The Effect of Group Counseling Program on 8th Grade Students. Vocational Competence Levels

This study was carried on to determine the effect of vocational group counseling program on the vocational competence levels of the 8th grade students. The study was conducted on 128 students from Erzurum Kocatepe Elementary School in 2011-2012 education years. Vocational Competence Scale developed by Bozgeyikli (2004) was used to gather data in the study. Volunteer 30 students that got lower marks from the scale randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Each group is formed of 15 students. Group counseling program was applied on the experimental group for 8 weeks to improve vocational competence levels of the students. Any operation was not carried on control group. t test for unrelated sample and One-Factor ANCOVA for related sample were used in the analysis of the data. The data was analyzed by using SPSS 20.00. According to the results of the study, it is determined that the vocational competence levels of the students participated in the vocational competence counseling program increased meaningfully compared to the control group and their pre-experimental situation. Besides, it is determined that this change occurred independently from the age, sex and socio-economic level variables.