Counseling in Malaysia: History, Current Status, and Future Trends

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the history of counseling in Malaysia, provides an update of its current status, and discusses some anticipated future trends for the profession in light of recent developments in the country. Counseling in Malaysia began with school guidance in the 1960s and has now achieved recognition as a profession in school and community settings. Counseling in Malaysia continues to encounter challenges in training, service, and professional identity and development.

Perceived Multicultural Counseling Competence of Malaysian Counselors: An Exploratory Study

“…This article reports on a national survey study aimed at exploring the nature and extent of perceived MCC of professional counselors in Malaysia. This is in line with the current need for more multiculturally competent counselors in the Malaysian counseling profession (Aga Mohd Jaladin, ; See & Ng, ).…”

Barriers and challenges in the practice of multicultural counselling in Malaysia: A qualitative interview study

“…Second, this finding could indicate that the current multicultural counselling courses may have unclear focus and hence, do not contribute to developing counsellors' MCCs. This is evidenced further by a critique of Malaysian counselling literature, which states that there is lack of empirical evidence regarding the state and extent of multicultural education and training in the counsellor education programmes in Malaysia (Aga Mohd Jaladin, 2003, 2008Ng & Stevens, 2001;See & Ng, 2010). Participants also noted other challenges associated with counsellors' attributes such as language barriers, value conflicts, and lack of multicultural exposure to diverse cultures.…”

Relationship between sources of counseling self-efficacy and counseling self-efficacy among Malaysian school counselors

“…The role of school counselors has evolved and transformed over the years, in Malaysia and in the Western countries (Wilde, Park & Lee, 2013). In 1963, the Malaysian Ministry of Education implemented the idea of having guidance teachers in schools but the idea was aborted due to financial limitation and human resources constraint (See & Ng, 2010). In the year 2000, another milestone was achieved by the counseling profession when it became mandatory for every secondary school in Malaysia to have at least one full-time counselor.…”