The Career Guidance for Social Justice blog has been a labour of love for all of us involved. We are all trying to find time in and around our day jobs, to write and edit the blog. What makes it worthwhile is the thought that we are managing to get some important messages out into the world about how career guidance can make a difference. So, in this post, I’m going to count down the top 10 posts that people have been reading over the last year, to remind you of some of the amazing stuff that we’ve been posting.

If you want to contribute something for next year, just email me on tristram.hooley AT inn.no and we’ll try and get you published!

10

In August this year we held a summer school in Lillehammer where we worked together to discuss and learn about social justice in career guidance. Students on that course developed resources for social justice. In this post Ly Kubenko introduces a new card-based activity which is designed to help career guidance professionals to build trust with low-educated clients.

9

This year there has been a lot of discussion on how career guidance interacts with issues of environmental sustainability. David Roe gives his take on this issue in his post on green guidance.

8

Discussion about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has become an important way to raise issues of social justice over the last few years. In this post Lizzie Knight interviews Canadian career development expert Candy Ho about the way that she has used the SDGs in her work.

7

Advocating for the profession is a key element of the struggle for social justice. Bella Doswell and Katherine Jennick explained in January, why career guidance was about so much more than talking about jobs.

6

One of the best resources produced at this year’s summer school in Lillehammer was Fostering socially just career guidance through a case study exercise (Ahmed’s struggle), which also has the honour of being our sixth most popular post of 2023.

5

Pete Robertson decided that it was time to slaughter one of career guidance’s sacred cows in January. So he took aim at meritocracy, laid bare some of its problems and then explored what this meant for career guidance. A must read for everyone who has cried out for a society based on merit.

4

At the start of the year, Ronald Sultana, was cautioning us not to use ‘dirty words‘. In his post he focused on the terms “resilience,” “activation,” “vulnerability,” and “employability” and reminded us that these seemingly innocent words are carrying a lot of problematic ideological baggage. In the year in which we lost Ronald, this piece reminds us of why his voice was so important.

3

In the UK debate has been raging about what an ‘ethical careers policy’ would really look like. Chris Webb gave his take back in November 2022, and reminded us that ethics can often be a case of blurred lines.

2

In August Matt Diemer set out his consciousness raising approach to career guidance. In a brilliant post he sets out, not just what the approach is, but also the evidence that backs it up. It is well worth reading if you haven’t engaged with Matt’s work yet.

1

The most popular post of the year was written back in January, by me! In it I looked at the economic crisis that the UK was (is) going through and reflected on why it was particularly problematic for the career guidance profession.