Department of Psychological Counseling and Guidance

Hi. My name is Ayşegül Kılıçaraslan Çelikkol. I am a lecturer in Hasan Ali Yücel Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences, Guidance and Psychological Counseling Department. I have completed my undergraduate, graduate and doctorate studies in this department. I finished all these programs at Istanbul University. Later, I started working as a research assistant in this department and I still carry on with my duties. The establishment of the Department of Educational Sciences goes back to the 1930s. It is a department established within Istanbul University. It initially was a part of the Department of Philosophy. It was later moved to the Pedagogical Institute. It is a department that continued providing education in Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters. It consists of 5 departments at the undergraduate level in total. Only undergraduate students are accepted to the Guidance and Psychological Counseling Department out of these five departments. Apart from this, we have 2 master's programs and 1 doctorate program. Some of the courses taught are at the theoretical level. For example, there are courses such as developmental psychology, learning psychology, guidance, and principles and techniques of psychological counseling. We also have applied courses. The students themselves go to schools or guidance research centers and apply for an internship. They take courses in which the advisors working there help them out. Apart from this, we also include method courses such as scientific research techniques, statistics, assessment and evaluation in our program. Apart from our theoretical courses, we have a number of internship courses that fourth grade students should complete. One of them is concerned with field work in guidance and psychological counseling. Our students personally go to the schools of the Ministry of Education and work with the school psychological councils there to prepare projects and homework. We carry out this program in coordination with the department. Our professors can also expect additional studies. At the end of the day, we evaluate all the studies and projects together.
There are some universities that our department has agreements with. Thanks to these agreements, we send our students as part of the Erasmus Program for 1 or 2 semesters. At the same time, we accept students from abroad to our department. Especially many students come from Germany. Other than that, our students can apply for the Farabi Program in Turkey. In Turkey, they can go to other universities for their studies. Likewise, they can come to our department and receive education from our university. After our students graduate, they can work in many different fields. From pre-school period to higher education, they can work at different levels, they can work as school counselors. They can work as psychological counselors in guidance research centers. It is possible to work in guidance services in private schools. In addition, they can work as psychological counselors in prisons, hospitals and child welfare institutions. They can also provide consultancy services as pedagogues in family and juvenile courts. As the grade level increases, the difficulty level of the courses also increases. Because the departmental and vocational courses increase and students take more applied courses. Therefore, students may find it difficult from time to time. However, our door is always open to them, we always support our students. Therefore, we believe that our students will be successful. If you have strong communication skills, you like socializing, you like to help other people and you have a special interest in psychology, education, you can choose this department. First of all, I would like to tell our future students that our faculty is located in a very beautiful campus. We can mention the benefits of this. I think there are advantages to this. There is more social interaction, as you are together with other students, you can also easily get in touch with faculty members. Apart from that, we have a very beautiful lake view. Students who will come here will not only receive education; you also have the chance to meet people from different cultures. We look forward to welcoming you to Istanbul University - Cerrahpaşa, Hasan Ali Yücel Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences.