Validation of the Competency Model of the Counsellors of the General Education System

The aim of this study was to validate the competency model of the counselors of general education system in line with promoting the role of family and school in educating the next generation. The research is applied in terms of purpose, and with regard to method it is descriptive survey. The statistical population included 1142 counselors working in the education system of Tehran. The sample consisted of 288 people determined on the basis of Morgan table and selected through the cluster random sampling method. The library method was used to review the literature, background and upstream documents of the public education system, and the survey method was used to collect data. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. Content validity, face validity, convergent and divergent validity were used to determine the validity of the questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire was determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.943) and combined Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and Cronbach's combined alpha coefficient of all dimensions was more than 0.70. To describe the data, descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation and graphs) was used, and to analyze the data, first the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used and to compare the data distribution of the research variables, the normal distribution was employed. Other default factor analysis tests were reviewed and confirmed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to answer the research questions and determine the validity of the final model. The findings confirmed the eight main competency components (dimensions) of public education system counselors including knowledge, ability, skill, personality trait, moral trait, attitude, insight and credibility at the significance level of 0.05. Out of 150 competency sub-components confirmed in the qualitative part of the research, 118 sub-components were confirmed at the significance level of 0.05, and the other 32 sub-components were not significant and were removed from the model. The final research model was evaluated with five fit indices and its fit was confirmed.