Multiple agendas in a changing society: Policy challenges confronting career guidance in the USA

Career guidance services in the United States are diverse in the settings in which they are located and comprehensive in their coverage of populations. Even though career guidance services are socio-political mechanisms, as reflected in their support from government policy, legislations and statutes, there is no unifying policy of career guidance at the federal or state government levels. There are, instead, many policies, guidelines, and legislative acts, the influences of which are often not distinguishable. These tend to differentiate career guidance services and practitioners by setting and population rather than co-ordinating such interventions and purposes under a comprehensive policy. Recommendations for the depoliticisation of and the use of a life-cycle approach to public policy in career guidance are discussed.     

Translating Career Theory to Practice: The Risk of Unintentional Social Injustice

An important aspect of social justice involves ensuring that effective career guidance is readily accessible to all citizens. The career theory used to guide the delivery of career services can contribute to or detract from social justice. This article examines the translation of career theory to practice, the effectiveness of career interventions, and access to career guidance. Collaborative career counseling is presented as an intervention to improve access to career services.     

Social Status and Guidance Involvement

This is a study of the relationships of 3 measures of social stratification to students' utilization of school guidance services and knowledgeability about chosen vocation. A survey of students in 8 high schools suggests that, in a majority of the groups studied, social status of parents and projected social status of the student (based upon chosen occupation) are positively related to knowledgeability about chosen career. The extent of the student's utilization of career guidance services was related to his social status within the microcosm of the school as defined by amount of participation in valued extracurricular activities. Parental and projected social status measures did not appear to be so consistently related to utilization of career guidance. The degree of the student's participation in other guidance services not directed at career planning was, in a majority of the groups studied, negatively related to the social status of the student's parents.     

Career support for migrants: Transformation or adaptation?

The complex interfaces created by migration not only challenge core beliefs about the purpose of career guidance and counseling but also about the precise nature and level of the support required for migrants. However, the issue has had little academic attention. While traditional theories informing the practice of career guidance and counseling implicitly reflect a commitment to social equality, they were developed in relatively homogenous Western capitalist contexts that were strongly individualized, masculine, secular, action and future focused. As career guidance and counseling services in more individualized countries seek to meet the needs of a growing number of clients from more collectivist cultures, the universal relevance of such models is increasingly open to challenge. This article explores three core challenges posed by migration for the theory and practice of career guidance and counseling. The first relates to the very purpose of these types of services for migrants; the second, to the way in which migration requires a realignment of the relationship of theory with practice; and the third relates to the need to redefine service delivery models for this client group. The extent to which notions of “quality” in services are culturally dependent will also be considered, together with the potential for general service improvements being stimulated by the provision of high quality services for migrants.     

Quality assurance in university guidance services

In Europe there is no common quality assurance framework for the delivery of guidance in higher education. Using a case study approach in four university career guidance services in England, France and Spain, this article aims to study how quality is implemented in university career guidance services in terms of strategy, standards and models, relationship with main stakeholders and quality assessment. The case study findings reveal that the services articulate their strategy and mission as dedication to providing a quality service. However, little objective assessment of programmes and procedures is actually being conducted.     

Career trajectories of older women: implications for career guidance

As work and employment transitions become more frequent and difficult, the demand for formal career guidance increases. Women are likely to experience structural labour market disadvantage and may benefit from formal support that is sympathetic to their particular needs. Yet the traditional psychological paradigms that dominate career guidance practice have assumed homogeneity. To contribute both to broader debates about careers services for adults and the development of more relevant theoretical frameworks for career practice for women, results are presented from an international, comparative qualitative investigation of the career trajectories of older women (aged 45 to 65) in Australia, England and South Africa. These results confirm a need for career guidance that is nuanced and differentiated for women.     

Testing times: careers market policies and practices in England and the Netherlands

Careers work is a very political business. Since the early 1990s, successive governments in England and the Netherlands have persistently challenged those working in the careers sector to demonstrate the educational, social and economic value and impact of their work. In this context, the marketisation of career guidance policies and practices has expanded, with a growing assumption that market-based goods and services ensure greater responsiveness to consumer choice and offer better and/or more innovative services for lower prices. In this article, we do not intend to give a comparison of trends in England and the Netherlands. We only examine the impact of market principles applied to career guidance provision in both countries. Findings indicate such provision for young people is on a steady decline. Lessons learned from these two nations indicate that a market for quality career services does not exist in schools and colleges. As a result, marketisation and privatisation of career services have led to an impoverished and fragmented supply of services. Greater attention by governments in career guidance policies for young people (and adults) is necessary to reduce the widening gap between ‘the haves and have nots’ in society. Failure to reduce labour market mismatch through new forms of careers dialogue is not only damaging and costly for individuals, families and employers, but for the taxpayer too.     

