Methods of practicing school counselors for counseling by playing in primary schools in Riyadh, and obstacles

Abstract

This research aimed to know the degree to which student counselor in elementary schools use the play counseling techniques , their perceptions and the challenges they face. It also aimed to find out the differences between male and female counselors in relation to the actual skills, perceptions and challenges around counseling with play. In order to verify this, the questionnaire of play-counseling interventions in primary schools prepared by (Al-Ali and Ghaith, 2013) was used. It was applied to the current study sample, which consisted of (270) female and male  counselors  in government schools in Riyadh.

The results showed that the most used forms of play counseling were: drawing, followed by reading stories, movement games, theater and role playing. The least used ones were: music instruction, gloved dolls, cubes and clay. The results also indicated that the degree of using the sample members (actual skills) was moderate. The most important perceptions about play counseling from the counselors' point of view were related to the importance of playing counseling in treating students who suffered from neglect and anarchic behavior and who suffered  from abuse (physical, sexual, emotional), and that the most challenges they faced were the lack of specialized training to use counseling with play. There were also differences in favor of the female counselors in the degree of using play-counselling methods and their perceptions, while there were no significant differences due to the years of experience in the study variables. In addition, the results showed that there were no differences between the sample members according to the specialization in the degree of use and perceptions. In addition, there were differences in the degree of using play styles and their perceptions in favor of the school in which the number of students is less than (500) male and female students, while the challenges were in favor of the counselors in schools that had more than 500 male and female students.