Educational guidance: what it is and how it helps students

The education that teachers can promote in school classrooms is not limited only to the transmission of academic content; In today's age, the role of teachers and professors has evolved.

In this article we are going to see what educational guidance consists of and its different functions in society and in the educational institution.. We will review the theories from which this form of education comes and see how it can benefit the students who receive it.

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What is educational orientation?

The educational orientation is a teaching modality that transcends the regular contents of the classes and goes further beyond the classroom, to teach and guide young people in the correct way to use their resources personal.

The exact purpose of this educational modality is direct the young person to choose academic and professional careers related to their personal strengths and abilities. The teacher is able to recognize which are the areas in which the student stands out and advises taking this into account, given that educating is not just transmitting information in a unidirectional way and without taking into account the particularities of the students. Ultimately, students are not passive agents who go to school, college or university to absorbing knowledge without further ado, and acting as if it were, would minimize your chances of learning from truth.

An adequate orientation process in this sense leads students to have fewer doubts about what profession to choose, and also greatly decreases the percentage of academic dropouts in high school and high school students. college.

In the current era, the slogan is that teachers, more than counselors in classes, are also outside of it, to provide support and advice to young people regarding your personal experiences.

In this way, education is understood as a holistic process where not only purely academic factors intervene, but also the experiences, interests and unique abilities of each young person are taken into account.

In the end, it is the students who make the decisions they consider correct for their future, but with the advantage that these decisions have been considered correctly thanks to the advice of their teachers specialized.

What benefits does this method bring?

The role of educational guidance implies that the simple fact of attending classes is not in itself a sufficient event to guarantee a good level of education and acculturation: it does not make sense to assume that everything is limited to the internalization of information that is imparted by the staff teacher. You also need to take into account the context in which the educational process occurs, and take steps to ensure that what is offered to students meets their needs and interests.

In this sense, these are the advantages of educational guidance.

1. Greater personal knowledge

Academic orientation gives young people the possibility of having a greater and better understanding of your abilities, which is beneficial to all areas of students' lives. They will grow up to be adults without being so exposed to unnecessary frustrations.

2. Better adaptability

Intelligence is a fairly abstract concept, but one that is mainly based on the adaptability of individuals. One thing is academic preparation and another is the ability to adapt to different situations in life. Educational orientation helps to find workspaces that correspond to one's own cognitive abilities, depending on whether you excel at creativity, logical reasoning, verbal intelligence, etc.

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3. Better selection of priorities

Young people who have gone through an academic orientation process, in general, have a better capacity to discriminate between things that are relevant from those that are not so much in terms of your life goals. That is, they learn to rank in order of importance and prioritize what is most decisive for them.

4. Family integration

The educational orientation transcends the classroom and covers topics related to the personal life of each of the students. Family life is an area that is constantly worked on within this form of teaching, and it has good results when it comes to creating collaborative networks between the school and family members.

5. Better disposition to change

Once the young person has gone through a correct process of educational orientation, it becomes much easier to process and cope with changes to which he must be exposed when he finishes his stage as a high school student and must start new challenges as a university higher education student.

6. Better problem solving styles

The adaptive and coexistence tools that students obtain when they go through an educational orientation process significantly impact your problem-solving styles in times of uncertainty. Young people are strengthened in terms of their capacity for evaluation and decision-making.

7. It favors the integration between student and teacher

This way of educating has as an intrinsic advantage the fact that students see the figure of the teacher a counselor, and not just as a rigid authority figure.

Accompaniment beyond the school environment

As we have seen, educational guidance helps young people think outside the box mental school and begin to imagine a professional future according to their interests and capabilities.

However, it must be borne in mind that there is always the possibility of making mistakes with decisions and of taking a professional career for what it is not. After all, professions are not always the same in all contexts, and beyond the dictionary definitions of what is done in one job or another, there are other factors that influence: the economic context through which the country passes, the organizational climate of the companies, the personality of the bosses, etc.

To avoid frustrations, part of the educational counseling process is to point out that a person is much more than the first career they choose, and that they can change course in life. In the same way that learning is a dynamic process, so must the way in which learning is taught and facilitated.

Bibliographic references:

• Connelly, F.; Michael; F.H.; Ming; J. 2008), Curriculum in Theory. The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction, Sage
• Sampascual, G.; Navas, L.; Castejón, J. (1999). Functions of the counselor in primary and secondary school. Madrid: Editorial Alliance.
• Thomas, G. (2007) Education and Theory: Strangers in Paradigms. Open University Press.
• Woolfolk, A.K.; Winne, P.H. & Perry, N.E. (2006). Educational Psychology. Toronto, Canada: Pearson.