COUNS-EDU The International Journal of Counseling and Education Vol.4, No.4, 2019, pp. 129-133 p-ISSN: 2548-348X- e-ISSN: 2548-3498 http://journal.konselor.or.id/index.php/counsedu DOI : https://doi.org/10.23916/0020190423040 Received on 09/09/2019; Revised on 10/15/2019; Accepted on 11/12/2019; Published on: 12/21/2019 129 Subject teachers’ perceptions of academic mentoring and counseling services Sutirna Sutirna *) Universitas Singaperbangsa Karawang, Indonesia *)Corresponding author, e-mail: sutirna@staff.unsika.ac.id Abstract In developing students’ potential requires, among others, psycho-education services. This effort can be provided not only by counselor but also by subject teachers at school. This research is aimed at investigating subject teachers’ perceptions of academic guidance and counseling services provided by the teachers to students who had learning difficulties. Employing descriptive method, this research involved fifty counseling and guidance teachers to participate as research participants. To collect data, paper- and online-based questionnaires were used. The data gathered were then categorized and analyzed. The results indicated that the majority of the subject teachers have sufficient understanding on their roles in substantially providing academic guidance and counseling related to the students’ academic problems. In addition, it was found that the counseling teachers always give the students referral to their respective teachers whenever the students get learning difficulties. Keywords: perception, guidance and counseling, learning difficulties How to Cite: Sutirna, S. (2019). Subject teachers’ perceptions of academic mentoring and counseling services. COUNS-EDU: The International Journal of Counseling and Education, 4(4), 129-133. DOI: http://doi.org/10.23916/0020190423040 This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ©2019 by author. Introduction It has been a consensus that developing life competency requires an integrated educational service system in each educational unit. This effort does not only rely on subject learning services/fields of study and management, but also on special psycho-educational services through guidance and counseling services (See Permendikbud No. 111 of 2014). In addition, efforts to develop the students’ potential fully and optimally is a collaborative task involving teachers, counselors, and other educators as partners (Guidance and Counseling Implementation in Formal Education). Based on the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Regulations of Guidance and Counseling, the efforts of developing students is a shared responsibility of stakeholders (teachers, principals, counselors, and educational staffs). Viewed from functional partnership between counselor and teachers, the problems of student development faced by the teacher related to learning processes will be referred to the counselor. The counselor otherwise will also refer students who have learning difficulties in particular subjects to the respective subject teacher. Learning difficulties experienced by students actually stem from teaching and learning activities in the classroom. This means that in developing a quality learning process the teacher needs to pay attention to the implementation of the guidance and counseling functions. Thus, it is expected that learning difficulties experienced by students could be overcome. This is consistent with the relevancies and http://dx.doi.org/10.23916/0020190423040 COUNS-EDU  The International Journal of Counseling and Education Vol.4, No. 4, 2019 Subject teachers’ perceptions of academic mentoring and counseling services | 130 Indonesian Counselor Association (IKI) | DOI : https://doi.org/10.23916/0020190423040 specificity of learning services provided by teachers, and guidance and counseling services by counselors. Pilon (2010) said In all realms of contemporary science, to understand, describe and act upon reality, an allencompassing sense of totality is needed, which demands complex thought, transdisciplinary approaches and conceptual maps based on new paradigms and rules of legitimacy and coherence. Table 1. The uniqueness and interrelation of teacher and counselor services Dimension Teacher Counselor Activity Focus Ability development of subject matters and its problems Development of personal potential in the personal, social, learning, and career fields and their problems However, in reality subject teachers in schools often find students experiencing academic problems other than personal, social, career, etc., which are not possible to be handled by the guidance and counseling teacher alone. It is clear that counseling guidance services must be carried out by the respective subject teacher. In this case, the guidance and counseling teacher must conduct a referral to the subject teacher so that the handling of the problem would be optimal. It is this optimal guidance and counseling service activity that will help students achieve their academic potential. Ganies Putra (2018) said sustainable Development Professionalism is a guide to continuous learning for teachers as the main line to bring about the changes that related to student success. Furthermore Kartadinata (2008) said that quality, effective and ideal education is education that integrates three main areas of activity in synergy, namely the administrative and leadership fields, instructional or curricular fields, and guidance and counseling field. It may imply that education that only carries out administrative and instructional fields but put aside guidance and counseling will only produce counselees who are academically smart and skilled, but personally lack the ability or maturity. This was said by Kurniawan (2018) that “The era of globalization exposes the whole country to complex and rapid developments and changes. Every component of society within a country, required to race, improve its competence. The global situation makes life more competitive and opens opportunities for anyone to achieve better status and life. The positive impact of global conditions is to encourage individuals to continue to think and improve their ability, and not satisfied with something that is achieved at this time”. Method This study is aimed at investigating subject teachers’ perceptions of academic guidance and counseling services for students who experience learning difficulty. The method used in this research is descriptive research method. The population and sample of this study involved all subject teachers in Karawang Regency. Data were collected using an online questionnaire that was distributed to research respondents via the WhattsApp message. Respondents were then asked to fill out the questionnaire by clicking on the URL link (Uniform Resource Locator) that was sent by the author. The respondents were asked to respond to questions and statements by choosing one of four Likert scale choices, namely Strongly Agree (SS), Agree (S), Disagree (TS) and Strongly Disagree (STS). Table 2. Percentage criteria for questionnaire perception No Percentage Category 1 P = 100% All 2 76,00%≤P<100% Almost All 3 50,00%