Kvalet inför valet: Om elevers förväntningar och möten med vägledare i grundskolan

Sammanfattning: The main purpose of this study is to highlight the counselling interview in connection with the choice of upper secondary school from three perspectives, the student's, the counsellor's and society's. The intention is to describe and analyse the counselling interview in the ninth grade with relation to: · the student's expectations, perceptions and values before and after the interviews, · the counsellor's perceptions and values after the interviews, · society's goals and purpose for student counselling in secondary schools and · the theories and models for career development and counselling. Eight students from both sexes with diverse grades have been chosen, and all their interviews in year 9 to-gether with the four counsellors have been recorded and analysed. In the theory chapter, theories connecting three perspectives are described, the individual, the counsellor and society. Career development theories are used to describe and explain the process behind student choice. Counselling theories are used to illustrate what is happening during the interviews and frame factor theories to explain how decision and choice is influenced and limited by different factors in society. In conclusion it can be stated that educational and vocational orientation is not sufficiently well integrated into the school curriculum and educational activities. The role of the counsellor has primarily been to help stu-dents in the ninth grade to make a well thought-out decision through interviews. These interviews can also be described as meetings with certain in-built rituals. The counsellor took the initiative, questioned the students, continued to give information and then guided the student to a decision. Such a description is of course simpli-fied but does give a picture of counselling that is tightly framed by factors that the counsellor and student have difficulty breaking away from. Another way of describing counsellors is to see them as catalysts and co-ordinators who partly tried to start processes particularly to widen perspectives, and partly worked to connect the students' ideas and lack of ideas with those possibilities offered.