Florian Kadletz is a Specialist in Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Skills at the European Training Foundation (ETF). In this post he discusses new research from the ETF that looks at new research from the ETF through a social justice lens. The ETF is the EU agency supporting countries surrounding the European Union to reform their education, training and labour market systems.
A recent report of the European Training Foundation (ETF), International Trends and Innovation in Career Guidance (see volume 1 and volume 2), explores the importance of career-guidance policies and practice in the light of global challenges and the responses offered by education and training systems, employment and social policies.
The new publication examines the current mega-trends in career guidance, focusing on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), career management skills, cooperation and coordination mechanisms in career guidance and the role of parents and carers in young people’s career choices. The innovative examples presented in this report further highlight how career guidance is changing in a fast-evolving world and labour market to support individuals to become real lifelong learners, to acquire new skills to cope with change and to further develop their existing skills.
Social justice
The report also discusses social justice as an aim and outcome of career guidance and features in many case studies in the publication. Among the added values of career guidance in a context of changing labour markets and related changing skills demands, is to ensure social inclusion and equity, hence justice.
Career education and the development of career management skills can per se be an initiative for social inclusion, equity and social justice, as it contributes to the empowerment and emancipation of learners to manage their own education and career path. The integration of CMS into the national core curricula from primary to upper secondary school as a compulsory subject similar to other school subjects in Finland is among the best examples. Also, the Counselling and Personal Development middle-school curriculum in Romania, to develop learners’ career competences, and the NCGE Whole School Guidance Framework (Ireland) providing differentiated career services on the basis of learners’ readiness for decision making, and the “My Competence Folder” (Denmark), an eElectronic folder in which school pupils document their competences, are valuable practices.
Co-operation and collaboration
The publication also includes examples of cooperation and collaboration in career guidance. These highlight some implicit contribution to social justice, like the broadcasting partnership “Khetha radio programme” in South Africa, which broadcasts a weekly radio programme in ten of the country’s official languages, reaching rural populations to provide career guidance ‘for all citizens regardless of geographical position or socio-economic status’. More explicitly, the involvement of parents and caretakers can be seen as planned contribution to social inclusion, equity and justice:
“Bridging dialogue for children’s career counselling and guidance” (Pakistan), aims to raise the awareness of parents and children about the significance of career fields and to offer them information about future careers. Parents and their children filled in a career-selection questionnaire, standardised for the Asian context, followed by a dialogue on exploring and selecting career fields. In addition, institutionalised parental career-guidance workshops were initiated and facilitated at middle- and high-schools. A student and parental Career Guidance Association was initiated to inform parents and students on a regular basis about activities carried out in the field of career education and development. Corporate-sector organisations and philanthropists supported these parental career-guidance programmes. Such reflective exercises contribute to “conscientisation”, to supporting people’s understanding of their life situation and considering their own opinion regarding the measures taken by governments for their children, as does the below example.
A parents’ counselling programme in Romania focused on parents from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas who were involved in experiential activities, e.g. role play, use of metaphors, case studies, use of maps/life space to address issues such as self-knowledge, communication between school and parents, the role of education, the importance of learning, school success, etc. The programme was implemented with the support of school counsellors and ‘multipliers’ (teachers, social workers, school mediators).
Find out more
To find out more download the full publications at
Critical Perspectives on Career and Career Guidance (COCAG) 
[…] guidance has received new attention this week with the publication of new research on international trends and how the field has responded to the […]
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