Interactional straightforwardness in guidance counselling

ABSTRACT A common dilemma of counsellors is to deal with various institutional tasks and demands while being in the service of the client. In this paper, the authors are interested in how this dilemma shows in the Finnish school context, in the work of guidance counsellors who help the pupils to manage their studies and plans for further education. Video-recorded social interaction between guidance counsellors and pupils was studied, using conversation analysis (CA) as a method. The focus is on a specific feature of the interaction, that is, interactional straightforwardness in the counsellors’ talk. The analysis demonstrates how straightforwardness occurs in counsellors’ questions, assessments and proposals. The straightforwardness is linked to building an alliance with the pupil and attributing agency to them. It is suggested that straightforwardness is a way to deal with the role tensions of the counsellor.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  British Journal of Guidance & Counselling

• Publication date

  2025-09-03

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/03069885.2025.2582860
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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