Career guidance counseling in a
globalized society. Strategies and
tools for career counseling.
International career guidance
conference, Cape Town, Soth Africa,
19.-21. October 2011
Dr. polit Tron.Inglar@hioa.no
Aims of the presentation
• To highlight challenges a career guidance
counselor may face in today's globalized
society.
• To provide career guidance counselors with
knowledge so they will understand their focus
person's situation, whether it is children,
adolescents or adults.
• Such knowledge can also be used to predict
people's reactions and actions.
The presentation is based on
• Giddens' theory of structuration (Giddens
1984; 1991)
• Results from my own research (Inglar 2009),
which was a qualitative study of experiential
learning and vocational teachers.
The theory of structuration
• In a functionalist tradition, the systems of society gives
opportunities or difficulties. In all systems there are rules and
expectations that define the limits and reduces the possibility of
individual actions.
• An action sociological tradition on the other hand emphasizes the
individual perspective and freedom of action. A career guidance
counselor may be most concerned that the fp (focus person) should
construct a future based on his, or her own desires.
• Giddens combines the theories and structure them in a way that
captures both the individual and the collective, and both the
industrial and globalized society. In what he calls the theory of
structuration he builds a foundation for to say that the possibilities
in the labor marked and the focus person´s wishes may be
combined.
Social systems and social practices
• Social practices (looser) can be seen as a
structuring process, where human actions at
the same time structure and are structured by
the collective.
• Single social practices can be linked together
in social systems (firmer), which consist of
relationships between actors and social
practices replicated across time and space.
Social practices and systems and
career guidance
Social systems have a strong influence. What affects young people's
study or career choices, are in order of priority
• the interests of their own
• parents and especially the mother
• friends
• competence in different subjects
• local (geographical) offers of education
• trends and fashions
• siblings and other family
• Media
• labor marked
• employment opportunities locally and teachers (Buland 2011)
Local conditions, such as employment
opportunities are important.
In sparsely populated areas the fp (focus person) has
• lower expectations about employment
• higher expectations of early participation in the labor
market
• lower expectations about their own influence on
educational and career choices
• lower grades, especially boys
Twice as many of them becomes craftsmen as those who
live in densely populated areas
Higher education often requires a resident in a city
Vilhjámsdóttir (2006)
Good relations in social systems, in
face-to-face relationships
• Some students say they chose a vocational
training because their friend did
• The career guidance counselor often is a
representative for the system in which the
career choice is done
• Hence they should be aware of the cultural
educational ballast they are a part of: "the
school is the best place to be and you need
education."
Establishing a relationship by
storytelling
I ask the fp to tell me about an experience that made him
happy, which gave him a good feeling.
In a few minutes I get to know
• the story, what he likes
• additional information as humor, likes to tell, likes to
take a challenge
• information to approach a possible field of work. Not a
specific profession, but a framing of opportunities.
The main thing is that I establish a good relationship.
Since the fp tells about a good experience, he will get in a
good mood.
In addition I use passive and active listening.
Using the fp´s social systems and practices
I have
friends
working in
a factory
I play in a
band
Me
Uncle Ben
is a
carpenter
Mother
and father
Community and individuality as opposites
(Baumann 2001)
• In the past was often the local community, face - to face relations and the close social systems safe and
supportive for the individual member of it.
• But being part of a safe community meant that one had
to participate in the community's continuous operation
at its premises.
• A key element is identity. When an individual's
identity, in today's society, must replace the
community's safety, the difficult ontological situation
all have, in a globalized society, is increasing.
• The ontological security of an actor is about their sense
of everyday events is predictable, ongoing and possible
to systematize (Giddens 1991:39).
The community´s influence on career choice and
guidance
• Those seeking career advice do often have a
conflict between community and individual and
personal choice.
• It requires a lot of independency of the individual
to break out of the community's confidencebuilding by making an independent and different
choice based on desires, interests and expertise
• It may therefore be an important task for a career
guidance counselor to accept, respect and support
individual choices
• However, it is also important that career guidance
counselors make the fp aware of how others affect
on his choices.
