Lifelong Vocational Guidance

This document synthesizes the findings of case studies of career guidance and advice for adults in the European Union. Section 1 examines the problems of helping the following groups: marginalized individuals in need of vocational or social (re)integration; individuals in the process of becoming marginalized, individuals who appear to be "problem free"; and groups adversely affected by the economic recession. The case study findings pertinent to the issue of facilitating adults' social, personal, and/or occupational transitions are detailed in section 2. Special attention is paid to facilitating vocational integration, encouraging self-esteem and determination, teaching adults to network, helping adults make the best use of what they have learned, and helping adults reacquire a social role and reintegrate into temporary or permanent settings. Section 3 presents the following institutional solutions to the problems of personalizing help, advice, and guidance and offering guidance for the medium- or long-term future: improving services at the individual level, preventing marginalization, developing policies at the European and national levels, adopting a multidisciplinary and holistic approach, and linking passive and active measures. Appended is information about quantitative and qualitative methods of evaluating counseling services and evaluation for cost-benefit analyses and services adapted to needs. The report contains 35 references. (MN)

Recoge: 1.Introduction - 2.The lifelong career guidance paradign - 3.Implementing lifelong guidance systems - 4.Broadening access to guidance - 5.Stenghening quality assurance mechanisms - 6.Learning and career management - 7.Strengthening structures for policy and sustems development - 8.Ways forward.

OECD countries are attaching rising importance to lifelong learning and active employment policies as tools of economic growth and social equity. Effective information and guidance systems are essential to support the implementation of these ...

"Career brings together individuals' paths through life, learning and work. It describes how people interface with social institutions including the education system, employers, civil society and the state. Because our careers are socially and culturally embedded it matters where they are enacted. Career and Career Guidance in the Nordic Countries explores what kind of context the Nordic region offers for the pursuit of career, how the development of careers are supported in welfare societies, and how career guidance is enacted in this context. The Nordic region encompasses an area in Northern Europe and the Northern Atlantic comprising Denmark, Sweden, Norway as well as Finland to the east and Iceland in the Atlantic. It includes also the self-governing areas of Åland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. This region has long been seen as a source of progressive policy innovation in education and employment and this book focuses and explores the place, the enactment and the theories of career guidance in these Nordic countries"--

This book is the product of a series of reflections by career counseling and guidance specialists on a question central to society: "How can career and life design interventions contribute to fair and sustainable development and to the implementation of decent work all over the world? ". This question was formulated by Professor J. Guichard, the director of the UNESCO Chair in Lifelong Guidance and counseling at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. The researchers involved in this Chair’s activities proposed answers which form the chapters of this book. These reflections emphasize the need to focus on the study and implementation of certain central psychological processes which can enable individuals to face the main challenges of our society. The contributions also propose new avenues of intervention for career counseling and guidance. The entire book is the bedrock of a program of research and interventions to be implemented in order that the field of career counseling and guidance plays a key role for individuals who must design their lives in a rapidly changing, and ever more complex context. This book is therefore a major scientific contribution and marks a turning point for researchers and practitioners in career counseling and guidance, and for all professionals who support the self-construction of individuals in the 21st century. "The authors draw on a diverse range of disciplines and research traditions and offer readers a rich array of insights, helping them reflect on how career guidance can be mobilised to serve citizens in a world that is increasingly challenged by complex, seemingly intractable problems. A central, crosscutting concern is the ways in which career guidance can foster well-being by facilitating access to meaningful and fulfilling work in contexts that promote equity, social justice, and dignity for all. While engaging the micro-worlds of individuals, and throwing light on their valiant efforts to design a life that realises their hopes and aspirations, it is a commendable feature of many of these papers that they do not eschew the societal – indeed planetary – stage across which personal dramas are enacted.” Prof. Ronald G. Sultana, Director, Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research, University of Malta. "The primary strengths.....are the authors' capacity to provide forward thinking perspectives on the important issue of sustainable lifelong interventions and career design in its broadest sense. The volume offers depth in a way of thinking that is pertinent to the 21st century and provokes both an in interest in the further study of this domain as well as providing tools and references for novice and experienced researchers and professionals. The book is sure to become a major text in the field." Prof. Maurice Taylor, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada

This handbook offers a comprehensive review on career guidance, with an emphasis on the applied aspects of guidance together with research methods and perspectives. It features contributions from more than 30 leading authorities in the field from Asia, Africa, America, Australasia and Europe and draws upon a wide range of career guidance paradigms and theoretical perspectives. This handbook covers such subjects as educational and vocational guidance in a social context, theoretical foundations, educational and vocational guidance in practice, specific target groups, testing and assessment, and evaluation.

Career and Career Guidance in the Nordic Countries explores what kind of context the Nordic region offers for the pursuit of career, how the development of careers are supported and how career guidance is enacted in this context.