Discovering a relationship: adolescents' insights into the counselling relationship in a secondary school setting

Abstract

This study was designed to explore, with five grade twelve students, their understandings of the counselling relationships they shared with their counsellors in a single northern B.C. secondary school setting. The investigation was guided by four questions: (1) What conditions make it possible for the students to talk to a school counsellor? (2) What conditions give students the confidence to share private and confidential information with their counsellor? (3) What are the critical incidents during their counselling which affected the development of the counselling relationship? (4) What were the characteristic elements that constituted the counselling relationship between a school counsellor and a student client? Participants were identified by their school counsellors based on the following criteria: (1) the students were grade twelve students, (2) they were familiar with the counselling programme in their school, (3) they had developed a personal counselling relationship with the students, ( 4) the students could articulate their understandings of those relationships, and (5) they had not had a counselling relationship with the researcher. A series of open ended, in-depth interviews were conducted with the students. Grounded Theory method was used to analyse the data that was transcribed from these interviews. A conceptual model of the counselling relationship was developed consisting of five stages: the Motivating