Counselling Across the Gender Divide: Male Teachers’ Attitudes towards Counselling Secondary School Female Learners in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The attitudes of male secondary school teachers towards counselling female adolescent school learners were examined in Zimbabwe in the current study. The study was grounded in the field of Educational Psychology specifically focusing on Freud’s classical psychoanalytic theory, Erikson’s psychosocial theory and Horney’s feminine psychology together with Rogers’ person-centred theory. The qualitative research approach was employed with the descriptive survey as the research design. Data collection was done using open-ended questionnaires and telephone interviews. The researcher used the stratified random sampling method to generate a sample of 20 male secondary school teachers based in Masvingo. The stratification was done relative to teaching experience, age and highest professional qualifications. The study established that seven out of the 20 respondents expressed positive attitudes towards counselling female secondary school learners while eight of the respondents expressed serious misgivings regarding the exercise. The remaining respondents were half-hearted and pointed out that they were willing to assist female secondary school learners on a limited number of issues. Variables such as culture, technological advancement, ignorance of the counselling techniques and dynamics, the developmental stage of the target counsellees and the issue of qualifications to conduct counselling were cited by the research participants as they substantiated their opinions. The researcher recommended that counselling workshops to sharpen classroom practitioners’ counselling acumen be undertaken on a regular basis so that counselling could be undertaken across the gender divide.