What are the most essential duties of school career master?

Even if all prospective teachers have some guidance responsibilities, few teachers are appointed as career masters or teacher counselors to provide minimum guidance service and to help the full lime guidance counselor.

These career masters or co-ordination who are elected from among the best secondary school teachers should be given intensive two week training courses, followed by a weekly half-day session to discuss immediate problems and new developments in their supervisory work.

Duties of the Career Master

(i) To gain understanding of children

The most important task of the career master is to gain under­standing of children and young pupils. Each generation has its own problems of growing- up. Each age group presents a new challenge to the teacher.

The child study groups developed by Prescott have given many teachers a deeper understanding of the kind of information that is needed about children and adolescents, more appreciation of the significance and meaning of the facts and impressions that they have collected, and more practical ways of meeting the individual needs revealed by this study. The most effective in-service education is that which teachers agree on and which gives them personal satisfaction.

(ii) Discussion on Aims and Objectives of Guidance Programme

When the teachers get together to discuss their common problems, it is a good idea to let the career master to explain the aims and objectives of the school guidance services. The group may suggest several possible explanations for the pupils behavior and may ask for more information to help them eliminate or reinforce some of the hypotheses. After they have decided on the most plausible explanation, they suggest ways of handling the situation.

(iii) To help in the problems of Discipline

The career master also helps in the problem of discipline -rudeness disobedience in attention, loud talking, fighting, stealing, profane language, antagonism, refusal lo work and the like. He should help in child’s development and modification of such behavior.

(iv) Organization of guidance services in schools

The career master should organize the guidance service in school. He should consult the headmaster and other teachers lo provide more opportunity lo the students lo take active part in guidance programme. For this purpose, he should organize career talks, exhibitions, displays, film-show, film-strips and student-clubs.

(v) Organization of Career Conferences

The career master should organize career conference. This is one of the most interesting effectively both for a school and a college. The organization of a career conference may be simple for a small institution and complex and extensive for a large school or college. During the conference successful persons from different fields of workers are invited lo come and talk to the students on their own occupation.

Ideally the talk should be followed by a question hour during which each student gets a chance lo have his doubts clarified and queries answered; with younger students the teacher can spend an hour following the talk in analysing and interpreting the talk to them.

The career conference can cover an array of occupations which can be selected according lo the most common interests displayed by the students through their co-curricular activities. The career conference provides an opportunity lo the students to attend the talks on occupations in which they are interested.

(vi) Organization of co-curricular Activities

The career master should organize co-curricular activities during which information can be given to students and their career planning discussed and guided. Many institutions offer career information as a co-curricular activity. Most of them organize a career conference as a part of the co-curricular activities. There can be a question as lo how effective a career conference can be as a co-curricular activity but no doubt this is one programme where occupational information can be given to groups.

(vii) Setting up vocational centers

The career master should set up educational and vocational centers in the school to supply useful information regarding job opportunities, training courses and higher educational for those who deserve it.

(viii) Maintenance of School Records

The effectiveness of the guidance programme is dependent upon a comprehensive and smoothly functioning system of school records and reports. Making records and keeping them up-to-dale arc probably the most important duty of the career master.

(ix) Selection of appropriate occupational Materials

Another important task for the career master in the selection of occupational materials for the counselee. He performs this function by studying the interest of the counselee and determining the level of his reading and comprehension. With the study of his interests the career master is in a position lo judge what kind of material and which occupa­tions are suitable to the counselee.

Other factors that determine the suitability of (he occupational materials are the counselee’s background, ability, experience, his drive to read the available information and his attitude towards his vocational choice.

(x) The career master should know the types of counselee and his needs

There are career masters who feel that having set up the information library, the only duly that they have is lo point out the shelves lo the student and then it is the student’s responsibility or headache to search for the appropriate information, sift it out and interpret it for his use. On the other hand, there arc career masters who believe in reading out each booklet with the counselee and explaining it to him.

The latter maybe accused of spoon feeding while the former are guilty of indifference. The amount of help which a particular case requires is quite capable of proceeding on their own if the materials are given lo them while the others may require help in sifting and following the materials provided lo them. While the latter type the career master needs to direct their information by reading and discussing it with them.

In doing so he must aim al making the counselee self-directive rather than dependent on the career master. The amount of assistance required in each case into be determined by the career master in individual cases according lo the type of counselee and his needs.

(xi) Evaluation of Occupational Information’s

Evaluation of the use of occupational information is another concern of the career master. The career master needs to evaluate his own effec­tiveness, he needs to ask questions such as: Is individual counseling helping the counselee in making a better choice? Does a comparison of this counselee with the ones who have not had counseling indicate a superior vocational choice and adjustment than those who have not been counseled?

(xii) To know the sources of information

It is important for the career master to know the sources from which vocational information is available and he should call .upon these agencies from time to time and keep his information library as complete and up-to-date as possible. It is hardly practical for the career master to approach each and every agency, factory and organization for information tin jobs available with (hem. The task should be taken up by a central agency preferably with the staff qualified in research methods.

(xiii) Collection and Preservation of Information

The career master should keep the confidential information in a separate confidential file. Some interview notes, special lest results, con­fidential information about home, and family, problems and certain other clinical data should be duly preserved by the career master.

(xiv) Knowledge about the Hierarchy of Needs

Various psychologists have given lists of needs which a man tries lo satisfy by taking an occupation. Pure economics is not enough to explain the man’s need to work modern studies of job satisfaction have proved that the pay is not the only motivating force for a worker. Therefore the career master should be aware of the following hierarchy of needs suggested by Maslow.

(i) The physiological needs.

(ii) The safety needs,

(iii) The need for belongingness and love.

(iv) The need for importance, respect, self-esteem, independence.

(v) The need for information.

(vi) The need for understanding,

(vii) The need for beauty.

(viii) The need for self-actualization.

They have been arranged in order of potency and Maslow claims that a completely unsatisfied individual would start with the search for food. Once he is provided with enough food he would start seeking shelter and safety: it is rarely found that a man with the most basic and potent needs unsatisfied looks for beauty or self-actualizations.

Some exceptional per­sons have shown such an imbalance by suppression and sublimation but then the exceptions prove the rule. Individual differences are as common in this hierarchy as in any other psychological phenomenon.