Counselling services in Malaysian schools were first established in 1963. Several local research studies investigated the provision of school counselling services and revealed that they were unpopular among students and could be further improved. School-aged children are still under the care of their family, mostly their parents, and many authors suggested that the school counselling services for these children are inseparable from their family and community. A qualitative research study was conducted with 12 secondary school counsellors from Perak state in Malaysia. The counsellors were interviewed to explore their experiences of working in the existing counselling services system. The findings showed that there was a lack of collaboration among various educational stakeholders and the resources from the community were not utilized effectively. As a result of this study, a comprehensive integrative model for school counselling is proposed and discussed. Some possible challenges faced by counsellors and suggestions on ways to further improve counselling services within the Malaysian context are discussed.

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Abstract-Though the world is becoming increasingly globalized, has the education evolved to prepare youth to become world citizens with the necessary skills and competencies to meet these challenges? Altogether 301 students from the Psychology and Public Relations Departments involved in community-based projects were purposively surveyed using Civic Attitudes and Competence Skills questionnaire. Results showed that overall the mean scores of the Civic Attitude and Competence Skills are moderate. The results reveal no significant difference between the Psychology students and Public Relation students in the mean scores of Civic Attitudes and Competence Skills except for subscales Civic Action, Interpersonal & Problem-Solving Skills, Social Justice, and Diversity. The author concludes that it is important to enable youth to participate in developing a sense of self, appreciation of cultural diversity, social justice and building civic actions towards globalization awareness.

PurposeThis study examines the hearing students' attitudes and behaviors towards deaf students in Malaysia using the intergroup contact approach.Design/methodology/approachPurposive sampling was used to recruit 439 hearing students at secondary schools. Hearing students were asked to fill in questionnaires that contained four measurements: contact with deaf people, sources of knowledge about deaf people, attitudes towards deaf people and behaviors toward deaf people. A serial mediation model was proposed to investigate the hypothetical mediating role of knowledge and attitudes toward deaf students in the relationship.FindingsThe results of this study showed that contact frequency is negatively associated with attitudes towards deaf people. However, such a relationship is suppressed, only when knowledge is included as a mediator. In addition, mediation analysis supports that sources of knowledge and attitudes about deaf people mediate the relationship between contact and behaviors toward deaf people. Moreover, the frequency of contact indirectly contributes to behaviors through knowledge and attitudes.Originality/valueThe findings indicate that increasing the contact between hearing and deaf students would improve hearing students' attitudes and behaviors towards deaf students. However, this is only when the contact can improve hearing students' knowledge about deaf people and deafness.