Creative writing for life design: Reflexivity,metaphor and change processes through narrative

To survive and thrive on the labor market of the 21st century, individuals must construct their identities in a process of meaning making, where identity is co-constructed in the form of a narrative. In order to better understand the nature and elements involved in this career-identity change process the Interpersonal Process Recall interview (IPR) method was used to examine the results of a two-day Career Writing (Lengelle, 2014) intervention. The exploration regarding what prompted changes and how reflexivity was developed, was done by having each of two participants bring in pieces written during the course and having the interviewer ask what thoughts and feelings were remembered at the time of writing. The IPR process revealed that Career Writing enables participants to first enter into feelings, then make sense of those by finding the ‘right’ words to describe them, and experience (by thinking and feeling) that their ‘new story’ makes sense on a gut level and provides meaning. This process is made possible by an internal and an external dialogue where various I-positions (voices within the self) speak and where metaphors and analogies concretely facilitate meaning making.     

The relationship between learning environment and career competencies of students in vocational education

This article focuses on which aspects of the learning environment, aimed at fostering career learning, correspond with the development of career competencies among students (aged 12–19 years) enrolled in prevocational and secondary vocational education in The Netherlands. Aspects of the learning environment that are taken into account here are the following: career orientation and guidance methods used, instruments implemented, and the degree to which the curriculum is practice-based and dialogical. In the study, three career competencies are identified: career reflection (reflective behaviour), career forming (proactive behaviour), and networking (interactive behaviour). To research the relationship between the learning environment and the presence of career competencies, a study was done among 3499 students and 166 teachers in 226 classes in 34 schools. The results show that career guidance in school, in which a dialogue takes place with the student about concrete experiences and which is focused on the future, contributes most to the presence of career competencies among students. Without this dialogue, career guidance methods and instruments barely contribute to the acquisition of career competencies.     

New perspectives on career and identity in the contemporary world

For much of the 20th century, career and identity have been intimately interwoven: to know about work has been to know about the self. But meanings for both are differently constructed at different times in different discourses.This article re-examines the meaning of the concept of 'identity' under late modern conditions. It draws on discourses ranging from neuro-physiology to autobiography. The primary purpose of the piece is to set up some signposts for alignment of the careers-work field to the demands of our time. In particular, the article concludes that much of policy-directed development in this field takes too little account of emerging and significant relationships between career and identity.     

Towards a strong career learning environment: results from a Dutch longitudinal study

ABSTRACT

To prepare students for the flexible labour market of nowadays, schools are increasingly acknowledging their responsibility to guide students in their career development. The project ‘Career Orientation and Guidance in Secondary Vocational Education’ was developed to encourage Dutch schools to initiate and/or continue the creation of a strong career learning environment for their students. Central in this learning environment is a dialogue with the students, where meaning is attached to concrete experiences with work. This longitudinal study is designed to gain theoretical and practical insight into the influence of the project. Results show that, although the school’s vision on career orientation and guidance is clear to the teachers, it is not supported by all of them. It appears that the renewed vision is imposed on the teachers, and this absence of a shared and widely supported vision appears to withhold the teachers and the project managers to engage in collective action.     

Mentoring in Dutch vocational education: an unfulfilled promise

Between 1998 and 2002 an estimated 250 mentoring programmes were started in Dutch secondary vocational education in order to decrease motivational problems and drop-out rates, especially among youngsters from ethnic minorities. Currently there are only two schools in secondary vocational education that include mentoring as part and parcel of their system of guidance and counselling. The vast majority of mentoring programmes do not run for more than two years. The main reason for this seems to be the absence of a vision of mentoring that explains how and why it works – a vision that is shared by mentors, teachers and school managers. In this article, data presented from four different case studies on mentoring in Dutch vocational education showed that the absence of a shared vision resulted in vague, often contradictory, and conflicting perspectives and actions taken by all parties involved in the mentoring scheme. In fact, because no synergy existed, the mentoring programmes had a marginal position in schools and disappeared as soon as external funding stopped.     

Mental Causation and Searle’s Impossible Conception of Unconscious Intentionality

In my article I evaluate Searle’s account of mental causation, in particular his account of the causal efficacy of unconscious intentional states. I argue that top-down causation and overdetermination are unsolved problems in Searle’s philosophy of mind, despite his assurances to the contrary. I also argue that there are conflicting claims involved in his account of mental causation and his account of the unconscious. As a result, it becomes impossible to understand how unconscious intentional states can be causally efficacious. My conclusion will be that if Searle’s conception of unconscious intentionality is to play a genuine role in the causal explanation of human action, it needs to be rethought.