Who affects the fp´s choices
Me
Another person
Two chares
The fp shifts between the chares:
I, fp, want to ...
I, your friend, want ...
And so on, shifting between chares. Then the fp
may realize the influence by his friend.
A reflective cgc
(career guidance counselor)
•
•
•
•
What social practices and systems, am I in?
Which social systems do I do a lot to belong to?
In which systems am I confident?
How do the norms and expectations in the
systems I do belong to, affect me in my work as a
career mentor?
• Which attitudes have I regarding studies and
careers that are attractive and that I would like my
focus persons to choose?
Young people in a globalized society
The informants in my study claimed that students in
today's high school were different frombefore.
• They had a different language and a different way
of being.
• They were tougher and had less respect for
teachers.
The teachers had, without doubt, to work more with
the students' social problems and lack of
motivation.
Young people in a globalized society
Some of the students lived in a society characterized
by multiple risks and they had poor ontological
security. A former counselor said:
“… Some say that the adult contact, the conversation once a week, it
can be so that they stay afloat. Only they get out a bit without the
teachers try to clean up something, we can listen for half an hour.
Then they get rid of something and then they “keep it going to the
next meeting”, said a student to me. “
Poor ontological security, or existential anxiety
Young people in a globalized society
Consequences for the cgc
• The choice of education and occupation is
more difficult today.
• Earlier one “inherited” the family vocation
• Today
- increased mobility
- more career options
- focus on own interests and preferences,
some are uncertain about this all their life
Young people in a globalized society
Consequences for the cgc
• In Norway: “Choice of education” (primary) and “Choice of
vocation” (high school)
• It is important that a career guidance counselor represents a stable
partner, you know he is there, and it is the same person
• It is very important to build a good relationship where the focus
person feels he is seen, addressed and challenged.
• This can be achieved by using communication techniques and by
conducting several conversations in which the career guidance
counselor demonstrates that he remembers what the previous
conversation has been about.
• But a career guidance counselor must also challenge the focus
person's opinions and get him to reflect on the advantages and
disadvantages of options.
Characteristics of the globalised society
(Giddens 1991:21)
1. Separation of time and space makes it
important with knowledge of
• study and work opportunities in other countries
• our new, minority-language citizens, their
cultural background and cgc-traditions
• I choose between four strategies: advising
(guiding), mentoring (process) , gestalt
(holistic) and critical (reflective) in an
eclectically way
Characteristics of the globalised
society (Giddens 1991:21)
2. Disembedding of social institutions. Social relations are
"lifted out" of local contexts and are, or should be valid
globally. One has to
• trust that social relationships are stable beyond the local
conditions
• rely on faceless relationships and systems the
representatives of a system.
• Some students use teachers as "support" and social
networks (the quotation)
• A career guidance counselor therefore should be a reliable
system representative.
• He should help not only with a single choice, but help the fp
to learn how to plan his career in a lifelong perspective.
Characteristics of the globalised
society (Giddens 1991:21)
• But is it realistic that everyone can construct their future, that
everyone can plan their career and make "right choices"?
• Some make temporary choices followed by new and changed
choices and by dropout.
• When you were 18 years old and had finished higher education, did
you know then that you were to become what you are today?
• Krumboltz & Levin (2004) and Gelatt (1989) respectively use the
terms "Planned Happenstance" and "Positive Uncertainty". The
randomness is not random, but prepared. Personal plans always
contain uncertainties.
• This represents a brake with the linear thinking that is the basis for
more rational and effective career guidance counseling where one
for instance works with the present situation, the wanted situation
and the actions to bring you there (Peavy).
Trust, risk and ontological security
Trust is influenced continuously by both close
and faceless relationships. An early
established, good relationship of trust between
a child and its environment will influence the
child's upbringing and protect it from impacts
that can create feelings of chaos and
inadequacy
Risk Society
Living involves many risks and we calculate and
evaluate the various risk factors associated
with our actions.
