RETHINKING THE DELIVERY OF CAREER
COUNSELING SERVICES IN GREECE:
RESULTS OF A NATIONAL SURVEY
Prof. Spyros Kriwas
University of Patras
Department of Education,
Laboratory of Career Development and Career Counseling
THE STRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATION
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A.The rapid socio-economic changes
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B.Effects of socio-economic developments
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B1. On the workplace,
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B2. On career perception.
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B3. On Counseling ( theory and practice),
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B4. On the identity and practice of career counselors
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C. Required skills
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D.The challenges for career counseling services
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E. Reasons for the evaluation of the effectiveness of career
counseling services
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F. Research methodology
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Main results
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THE RAPID CHANGES
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The developments in modern society
The wide use of new technologies
The internationalization of the economy and the subsequent
international competition
The emergence of new population groups in the economic and
social horizon: women, individuals with special needs, people
from different cultural origin.
The globalization
The geopolitical realignments and inter-country conflicts
The change gradually of the western societies from monocultural
to multicultural
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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THE EFFECTS OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENTS
ON THE WORKPLACE AND THE WORKERS
PART1
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The internalization of the workforce
The increasing surplus in the job market
The organizational differentiations in business
The increasing awareness of the relationship between
positive – negative experiences from work and career
and mental health, self-concept and natural health
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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THE EFFECTS OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENTS
ON THE WORKPLACE AND THE WORKERS
PART2
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The interest of European governments and worldwide to
implement with regard to the passage from the school to
the workplace and the link between learning and work
Changes in the structure, the content and the
organization of job market
Changes in the role of workers with regard to the
required skills and abilities for planning their life in
general, and their career in particular
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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THE EFFECTS OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENTS
ON CAREER PERCEPTION
The older perception of career
 The new perception of career
 It sees career as subjectively determined. It
describes the lifelong evolving of the individual
with regard to learning and work. It is a process,
not a predetermined structure.
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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ON COUNSELING, AT A THEORETICAL AND
PRACTICAL LEVEL
The consequences of the new perception of the
career for counseling theory and practice:
 The introduction in the scope of the career
counseling research and practice of new variables
such as sex, intercultural and intra-cultural
otherness, nationality, race etc.
 In the framework of lifelong learning, the diversity of
individuals, their personal and social needs as well
as the conditions of the institution in which they
operate
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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ON THE PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AND
THE PRACTICE OF CAREER COUNSELORS
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A new professional identity of the counselor is
emerged: From an expert of vocational orientation to a
facilitator of personal involvement of individuals in the
planning of their career
Consequently, the career counselors has to redefine the
methods and the techniques of intervention and to
acquire new and more specialized skills
The career counselor should help not only students but
also the parents and the school to adapt to a
differentiating world
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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REQUIRED SKILLS
Self-knowledge
 Ability to seek opportunities
 Planning of action
 Combination of interests, personality and action
 Ability to negotiate
 Accepting and dealing with social uncertainty
 Developmental perception of life, learning and
action
 Political awareness
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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THE CHALLENGES FOR CAREER COUNSELING
SERVICES
The career counseling services are called to
achieve three types of goals: learning goals, labor
market goals and social goals
 Their personnel has to help the individuals to:
 To better understand the new social and economic
reality
 To improve their skills of decision-making and of
facing unexpected changes
 To locate and take advantage of existing career
opportunities
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling 10
REASON FOR THE EVALUATION OF
EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SERVICES
1/2
The evaluation is important for :
 The self-assessment of career counselors and of
their activities within the services,
 The information of state decision-making bodies,
 The effectiveness and sufficiency of the services
in educational policy and, finally,
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling 11
REASON FOR THE EVALUATION OF
EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SERVICES
Assessing the satisfaction of the needs of the 2/2
recipients
 ( students, parents and teachers) of their products
 The identification of common areas of activities
due to the expansion of educational-professional
choices, the uncertainty and the complexity of after
school life,
 The indication of the degree to which the various
products of career counselling services benefit
their various recipient.
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling 12
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Our observation and our discussion with career
counsellors in the Greek secondary education
confirm that:
 The career counselors do contain indirectly a form
of the process evaluation by asking often the
counselees whether they found the process helpful
 This, however, is restricted and conducted orally
and consequently it does not result in the
identification of valid indicators for formative
interventions in the counselling process
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling 13
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION:
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This may be the result of lack of planning and
systematisation of evaluation inside the
counselling structures, which is attributed to the
perception of Greeks counsellors, that the
evaluation does not constitute an integral part of
the counselling process, but it should be
conducted at the end of the process and mainly
by external evaluators.
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling 14
RESEARCH TOOLS
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Semi-structured interview (for a group of members and
students) and a questionnaire {for members of the
career counselling services (KESYP and GRASEP
structures)}.
POPULATION - SAMPLE
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The population of this research consists of the 774 teacherscareer counsellors who staff the KESYP and GRASEP of the
country (204 in the KESYP and 570 in the GRASEP, Source:
YPEPTH). The sample consisted of 230 teachers-career
counsellors (approximately 30% of population; 77 from KESYP
and 153 from GRASEP).
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling 15
MAIN RESULTS
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The Greek career counselors don’t consider the
evaluation of the counseling process as a part of their
job and suggest that they are unprepared for doing that.
The individuals who seek the support of career
counseling services seem to come anywhere from the
fringes of low social class and from the middle class,
although there are some from the upper social class.
Possible explanation: Career counseling, both in terms
of theory and practice, refers to the professional
behavior, the worldview and they culture of the middle
class.
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling 16
MAIN RESULTS
Immigrants or children of immigrants are not
reported by the counselors to be among the
clientele of the career counseling services.
 Possible explanation: Insufficient training of the
career counselors to deal with the problems of the
people from different countries. In the case they
have a counselee from one of those groups, they
limited their intervention simply to issues of
professional information, and, in particular,
information on the job market.
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Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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MAIN RESULTS
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The counselors seem to know the most important
problems they face in everyday life, for which they
realize the differences between past and present,
both in terms of form and intensity. However, they
see their role mainly as providers of information
and counseling on decision-making. Other
interventions, such as support for overcoming
difficulties, other issues of personal counseling,
counseling parents and teachers, are not consider
by many of them as part of their job.
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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MAIN RESULTS
•The fact that the demand for continuing training and
information is placed by the Greek career counsellors
higher compared to other measures that are essential
for the improvement of their effectiveness, even higher
than the need for the institutionalisation of their role,
shows their anxiety for their ineffectiveness to deal with
the above problems.
•They identified themselves mainly as students
counselors but not of parents and teachers ones.
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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MAIN RESULTS
It may also be argued that the lack of knowledge of
those activities on the part of the potential
clientele results from the limited understanding
the public has of Career Counselling, believing
that it is mainly guidance and search of work or
help for the entry of new individual into the world
of work.
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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End of the presentation
Thank you
for your attention
Prof.S.Kriwas-U Patras - Department of Education Lab of Career Development & Career Counseling
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