher trainees (four males and four females) who had completed the questionnaire in each college and agreed to participate in the focus group discussion. The eight participants were selected purposively based on the suggestions of Fraenkel et al. (2019) and Leedy and Ormrod (2016) on focus group size. I explained the purpose of the study to them, sought their consent and assured them of confidentiality. I used a mobile phone to record the interview. I also took notes and used them to crosscheck information during transcription of the interview. Qualitative validity was achieved through data triangulation (Kusi, 2012). The focus group interviews lasted approximately one hour in each colleges.

Data Analysis
To understand and describe how guidance and counselling services can be improved in CoEs, the quantitative data were fed into IBM SPSS Statistics version 20 and represented on a frequency and percentage table. The qualitative data, in contrast, were analysed thematically, and later integrated with the quantitative data. Thematic analysis involves organising the data, transcribing them, immersing oneself in the data, generating themes from the data, coding the data, and describing them (Kusi, 2012).
The qualitative data analysis process for this study started with the verbatim transcription of the focus group interview tapes. Following that, each of the transcripts was read several times. All significant words, phrases or statements that pertained to the perspectives of the respondents regarding how guidance and counselling can be improved in CoEs were identified. This led to the identification of text that matched the preset themes or categories used. Note was taken of additional categories that emerged, in line with Creswell and Poth's (2018) suggestion. Patterns were identified between and within the themes. The qualitative preset themes were compared with the descriptive quantitative data. The data were sorted according to the preset themes/categories. For each theme, data were presented together. The results were presented, interpreted and later integrated with the quantitative data in order to determine whether the two databases converged or diverged

Ethical Considerations
The following ethical principles were adhered to in the study: access and acceptance, informed consent, anonymity, and confidentiality.

Access and Acceptance
Before going to the CoEs, I obtained ethical approval to conduct the study from the School of Graduate Studies through the Department of Education and Psychology, University of Education, Winneba in Ghana. The Review Board examined the research proposal and instruments, and issued an introductory letter. Then, I personally visited the sampled colleges and used the introductory letter to obtain permission from each institutional head (Principal) to conduct the study in their respective colleges. 2.6.2 Informed Consent I gave the participants information about the research topic and its purpose, the processes of the research, the handling of data and information about any potential publication of the data. I also told them that their participation would be voluntary and that they reserved the right to withdraw from the process at any point. I then gave them informed consent forms to fill. 2.6.3 Anonymity I addressed anonymity by asking the participants not to write their names on the questionnaire, and assuring them that they would not be linked to the information they would provide. In the focus group interviews, I assured them that although I could identify them, their identities would not be disclosed and that the quotations that would appear in the research report would be anonymised.

Confidentiality
I assured the participants that the information they would provide in the questionnaire and focus group interview would be kept confidentially and used only for research or academic purposes.

Quantitative Results
The quantitative results are summarised on Tables 1 and 2, and the results from the focus group interview are presented alongside.  Table 1 presents the results on how to improve guidance services in the colleges. The data on Table 1 indicate that the teacher trainees strongly agreed that to improve guidance and counselling in colleges, counsellors should keep information about their clients confidentially (55.4%); in-service training should be organised for counsellors to update and upgrade their skills (50.4%); counsellors should sensitise teacher trainees, tutors, college authorities and parents on the benefits of guidance and counselling (50.1%); adequate funding should be provided (49.9%); and College Principals should formulate policies to detach counsellors from classroom teaching and other non-counselling jobs so that the counsellors can have enough time for counselling (49.4%).
To make better sense of the data, the four-point scale was modified into a two-point scale. That is, "Strongly disagree" and "Disagree" were merged into "Disagree" while "Strongly agree" and "Agree" were collapsed into "Agree". The results are presented on Table 2.  Table 2, it can be seen that over 60% of the respondents agreed to the statements on how to improve guidance and counselling in CoEs. As much as 80.1% of them believe that periodic in-service training programmes should be organised for counsellors to update their knowledge and skills.

Qualitative Results
Following are the views expressed by the teacher trainees during the focus group interview sessions. To ensure anonymity and confidentiality, the respondents and their colleges were given pseudonyms.

Funding
The teacher trainees were unanimous in their opinion that funding must be provided for guidance activities in the Colleges of Education. One male teacher trainee from College Y argued: For me if funds would be provided, it would help to build the facilities such as the counselling room and the provision of computers and those things that can help the counsellor to access all information. The trainees in College X said in unison: Money must be provided to buy materials and also to motivate the counsellor.
The qualitative data thus supports the quantitative data on funding. We can conclude that provision of funding is one of the ways in which guidance can be improved in CoEs.

Provision of Facilities
Again, the teacher trainees said that provision of facilities would help improve guidance services in CoEs. A male trainee of College Y is said: … if there is an office, it makes going to the counsellor more official, appealing and more willing in the sense that the counsellor might be a mother, a husband, a worker and might even have some people in the house. This result throws more light on the questionnaire data on Table 2 that physical facilities are essential in guidance service delivery.

Training/Retraining of Counsellors
In each of the sampled colleges, the trainees suggested that the knowledge and skills of counsellors should be updated from time to time. One male trainee in College Y affirmed: Yes [teaching] to it… The interview data thus reveals that there should be policies on guidance and counselling in the colleges. This revelation is supported by the quantitative data.

