1. Introduction to career guidance – workshop I
Presentation at Ain Shams University
Cairo, Egypt
26th November 2017
Tristram Hooley

2. Overview
In this session we are going to look at the concepts of ‘career’ and ‘career guidance’.
We are going to look at ways to define both and look at how career guidance is practices in other countries.
These sessions are open for discussion and so feel free to ask questions as we go along.

3. INTRODUCTIONS About me About you
What do you want to cover during the week?

4. The concept of ‘Career’
The concept of ‘career’ is very important for my work.
It is different from ‘job’, ‘occupation’, ‘vocation’ and ‘work’.
I also understand that it doesn’t translate very easily in Egypt.
Write down your definition of ‘career’.

5. What is Career?

6. Conceptions of career
Hopson (2009) defines five commonly understood types of career
Single-track – The ladder
Serial career – The checker board
Lifestyle career – The scales
Portfolio career
Each of these idealised career forms are particularly suited to the needs of different forms of social organisation.
From a more critical perspective we can add the precarious or survival career which raises questions of class and power.
Within the Global South where informal forms of work are wide spread such precarity is arguably the main career form.

7. A journey or a race

8. MY DEFINITION OF career
Career is… the individual’s journey through life, learning and work. It is the place where the individual meets organisations and institutions. It is where individual psychology and aspirations meet social structure. In this sense everyone has a career.
MY DEFINITION OF career

9. Discussion In pairs discuss the influences on your career.
What interventions/professional help would have been useful to you?

10. But not common meanings
So…
Common words
But not common meanings
“Career” as a term operates at multiple levels.
It has literal, ideological and theoretical meanings.
These meanings change across different countries and contexts.
Because we operate in an applied discipline this creates problems.
We are often trying to have conversations between policymaker, practitioners, individuals and academics/researchers.

11. So what is career guidance?
career learning/career education/career counselling/careers advice/ information, advice and guidance (IAG)/ career management / career development?

13. OECD definition
Career guidance refers to services and activities intended to assist individuals, of any age and at any point throughout their lives, to make educational, training and occupational choices and to manage their careers…
The activities may take place on an individual or group basis, and may be face-to-face or at a distance (including help lines and web-based services). (OECD, 2004)

14. a new Definition?
Hooley, Sultana & Thompson (2017)
Career guidance supports individuals and groups to discover more about work, leisure and learning and to consider their place in the world and plan for their futures. Key to this is developing individual and community capacity to analyse and problematise assumptions and power relations, to network and build solidarity and to create new and shared opportunities. It empowers individuals and groups to struggle within the world as it and to imagine the world as it could be. Career guidance can take a wide range of forms and draws on diverse theoretical traditions. But at its heart it is a purposeful learning opportunity which supports individuals and groups to consider and reconsider work, leisure and learning in the light of new information and experiences and to take both individual and collective action as a result of this.

15. Career guidance techniques
What things can we do (as careers professionals) to help them to develop their careers?

16. ‘Career guidance’ includes…
Providing information
One-to-one counselling and coaching
Group counselling and coaching
Career education
Telephone and online support
Brokerage and linking to others
Supporting reflection
Referral
Advocacy
Feeding back to the system
And other roles and activities

17. What is the purpose of career guidance?
The individual?
The careers professional?
The school, college or university?
The government?
In groups discuss the purpose of career guidance for:

18. Public policy rationales
Active ageing.
European/International mobility for learning and work.
Active labour markets.
Labour market efficiency.
Addressing youth transitions and unemployment.
Labour market flexibility/flexicurity.
Economic development.
Lifelong learning. Social inclusion.
Effective skills utilisation.
Participation in vocational and higher education.
Efficient investment in education and training.
Reducing early school-leaving.
Employee engagement.
Social equity.

19. Levels of policy impact

20. Economic benefits

21. About the evidence base
There is a considerable evidence base on career guidance.
It demonstrates repeatedly that career guidance has a range of individual and social impacts.
The evidence is multi-disciplinary, international and based on a wide range of research methods.
There are also a number of literature reviews, systematic literature reviews and statistical meta-analyses.
In summary we know that it works (for some things) and we know quite a lot about how it works.

22. Impacts for individuals
Improves engagement with education
Enhances performance in the education system (increases motivation)
Support transitions between education and work (and other life stages)
Contributes to lifelong wellbeing and success

23. What we know – Career guidance should be…
Lifelong and progressive.
Developing career management skills.
Connected to wider experience.
Holistic and well-integrated into other services.
Recognising the diversity of individuals and their needs.
Ensuring professionalism.
Involving employers and working people, and providing active experiences of workplaces.
Making use of career information.
Assuring quality and evaluating provision.
Not designed as a one-off or single type of intervention, but as many, varied activities.

24. A work in progress – We need…
A broader disciplinary base for research in career guidance.
Deeper analysis of administrative data, the greater use of longitudinal studies, randomisation and controls and an exploration of what online data sources might offer.
More statistical meta-analyses.
Policy makers to view evidence as part of the cycle of policy development and invest in improving the evidence as well as using what is there.
To make better use of evidence in practice.
Commit to more regular and more robust evaluation.

25. QUESTIONs

26. References
Hooley, T. (2014). The Evidence Base on Lifelong Guidance. Jyväskylä, Finland: European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN).
Hooley, T. (2017). Moving beyond ‘what works’: Using the evidence base in lifelong guidance to inform policy making. In Schroder, K. and Langer, J. Wirksamkeit der Beratung in Bildung, Beruf und Beschäftigung (The Effectiveness of Counselling in Education and Employment) (pp.25-35). Bielefeld: WBV.
Hooley, T. and Dodd, V. (2015). The Economic Benefits of Career Guidance. Careers England.
Hooley, T., Sultana, R.G. and Thomsen, R. (2017). The neoliberal challenge to career guidance - mobilising research, policy and practice around social justice. In Hooley, T., Sultana, R.G. and Thomsen, R. (Eds.) Career guidance for social justice: Contesting neoliberalism. London: Routledge.
Hopson, B. (2009). From Vocational Guidance to Portfolio Careers: A Critical Reflection. Derby: International Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby.  
Law, B. (2012). The uses of narrative: Three scene storyboarding – learning for living, .
OECD. (2004). Career Guidance and Public Policy: Bridging the Gap. Paris: OECD.

27. Tristram Hooley
Director of Research, The Careers & Enterprise Company/ Professor of Career Education, University of Derby/ Professor II, Inland Norway University of Applied Science
@pigironjoe
Blog at