PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING AND GUIDANCE IN TURKEY: DEVELOPMENTS AND ISSUES


ŞAHİN C., KUMCAĞIZ H.

Turkish Studies (Elektronik), vol.13, no.3, pp.649-658, 2018 (Peer-Reviewed Journal) identifier

Abstract

The term Psychological Counseling and Guidance (PCG) wasintroduced to the Turkish education system in the 1950s when Americanexperts were invited to Turkey and Turkish educators were sent to theUnited States to study the counseling system. Over the past 65 years,there have been a number of developments in PCG services. We canexamine these developments in eight periods: (1) 1950 and pre-years:before the understanding of contemporary guidance; (2) 1951-1956:initial years; (3) 1957-1969: formative years; (4) 1970-1981: establishingpsychological counseling and guidance services in schools; (5) 1982-1990: establishing undergraduate programs in psychological counselingand guidance; (6) 1991-2000: years of accelerated scientific work andorganizing; (7) 2000-2010: New quests in PCG; (8) 2011 and onwards:professionalization work in psychological counseling and guidance. In thelight of these developments, the aim of this study is to examine the past,present and future of psychological counseling and guidance practices inTurkey.In the study, document review technique was used out ofqualitative research methods. A document review is a research whichenables the analysis based on documents produced within a certainperiod of time about a research problem, or documents produced bymultiple sources and different time intervals about the related subject.In the early years, psychological counseling and guidance services,which are used for the profession selection and for the failing students,have taken place as a service that should be applied to all students today.In recent years it has been emphasized that psychological counseling andguidance programs should be organized for preventive and developmental functions. As a result, it can be said that the future of psychologicalcounseling and guidance practices in Turkey is bright when consideringthe developments of the psychological counseling and guidance servicesin Turkey and the issues that are being discussed today.