CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1   BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Meaning and Definition of Guidance and Counselling
            Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines guidance as “advice that is given to somebody especially by someone with more experience while counselling “is a professional advice about a problem”.
            In a literary meaning guidance is the process of helping an individual to understand himself and his environment.
            According to Adenigbagbe (2011) guidance is the process of directing, assisting, guiding an individual to achieve his/her goals. Adenigbagbe (2011) also define counselling as a professional interaction between a client or individual and a professional counsellor with the aim of assisting the client to voluntarily change his behaviour for more productive one.
            Several authors have define guidance and counselling in different various ways. According to Ferguson (1999) have attempted to clarify the usage of the term by pointing out the word guidance, as a concept, as an educational construct and as an educational services to meet a demand.
            Counselling, according to English and English (2001) was defines as a relationship in which one person endeavour to help one another, to understand and to solve his adjustments problems.
            Carl Rogers (2001) define counselling as a therapeutic endeavour aimed at helping a client to relax his structure gain new experience and become integrated whole in the emphatic counselling environment counselling can be defined by Shertzer and Stone (2004) “as the process of helping an individual to understand himself and his world”.
            UNESCO (2008) says, guidance and counselling is a professional field which has a broad range of activities, programmes and services geared toward assisting individuals to understand themselves, their problems, their school environment and their world and also to develop adequate capacity for making wise choices and decisions.
            According to Adenigbagbe (2010) defines guidance and counselling as a subjects that deals with developmental problems of life or phenomenon problems of human being.
            Guidance and counselling is the process involving a special kind of relationship between a person who asks for help with a maladative problem and a person who is trained to provide that help (which is the counsellor).
            Counselling can be done in two different ways:
-                      Individual Counselling
-                      Group Counselling
            Individual counselling is the counselling in which the counsellor who is skilled in psychological strategies assists only one at a time in resolving the clients adjustment problems.
            Group counselling: This is the counselling which allows the counsellor to be involved with a group of counselee at the same time.
            There is no distinct line of demarcation between guidance and counselling because the two term are interwoven. There is much guidance in counselling just as counselling entails guidance.
            In practice however, the counselling psychologist should be able to identify where guidance activities stop and where that of counselling begins. For examples guidance is said to be more involving because it entails provision of useful information for path finding whereas, counselling is an aspect of guidance because it is one of the guidance service which is more intimate and involving means to resolve problems which require more than mere provision of information.  
            In terms of severity of the issues or problem as it affect the personality of an individual, counselling is more serious than guidance, though they both deal with the adjustment of individuals within their contexts.