The well-being outcomes of career guidance

ABSTRACT

The potential for career guidance to impact on well-being has received insufficient attention in the UK. There are both conceptual and empirical reasons to expect that the impacts may be positive, but a lack of evidence directly testing this proposition. Career guidance has commonalities with therapeutic counselling suggesting analogous effects, and it promotes positive engagement in work and learning, which may be associated with health benefits. There are implications for services in reconciling health and employment objectives. However, the promotion of well-being need not imply quasi-clinical ways of working. A call is made for more research and debate in the career guidance community as to the extent and implications of the potentially important relationship between career guidance and well-being.     

Devolution and diversification: career guidance in the home countries

The devolution instigated in the United Kingdom in 1997 was a further stage in a long historical process. Nonetheless, prior to the 1990s, the basic structures of career guidance services were broadly similar across the UK. But the marketisation of careers services that took place under the Conservative government in the mid-1990s went further in England than elsewhere. This helped to pave the way for the markedly different directions followed post-devolution, with England seeking horizontal integration of services for young people and adults respectively, whereas Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have emphasised vertical integration of career guidance services on an all-age basis. Some sectors have been affected less by devolution than others. It is suggested that the model adopted in England has already weakened the structures for career guidance provision, and is currently at risk of weakening them still further. The relative size of England means that these weaknesses could have ripple effects on the other home countries too—in relation to professional training and professional status, for example. Existing collaborative mechanisms need to be strengthened, and a culture of mutual learning enhanced, if the potential benefits of diversification are to be fostered and its potential risks avoided.     

Barriers to Adult Career Change

Adults have unique problems in making career changes. They face crucial economic, educational, and psychological barriers that require special guidance services. In this article, barriers to adult career change are identified and a five-county regional learning service using paraprofessionals is described. Results in working with more than 200 adults making career changes is reported. Suggestions for overcoming some of the problems adults face in making career changes are explained.     

Undergraduates' perceptions and evaluations of career guidance activities: A Hong Kong study

There have been several research studies in Britain and Australia into the usefulness of different career guidance activities. Similar issues are examined in a study of 493 undergraduates at City University of Hong Kong. The results demonstrate that the uses of counselling services have been perceived rather narrowly and instrumentally. Career guidance activities which are perceived as 'tools' for practical or immediate help have been under-utilised. The five most popular career guidance activities are characterised as being specific in content, information-based, externally focused, and structured in process. In examining the results within the context of Chinese culture, it is suggested that counselling processes which help the students engage in more self-exploration and self-discovery can be encouraged.     

Career guidance in England today: reform,accidental injury or attempted murder?

ABSTRACT

In 2011 England's career guidance profession lost its ‘own’ public service organisation and its former dedicated stream of public funding. The immediate causes lay in decisions by the government of the day, but this article revisits the profession's history to seek explanations for its later vulnerability. It is argued that decisions taken early in the profession's history, specifically its complete separation from adult employment services and basing claims to professional expertise almost wholly on occupational psychology, though maybe right at the time, were to have fateful consequences. The article proceeds to argue that career guidance will certainly survive its recent trauma, but the most likely outcome of the current ‘reforms’ – a market in career guidance services – will not create the kind of comprehensive education-to-work bridging service that was once intended and which is still needed.     

Career Education for Students With Disabilities

Career education is as important for students in special education services as it was a decade ago. The majority of these students continue to experience extreme difficulties in making a successful transition from secondary programs to employment and independent living. The authors review the state of the art and then present a life-centered career education curricular approach to prepare students with the important competencies needed for successful adult adjustment. Sample programs are cited. The school counselor is viewed as an important contributor to this process, and several critical guidance functions are recommended by using a comprehensive guidance program model. A challenge to the professional is presented to complete the unfinished agenda that presently exists in services to students with disabilities.     