• Today's risk factors includes other and
different dangers than before.
• We must deal with the immediate
consequences of actions taken far from us.
Risk Society
Beck (1997:63) believes that risks are the central theme in
today's global society, and he describes it as a civilizing
volcano.
• In risk society the antagonism grows between those who are
affected by risks and those who profit from them.
• The social and political importance of knowledge increases.
• The importance of the power of the media in which
knowledge is formed.
• The future becomes a new terrain that the individual can
speculate on what will be.
• Perhaps the biggest change is not that we face so many and
great risks, but that we are more aware of them because of
media attention?
Individualisation and ontological
security
An actor's ontological security is about staying alive (Giddens
1991:39), about his feeling that the everyday events are predictable,
that they are continuous and possible to systematize. Failing
ontological security will result in existential anxiety.
As we often make use of and allows abstract expert systems to control
our daily lives, dependence on and interest in the home, family and
community is reduced. But the abstract systems cannot replace the
ontological security that previously was rooted in family and
community.
Therefore, the responsibility now in the greater extent lies on each
individual, who himself must establish and maintain the close
relationships of trust, who must handle relations with new networks
(Baumann 2001:21; Beck 1997:152-53; Giddens 1991:80-81).
The cgc and ontological security
The cgc must:
• prepare adolescents and adults for a working life in which vocations
disappear and new are established.
• prepare adolescents and adults for a society undergoing rapid
changes and with many risks.
• motivate adolescents and adults to trust their own judgments and
choices of career opportunities.
• prepare adolescents and adults on a continuous and lifelong career
planning.
• prepare adolescents and adults to live with both confidence and
skepticism in expert systems and media.
• make adolescents and adults aware of their face to face and faceless
networks and to make use of these relationships in their career
planning.
Drop-out or excluded from
vocational education and training?
• The term drop-out gives the responsibility to the person
who "is not able" to complete an education.
• It can just as well be the opposite, that it is today's
vocational education and training that is not adapted to
those who want it. One may then call it "exclusion".
• The excluded are not adapted to learning in schools, but
learning in a vocation.
• What is important is not the transfer of knowledge, but
experiential learning. I think there is a strong
correlation between content and methods of today´s
vocational education and training, and exclusion
mechanisms.
Possible consequences of multi-potential
opportunities
• the large number of career opportunities may
result in a refusal to make career planning.
• a number of young people postpone their choice
as long as possible
• Some make random choices in a forced situation
when a choice must be made within a short time
• Therefore tests should be used with a critical
attitude
• Tests, in my opinion, should not be so easily
available on the internet
Assessment of Giddens theory of
structuration and its derivatives
• The theory´s strengths is that it sees today's society and
its individuals in a reflexive development, in which all
actors have the ability to produce desired changes.
• The theory, in some ways, simplifies reality.
• The sociological theories Baumann, Beck and Giddens
have developed are logical reasoning that is not based
on empirical research.
• Krange and Øia (2005) review a number of examples of
similar conditions in earlier periods of society and refer
to research results that contradict the theories.
Conclusion
• At a macro level, one must trust systems and
symbolic characters
• At a micro level, one should have ontological
security
• Today's young people may have problems with
their ontological security.
A career guidance counselor
• has a very important role as liaison between adolescents and adults
in a risk society with a variety of options and a society in need of
working people. In the empirical study,
• I found three developmental stages of the informants.
- The first year they were concerned about and talked about the
students and themselves.
- After one to two years the interest circled around close colleagues
and school conditions
- Then the pupils' situation in today's society.
• These stages may also be included in a career guidance counselor's
conversations with young people and adults.
• has to be aware of the relationships between each fp's needs and
opportunities, the local working life and the international
community. This is an impossible task, but it is better to light a small
candle than to curse the eternal darkness.
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Thank you for your attention
Tron.Inglar@hiao.no