In the master’s thesis, we examine the questions, problems and hardships that adolescents face today in their personal, family and school life, ways of dealing with them and the supporting role of school counsellors in this.
In the theoretical part of the thesis, we defined the period of adolescence and presented its characteristics, and drew attention to the growing uncertainty of the transition to adulthood, which further increases the vulnerability and sensitivity of adolescents. Afterwards, we presented the questions, problems and hardships of young people in various areas of life and strategies for dealing with them. We further defined psychosocial support and presented various sources of support to adolescents in distress. We especially emphasized the supporting role of the school counselling service, which is an indispensable part of every school. We defined the school counselling service and focused on counselling work for adolescents in distress.
In the empirical part of the thesis, we presented the results of empirical research, in which we looked for answers to the following content sets of research questions: (1) Adolescent’s experience of school, family (home), interpersonal relationships and themselves; (2) Adolescent’s dealing with questions, problems and hardships they face while growing up; (3) The role of the school counsellor in adolescent’s dealing with questions, problems and hardships. Research shows that quite a few adolescents can trust their teachers, have a good relationship with classmates, and have at least one friend they can trust. To a greater extent, they also agree to be able to talk to their parents and their siblings about things that interest them. Research also shows that many young people feel burdened by working for school and want better relationships with teachers, parents, siblings and peers. Many young people also want to be more independent and self-confident and have more confidence in themselves and their abilities. According to our research, we found out that adolescent’s recognize school counsellors as a possible source of support in coping with developmental tasks and challenges while growing up to a lesser extent. Adolescents usually try to solve their questions, problems and difficulties on their own, but if they fail to do so, they turn to their family and/or friends and peers for support. They rarely turn to school counsellors for support. If so, it is mostly related to the school (learning failure/success, grades, relationship with teachers, etc.). Adolescents are generally satisfied with the support received from school counsellors. It is also encouraging that the conversation with the school counsellor helped most young people (partially or completely) to solve their problems or hardships that caused them to turn to counsellors for help.
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