Orientations to Child Management: A Comparison of Teacher-Counsellors and High School Principals with Regard to Child versus Institutional Advocacy

Twenty teacher-counsellors and twenty principals from a socio-economic spectrum of white co-educational high schools in the Cape Peninsula participated in the study. A repertory grid comprising a set of child management situations to which subjects were required to respond in terms of a series of bipolar constructs reflecting child-centred or institutionally orientated problem-solving action was used. Consensus grids were compiled from the two samples in order to describe their responses and the two consensus grids were correlated in order to assess their degree of similarity. Results showed a high degree of consistency between the two samples in their likely management of problems. Further, teacher-counsellors were shown to be unlikely to act consistently as child advocates. Reasons for these findings are discussed with reference to possible structural constraints on the teacher- counsellor's role.