Norway Adapts Guidance Into New Educational Structure

Abstract

The many problems involved in incorporating guidance into the new comprehensive nine‐year schools in Norway are discussed. The democratic rationale for guidance services and their development in this small, homogeneous country are described. Comparisons are made with American guidance and counseling, and the Norwegian interpretation of “counselor role” as being primarily educational, vocational, and developmental is delineated. Reactions of students, parents, administrators—and counselors themselves—in some of the experimental schools around the country are presented. Aspects of counselor education are considered and progress toward implementation of guidance in the experimental schools is reported, with attention given to some of the limitations and difficulties in adapting the “uniquely American” counselor into the Norwegian school reform.

Attitudes toward counselling in the Middle East

“…France (Ostlund, 1958), Belgium (Ostlund, 1957), Norway (Hansen, 1965), Switserland (Stauffer, 1974), the Soviet Union (Gass, 1959), India (Fletcher & Riddle, 1962), Japan (Nishigaki, 1957), and Nigeria (Okon, 1981), to mention but a few, have all reported on counselling services available within each country. Nearly all of the authors that report on counselling services within different nations and cultures stress the importance of taking into account the uniqueness of each respective culture if counselling is to be useful and productive.…”