Educational and careers guidance services for adults: I. A rationale and conceptual framework

A number of current social trends are described which suggest that the career patterns of adults are likely to become more complex than in the past. If such complexity is to offer increased opportunities for choice and for personal growth, rather than simply producing damaging disruption and distress, guidance services could be of critical importance. Three ways of examining the guidance needs of adults are proposed, based respectively on developmental stages, on roles, and on life events.     

The role of learning and career guidance for managing mid-career transitions – comparing Germany and Denmark

In Germany and Denmark, the systems of further education and career guidance are well developed, offering a wide range of services and learning opportunities for targeted, specific and also general skills development. Based on an empirical study with mid-career individuals in both countries, the article investigates how the different systems support individuals to manage a career transition and develop their individual pathways. Mid-career transitions can be considered particularly challenging as they often reflect a more profound crisis and major concerns about future career opportunities. Constraints that prevent individuals in mid-career to fully benefit from the learning and guidance offers available can be identified in both countries. These range from the availability of programmes and accessing funding to getting the ‘right’ information. These constraints partly derive from adult education and guidance systems presupposing linear careers rather than disruptive trajectories and horizontal mobility.     

Career success: A new perspective

If the effectiveness of vocational guidance services is to be evaluated it is important to have adequate ways of measuring career success. In this paper the concept of career success is discussed in relation to the societal, the individual and the organisational frames of reference, all of which are regarded as dynamic. The actual criteria of success discussed relate to the degree of achievement of valued goals via the occupational setting, as measured through a particular frame of reference. The authors deliberately use the term career success in preference to that of occupational success since they wish to emphasise the significance of work in a person's total life space.     

'Let your fingers do the walking': the use of telephone helplines in career information and guidance

The UK Learndirect helpline, launched in February 1998, is the largest telephone helpline service in the guidance field so far developed in the world. By the end of 2000 it had responded to 2.4 million calls. The development of the helpline is placed in the context of the transformations in service delivery in other sectors, including the growth of callcentres and helplines. The use of the telephone in career guidance, both in the UK and elsewhere, is reviewed. The evolution of Learndirect is described, with particular attention to its policy context. The current operation of the service is outlined, including its extent, availability, staffing and users. Finally, a number of issues illuminated by the experiences of Learndirect are identified, including the place of in-depth guidance within helpline services, their relationship to wider guidance provision, their impartiality, their framing in relation to national/local, adult/all-age and learning/career dimensions, the synergy of helplines with other forms of technically mediated service delivery, and the implications of helpline work for the professional development of guidance staff.     

Relationships Between Selected Social Factors and Extent of High School Counseling

This research compares highly counseled and non-counseled secondary school students for differences in social status, attitudinal, and parental characteristics. The 2 guidance functions of career and non-career guidance were studied. Subjects were selected from a larger pool of seniors at 8 diverse high schools. The data revealed that subjects who received extensive career guidance (a) participated more actively in high status social and leadership activities in school, (b) reported their parents to be more active in community, social, and recreational activities, (c) had higher educational goals, and (d) that extensively counseled males were more other-directed, while highly counseled females were more inner-directed. Parental social status and academic achievement did not distinguish between highly counseled and non-counseled students. Few measures differentiated the 2 groups on amount of non-career guidance. These results were interpreted as indicating that utilization of secondary school guidance services may be determined to an important degree by factors extrinsic to the interpersonal process of the guidance situation.     

Computer-Assisted Career Guidance: A National Perspective on the Use of DISCOVER and SIGI

The authors describe the institutional use of DISCOVER and SIGI, two computer-assisted career guidance systems, in terms of services provided, staffing, management, and implementation.     

Righting rewritings of the myth of Mentor: A critical perspective on career guidance mentoring

Mentoring is entering the repertoire of career guidance techniques as careers services prioritise socially excluded young people. This article explores the use of Homer's Odyssey as a source of definitions and legitimations of many current accounts of mentoring. Contrasting modern versions of Homer's myth of Mentor with the original, it draws on feminist and class perspectives to question the basis on which such myths are used to proclaim the origins of a very contemporary phenomenon. It identifies an emerging discourse of mentoring, a régime of truth which exerts control not only over the young people being mentored, but also over career guidance staff expected to act as mentors in new Personal Adviser roles.