Teachers’ perspectives on the roles of psychologists

Abstract

The status of any given discipline, be it professional status or impact on society, is related to the occupational opportunities and the roles of the professionals in the community. The roles of the professionals of the discipline therefore can directly or indirectly determine the social perception of the discipline. As such, social perception, referring to how people of a given society receive and value a situation, behaviour, state of mind, or profession is a critical focus in this study because it helps us better understand the relationship between contributions of a discipline to the welfare of the society and the values that a society attaches to the contributions of that discipline. The discipline of study in this paper is psychology and how it is perceived in a newly industrialised country. In this paper, 121 teachers’ perceptions of the psychologists’ occupational roles are examined. Teachers perceived psychologists to be professionals working with counselling cum helping services, higher education and research institutions and business cum social sector. Implications of the study for the role of psychology in teacher education are discussed.