The purpose of this master's thesis is to develop and validate a tool for assessing the relational competence of school counselors. I was also interested in the expression of relational competence and its elements in school counselors, differences in the relational competence between different groups of school counsellors and the connection of relational competence with the big five personality traits. 312 Slovene school counsellors participated in the research. Participants answered sociodemographic questions and completed two questionnaires, the Big Five Inventory, and the preliminary form of the Relational competence questionnaire for school counselors. The latter consisted of 68 items, which we designed in cooperation with experts and school counselors. Based on the factor analysis results, 34 items divided into eight factors remained in the final form of the questionnaire. All aspects of relational competence were highly expressed, with the most points achieved in the factors of confidentiality, respect for individuality and acceptance of the counselee, and authenticity. This are followed by a deeper understanding of the counselee and the context, unconditional positive acceptance of the counselee's decisions, empathy and counseling skills, and the least expressed aspect is agreement. The reliability of individual factors is sufficient. As expected, scores on the factors were positively related to extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness, and negatively related to neuroticism. There were no differences between the groups of school counselors in the expression of relational competence in relation to the employment share, organization, and additional professional skills. In relation to profession and years of service, there were some statistically significant but very small differences between groups of consultants. The developed Relational competence questionnaire for school counselors enables counselors to self-evaluate the expression of relational competence individually or in inter- and supervisory groups and take care of their professional development based on this.
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