Impact of the Adoption of Information and Communication Technology in Guidance and Counselling for Sustainable Education in Abia State Secondary Schools

Abstract

The study examined the role and utilization of information and communication technology in Guidance and Counselling could play in the students, counsellors’ effective counselling services delivery, challenges and possible solutions. It focused on secondary schools in Abia State, using description survey design. Four research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. A total of 115 counsellors drawn using purposive sampling technique was the sample size. Utilization of ICT in Guidance and Counselling Questionnaire, duly validated and with reliability value of 0.77, using Cronbach Alpha procedure was used for data collection. Mean, standard deviation, cluster mean and t-test were used to answer the research questions and test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance respectively. Some findings were: adoption of ICT in guidance and counselling heightens students’ interest, increases counsellors’ efficiency, inadequate availability and accessibility of ICT facilities, constituted some of the challenge, while remedies included putting in place staff development programme on ICT for counsellors, making ICT facilities available and accessible to counsellors in schools. One of the recommendations was that school counsellors should consider routinely utilizing computer facilities to improve their effectiveness and efficiency in counselling for students’ achievement of sustainable development goals through educational counselling services.