On the 20th September NICEC is holding a network meeting which will focus on translating the current debates about career guidance and social justice into practice. In the meeting contributors to Career Guidance for Social Justice and Career Guidance for Emancipation will explore how some of the ideas contained in these volumes can be translated into practice through a series of practice-based activities.

The meeting will include the following contributions.

Tristram Hooley (Professor of Career Education, University of Derby), Why we should care about social justice in career guidance. Introducing recent research and debates on career guidance and social justice.

Charlotte Chadderton (Professor of Education, BathSpa University), Decolonising careers education? Considering the relevance of some of the arguments around the decolonisation of education for careers education. The session will explore some examples of an analysis of school-based careers education in England using post-colonial theories and the audience will be asked to consider their own work from a post-colonial perspective.

Elnaz Kashefpakdel (Head of Research, Education and Employers) and Chris Percy (Independent researcher), Access to employers in British Schools: How can we even the playing field? Employer engagement activities, such as work experience and careers talks, tend – if left to occur naturally – to reinforce existing patterns of social inequality. The question is how can schools manage such activities so they become a force for evening the playing field and helping all to benefit. The easy part of the answer lies in volume – more for everyone. As both disadvantaged and less disadvantaged young people experience more activities with employers, those who benefit most tend to be those least confident about their future, least engaged with school and most at risk. But volume isn’t always practical in a crowded curriculum and, in any case, only takes us so far. The harder part of the answer lies in schools taking a more proactive role in managing and targeting activities. Room for hope is found in one of the case studies, which points a light towards a possible set of approaches for evening the playing field without resorting to potentially divisive and counter-productive “deficit models” that pit the privileged against the rest, and mark out the rest as somehow weaker for it.  The session will include an open discussion challenging some of the starting suggestions for mitigating the natural bias and sourcing new ideas for how it might be done.

Rosie Alexander (Researcher, University of the Highlands and the Islands). Social justice / spatial justice.  Considering the spatial element of social justice and careers work. This session explores issues of geographical accessibility and how accessibility is related to other forms of inequality. I will not be attending the session in person (partly because of my own geographical location!) but will present virtually and invite participants to take part in a short exercise reflecting on their own experiences of place and mobility and how these relate to careers work.

Phil McCash (Associate Professor, University of Warwick). Social justice and continuing professional development (CPD): a workshop for career development practitioners. This session reports on an action research project by Kristin Midttun that took place in Norway in 2014. A pilot workshop on social justice was designed, delivered and evaluated in cooperation with career development practitioners. The aim was to stimulate professional reflexivity around social justice by helping participants consider and develop responses. This session will give a flavour of the activities Kristin designed to enable participants to adapt and use the workshop in their own contexts if they so wish.

Book your place to attend the network meeting.

p.s. September 20th is also the date of the next School Strike for Climate. I was thinking of attending the demonstration that morning before the network meeting. If anyone is interested in also attending let me know on tristram.hooley@gmail.com.