Discussion
The main focus of this study was to elicit from respondents how guidance and counselling service delivery could be improved in the CoEs in Ghana. The results indicate that to improve guidance and counselling in colleges, counsellors should keep information about their clients confidentially; periodic in-service training should be organised for counsellors; counsellors should sensitise teacher trainees, tutors, parents, and college Principals; funding should be provided; physical facilities should be provided and policies should be formulated and implemented.
The current study found that confidentiality is essential if guidance and counselling are to be improved. The ERO (2013) and Pybis et al. (2012) reported that confidentiality was a factor that militated against effective guidance and counselling in New Zealand and the Wales. Confidentiality is an important principle in building relationship, wherein clients have trust and confidence that the information they provide during therapy will be kept confidentially (Sivis-Cetinkaya, 2019). Ethical principles, particularly on confidentiality, have been discussed extensively in the professional literature including the American Psychological Association [APA] (2017) and Obochi and Nicholas (2018). Effective, ethics-based counselling is one in which clients are confident that their private discussions with the counsellor will not be divulged. No doubt, 76.1% of the respondents (see Table 2), supported by the qualitative data, want their counselling information to be kept confidentially.
The respondents have shown that adequate financial support is important in effective guidance service delivery as 73.6% of them (Table 2) agreed to the statement on funding. This finding is consistent with that of Songok et al. (2013). During the interviews, the respondents explained that funding is needed to build counselling offices, buy computers and other materials. In an emerging economy like Ghana, adequate funding is needed to procure material resources, pay the guidance staff and develop test batteries, among other things.
The present study also revealed that other ways in which guidance can be improved are proper training and Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol.12, No.33, 2021 retraining of counsellors, the promulgation of policies and sensitisation. These findings are consistent with those of Mbongo (2013), Odeleye (2017) and Waititu and Khamasi (2010). Effective guidance and counselling service delivery depends largely on the counsellor's training (Tsikati, 2018). Equally very important is periodic inservice training to update the knowledge and skills of counsellors. The changes taking place in the world today coupled with global emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic, call for a regular update of the counsellor's skills and knowledge. Retraining can help hone a counsellor's skills and make the counsellor more effective.
Implementing guidance and counselling effectively requires policy. Without policy, the guidance staff will not have a clear direction. Both the quantitative (73.0%, see Table 2) and qualitative data converge that policies are required. Introducing peer counsellors, reducing the workload for counsellors or allocating more time for counselling, and motivating counsellors are some of the ways in which guidance and counselling can be improved (Mbongo, 2013;Waititu & Khamasi, 2010). Undoubtedly, these are all issues that can be driven by policy. A simple school level policy on the teaching load for counsellors, for instance, can help streamline the activities of counsellors and enable them to devote more time to guidance and counselling.
This study further revealed that sensitisation (70.5%, see Table 2), is also necessary for improving guidance service delivery in CoEs. This finding supports Baik et. al.'s (2019) recommendation that there should be improvement in access to services and awareness creation. College Principals, students and tutors need to be sensitised periodically. Students in particular need to be reminded that the guidance services exist for them.
Finally, the study has found that facilities are needed to improve guidance and counselling in colleges. Physical facilities are important for guidance and counselling (Arthur et al., 2015;Cheruiyot & Orodho, 2015). One important physical facility in guidance is the counselling office. The sensitive nature of some of the issues that are presented in counselling requires that those issues are handled in a counselling office where confidentiality can be assured. There is also the need for material resources (Baik et. al., 2019;Gudyanga et al., 2015). Computers, printers and a good internet connectivity are important 21 st century counselling resources. However, Alale (2019) discovered that inadequate funding, lack of computers and internet facilities plagued the effective delivery of guidance services in CoEs in the northern part of Ghana. The availability, adequacy and utilisation of physical facilities will undoubtedly improve guidance service delivery in the colleges.

Implications for Practice
The study's major contribution is that it employed the convergent parallel mixed methods design to explore in breadth and depth, and from the perspectives of teacher trainees how guidance and counselling service delivery can be improved in an emerging economy context. The study found that guidance and counselling in the colleges of education setting can be improved by ensuring confidentiality, retraining counsellors, creating awareness, increasing funding, providing facilities, and formulating policies. This contribution is significant because it provides a unique look at counselling services in CoEs and better understanding counselling services in Higher Education in general. What this means is that it is important to proffer context specific solutions to guidance service improvement.
Therefore, the findings imply that CoE authorities should ensure that needed funds and physical facilities appropriate are adequately provided. College counsellors, on their part, should attend refresher courses to update their knowledge. They should also sensitise key stakeholders on the importance of guidance and counselling.

Limitations and Future Research Directions
Some limitations, however, need to be acknowledged and used to guide users of the findings of this study and future research. Firstly, the study focused on Volta regional colleges only. There may be some interesting insights if a similar study was conducted in colleges in the other regions of Ghana. Secondly, the sample was limited to second year teacher trainees. Future research should therefore consider the possibility of involving all year groups of trainees.

Conclusion
In this study, I examined the perspectives of teacher trainees on how guidance and counselling service delivery could be improved in CoEs in Ghana. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that confidentiality, in-service training for counsellors, sensitisation, funding, facilities and policies are needed to improve guidance and counselling in CoEs. The guidance literature supports these findings.

Disclosure Statement
The author reports no conflict of interest.