Counsellors’ Coping With COVID-19 Epidemics

Petra Gregorčič Mrvar, Katja Jeznik, Marjeta Šarić and Barbara Šteh

Summary:  Life and work in educational institutions, including the work of school counselling service, changed suddenly due to the Covid-19 epidemics. The classes were conducted online, and the educational processes, along with the work of the school counselling service, had been thwarted and altered in many ways. A number of previous evaluation studies have shown that the long-established school counselling tradition in the educational institutions is welcomed and well received already in the normal circumstances. The aim of this article is to present the results of the study on the ways the school counsellors had been coping with the questions, challenges, and problems that have arisen in the time of distance learning and counselling. The study was conducted with an on-line questionnaire in April 2020. The non-random sample consisted of 328 school counsellors. The results have shown that, in the period of the epidemics in the spring, the school counsellors were important actors in solving different situations related to: relationships between adults (parents) and children or adolescents; school learning; teachers’ educational dilemmas and questions regarding distance school work; and to the management of the educational institution.