| Counselors,as an important organizational strength in the cultivating of talents in colleges and universities,play a crucial role in promoting students' learning and overall development.Many scholars have done much research on the system evolution,career development,job responsibilities,role orientation,professional competency,evaluation and assessment of counselors in colleges and universities,which has great reference value while getting the counselors recruited,promoted and withdrawn from their positions.However,the unsystematic and inadequate study on the structure and need to strengthen aspects of counselors' professional competency is not feasible as the guidance for their work.Although the Ministry of Education has defined the functional fields of a counselor's work in "University Counselors'Professional Competency Standard" which was released in 2014,there is no clear description of the structural weights and priorities in the development of their professional capabilities in various fields.The present study,based on the existing research and policy documents,using the methods of survey by questionnaires and statistical analysis,redefines the structure of the local college counselors' professional competency and their respective weights,and finds out the capabilities which deserve the first priority in the cultivation of the counselors' professional competency from the perspectives of the counselors themselves and their leaders,etc..Meanwhile factors that would possibly influence the counselors' professional competency are analyzed.Finally,this dissertation discusses the deficiencies of China's "Standard" by employing the international comparative analysis method by comparing and analyzing the Professional Competency Areas for Student affairs Practitioners of the U.S.A and puts forward suggestions for the improvement of counselors' professional competency and the revision of China's "Standard".The respondents of the questionaire survey in this study include four categories:counselors,leaders in charge of counselors,excellent instructors and university students.Survey tool is based on the counselor duties,local college counselors actual work status and the "standard" and other policy documents,and compiled according to the assessment and advice of senior counselors,experts and scholars.Besides,it is repeatedly tested,modified and verified within a certain range.The questionnaire includes 35 indexes of professional competence test;the coefficient of the Cronbach Alpha(Cronbach's ?)reliability of the questionnaire,which is used for analyzing the counselors' professional competence structural is 0.973;the reliability coefficients of 10 factor dimensions are between 0.670-0.934,of which 8 are above 0.8,and there is only one dimension of which the reliability coefficient factor is close to 0.7.Therefore,the internal consistency of the results of the questionnaire is relatively good.Using the method of factor analysis,the present study has found out that the model of local college counselors'professional competency structure consists of 10 factors.They are respectively research and evaluation,personality traits and communication,emergency responses,mental health education and consultation,career planning and employment guidance,construction of the Party and class,ideological and political education,self-evaluation,professional codes of conduct and academic guidance.The explanation degree of each factor to the counselors'professional competency decreases in turn.Using the "priority action matrix" method,the present study has analyzed the differences the ideal state and the actual level of the counselors' professional competency in the understanding of excellent counselors,average counselors and their leaders.Thus,12 "maintain projects",9 "upgrade projects",4 "general projects",8"adjustment projects" and 2 "pending projects" are identified.Then the author has compared the analysis results with the expectations and the degree of the satisfaction of college students as well.It is found out that there are significant differences between the counselors and college students in the understanding of "being fair and impartial,caring for students".In other words,college students are least satisfied with the counselors' work on "being fair and impartial,caring for students".,while counselors are far from realizing this in their self-evaluation.To find out the factors that would influence the counselors' professional competency,the present study has used the method of variance analysis.It is found that the counselors' "length of service" has a significant influence on their professional competency and their sense of self-fulfillment in work is positively correlated to their professional competency.However,factors such as gender,professional background,job titles,professional loyalty,career planning tendency and job training of the counselors have no measurable influence on the counselors'professional competency.In the end,this dissertation employs the research method of international comparison to compare the documents of "Professional Competency Standard" for Chinese and American Counselors in universities and colleges.It's found out that China's "Standard" focuses on the description of results,offers no clear requirements in the more specialized professional competency fields and is not highly operable to enhance the counselors' professional competency.To sum up,as could be seen from the research findings of the present study,although the counselors in colleges and universities place a high recognition upon the"Standard" released by the Ministry of Education,there is a great gap between their expectations and their real professional competency.Meanwhile,college students are not quite satisfied with their work.There is a long way to go to get China's college counselors' work professionalized since factors,such as professional background,job training,etc.,that should have had an impact on the counselors' professional competency have not played their roles at all.Four suggestions are put forward based upon the conclusions drawn from the present study.Firstly,counselors should enhance their effective cooperation with professional teachers,"Two Courses" teachers,parents of the students and other related parts to jointly shoulder the responsibility of students' learning and overall development.Secondly,colleges and universities should investigate regularly upon students' satisfaction with counselors' work so as to improve the effectiveness of their work.Thirdly,the government and universities should be targeted to strengthen the classified training of counselors and get them professionalized gradually.Fourthly,it is necessary to strengthen the research on "Professional Competency Standard",to revise and perfect the specific requirements for the various functional fields of the counselors' professional competency,and to improve the feasibility of the "Standard".The deficiency of the present study are that the study did not get more excellent counselor samples,and that there is not enough analysis on the possible factors that might deeply influence the counselors' professional competency and its development.The future research will focus on this problem. |
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