Abstract:
The paper explored the professional self-efficacy levels on the part of rural secondary school
classroom practitioners with regard to undertaking learner counselling in Masvingo province in Zimbabwe.
Theoretically the study was grounded in the domain of Psychology of Education focusing on Bandura’s social
learning theory, Rogers’ person-centred theory and Freud’s classical psychoanalysis together with Maslow’s
need theory. The study adopted a mixed method approach in which the descriptive survey research design was
paired with a chi-square test as a means of methodological triangulation. Open-ended questionnaires and
telephone interviews were used as data gathering instruments during the empirical investigation. A gender
balanced sample of 80 secondary school teachers based in rural areas took part in the study. The stratified
random sampling method,in which stratification was done relative to gender and highest professional
qualifications, was employed during the sampling process.The study revealed that about 55% of the respondents
felt imbued with ample self-efficacy to undertake learner counselling at secondary school level. That category of
research participants believed that their teacher-training and teaching experience have arguably equipped them
to play a crucial role in the counselling of rural secondary school learners across a myriad of issues. However,
there were some teachers who confessed that they were not very comfortable to undertake learner counselling
due to a multiplicity of variables. The researchers recommended that classroom practitioners should continue
upgrading their professional qualifications so as to elevate their self-efficacy levels. The need to have
nationwide counselling workshops to staff-develop classroom practitioners was also recommended.
