School counsellor education in three countries : Australia, Malta and Turkey

Abstract

The study is a descriptive comparison of pre-service school counsellor education systems in Australia, Malta, and Turkey as it has been shown that pre-service training determines professional competencies and many personal traits, such as self-efficacy later on in real work settings. These three countries with very different histories and in geographically different parts of the world were selected as samples of convenience to examine their training of school counsellors. We describe four main issues of such training: the minimum formal educational qualifications required to enter training, the core activities which candidates need to complete, the entry requirements into the profession, and any specialisations required. To compare the education in each country, we used qualitative comparative methodology. The main findings were diverse nomenclatures, legislation, registration issues and different discipline boundaries between counselling and psychology. These findings can be useful for reflection for other countries when they are evaluating their own practices.