The Perceptions of School Counselors on Virtual Counseling in Private Schools in the Beirut Region

Abstract

Virtual counseling has become an increased necessity as a result of the current pandemic as well as the need for methods that comply with the continuous changes and advancements. Studies conducted have shown that the perceptions of counselors of the benefits and barriers reflect whether or not the counseling service will be successful. This study is a descriptive research design following a qualitative approach. The purpose of this study is threefold: (a) to explore the school counselor’s perceptions of the benefits and barriers they encounter when using virtual counseling, (b) to explore the perceived differences between conducting virtual counseling and in-person counseling, (c) to determine if students’ characteristics differ in their participation in virtual counseling from the school counselors’ perspective. Five schools in the Beirut region were contacted as they were known to have virtual counseling programs. Both the schools and counselors were purposively chosen. Eleven counselors were chosen using a non-probability sampling across all cycles. The study included individual semi-structured interviews and a focus carried out with the specified counselors, both of which entailed open-ended questions. Four themes were derived from the interviews conducted: (1) Environmental Adaptation, (2) Working with Technology, (3) Counselor's Approach, and (4) Preparation and Training for Virtual Counseling. Subthemes were then discussed in detail, and based on these findings the interview questions for the focus group were guided. Being that it is qualitative research, the interpretational analysis was carried out to assess the obtained data. The results showed that the main benefits have to do with time and method flexibility, the main barriers were issues of privacy and change of work dynamics. The results showed that the new changes, the counselor’s experience, along with personal attributes of counselors and students all influenced the efficiency of the counseling sessions.