Teachers' Views on Guidance and Counseling Services at Schools during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Opportunities.

With the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic, guidance and counseling services at schools have been impeded. In line with this, teachers' experiences and views on counselling services have gained importance since they tried to reach the students via online teaching platforms in most cases. The main purpose of this study is to reveal challenges and opportunities encountered by the teacher counsellors in the implementation of guidance and counseling services remotely during the global pandemic. To achieve this overarching aim, two research questions (RQ) were addressed. This descriptive qualitative study employed both qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis for qualitative data analysis process. The participants of the study were 56 counselor teachers who accepted to participate in the study. Data collected through online google survey form. Findings illustrated that 18 subcategories were gathered under the challenges category. We extracted 13 subcategories with different frequencies under opportunities category. As for the thematic analyses results, we identified 4 themes and 21 subcategories under the school counselors' opinions about challenges encountered however, there were 2 themes and 10 subcategories under the school counselors' opinions about opportunities encountered. As a result, challenges included school counselors' quest for supportive, clear direction and job description in a virtual classroom setting. Opportunities included elimination of the time-space-distance restrictions, in-service training opportunities and ease of access to those services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]