Career guidance in communities: A model for reflexive practice

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to inspire practitioners and professionals to leave their offices to bring career guidance into communities that might not identify with career guidance in the first instance. By making the effort to engage with communities, practitioners may bring about a critical change in career guidance practices as well as in the lives of the people in the communities. This paper falls into two parts: The first part considers the collective as the starting point for the development of meaningful career guidance activities. Based on previous research on career guidance in communities from a critical psychological standpoint the paper introduces a social practice theory of career guidance. The social practice theory of career guidance argues that career guidance can be seen as a collective practice in which people can join forces with career guidance practitioners to analyse their situation and based on these insights create new opportunities in relation to their future educational or vocational participation in society (Thomsen 2012). From this idea, the second part of the paper the paper moves on to consider the practical implications of taking the collective as the starting point for the development of a critically reflexive career guidance practice. The considerations are organised around seven elements. 1. Creating opportunity, structure and access 2. Entering a community and increasing visibility 3. Providing guidance in communities 4. Exploring potentials in guidance situations 5. Deciding on guidance activities 6. Developing, planning and implementing 7. Documenting and evaluating. These elements are joined together and presented as a model for reflexive practice. Each element is introduced, illustrated and examined noting important areas for reflection and action.