CCPD in Europe and the Gulf

Anne Chant – Assistant Director of the Centre for Career and Personal Development

 This has been a busy few months at CCPD. In March three tutors and one of our doctoral students travelled to an ESREA conference at the University of Milano Bicocca. The conference was the ‘Biography and Life History’ part of the European Society for Research into the Education of Adults which explores the use of narratives and life story as a research methodology. It attracts researchers from a wide range of disciplines and from all over Europe and beyond, including South Korea, South Africa, Australia, Canada and the US.

The theme of creative expression was evident throughout and we explored not only the content and meaning of life stories but also the range of ways in which they can be told. This included dance, collage, fiction and poetry. Papers by CCPD staff Alison Fielding, Hazel Reid, Rebecca Tee and myself included topics such as:

·         The Teller, the Tale and the Told: re-membering and re-writing the self

·         Generations of strong women: the impact of social class on the educational and learning experiences of four generations of women.

·         Beyond rhetoric: moving toward transformative research with young unemployed people in the UK.

·         Using auto/biographical narration to understand the role of political inheritance in applied civics.

Later in March I travelled to Abu Dhabi where I spoke to the Gulf Education Conference  about a new model for career learning and development.  Schools in the region are very keen on developing career learning in schools and in colleges and universities as their labour market changes and matures.

 

 

We hope to work with partners in the region to deliver professional and academic training in careers work for those based in schools, colleges, Higher Educaton and in the work place.

Then in May Hazel Reid and I, as active members of the Network for Innovation in Career Guidance and Counselling in Europe, attended the NICE 2 conference in Bratislava. This brought to a conclusion the work of NICE 1 and NICE 2 that was presented at the summit in Canterbury last September and hosted by CCPD.

http://www.nice-network.eu/

The conference in Bratislava explored ways in which the work of NICE on the professionalization of the sector and the establishment of competence standards for the training of careers professionals can now be established with in-country professional bodies; in the UK this will of course be the Career Development Institute.

Who needs professionals?!

One of the features of the current coalition government has been to claim that they are handing power back to professionals; localism has become a regular byword for respecting professional expertise and knowledge, particularly in education. However this is in stark contrast to the direction of movement within the careers world. Despite the responsibility outlined in the Education Act 2011 that all schools must make impartial career guidance available to their students, response to this statutory requirement is patchy. This was outlined by the Ofsted report in April 2014 but despite efforts by Department of Education the BBC’s Katherine Sellgren  reported today that schools are using teaching assistants and even receptionists to offer careers advice to students.


We might expect parents and teachers and other adults in a young person’s life to offer ideas and experiences and even a little advice. Our experiences of career is something we all feel we have something to offer. Similarly we might comment on our beliefs about healthy living, diet, fashion or even holiday destination. But how many parents, when concerned about their child’s health would assume their own experience is enough, or feel it was acceptable that the doctor’s receptionist would be just as useful as seeing the doctor themselves? Why then does it appear that schools feel it is acceptable to put any reasonably competent adult with a bit of time on their hands to guide, advise or counsel young people on their future working lives? The answer may lie in the lack of understanding within Education of what careers work, career learning and career guidance and counselling is all about. Perhaps 50 years ago it was simply about deciding what a young person might like ‘to be’ when then grow up; a familiar question of young people by grandparents who aren’t sure what else to ask them. But the complexity of the labour market, the opportunities available and the pace of change is such that today more than ever young people need skills, knowledge and information from professionals who are specifically trained to provide it. It cannot be delivered in a half hour discussion with the head of year 11, let alone with the receptionist or librarian. Careers, more than ever before, must be integrated into the curriculum from the early years of secondary school at the latest and supported by fully qualified professionals to help young people make complex decisions and smooth transitions.


If we don’t get this right, all the grade A*s achieved could be as passports into an unknown wilderness. By all means support the achievement of the passport but, please also ensure that young people also get some decent maps, from someone who knows about the new landscape and the new roads to get there.

Anne Chant, Centre for Career & Personal Development

Canterbury Christ Church University

CPD Network Event

Saturday 19^th July 2014

Centre for Career & Personal Development

Canterbury Christ Church University

Rowan Williams Building

CPD Network Event

‘Beyond the Face to Face: Digital media and Careers’

10am till 4.30pm

• Hear a speaker on using digital media in careers work

• Discuss the recent Statutory Guidance

• Hear presentations on recent research

• Network with colleagues

£25 per person – please note this includes payment for the day and membership of the network from July 2014 – June 2015.

Book a place now by following this link

http://shop.canterbury.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=31&catid=210&prodid=1783&searchresults=1

Looking forward to seeing you

New Senior Visting Fellow for CCPD

David Andrews OBE has been named as a new Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Career and Personal Development at CCCU.  David works as an independent education consultant, trainer, researcher and writer specialising in career education and guidance.  He leads courses for careers leaders and careers advisers, provides consultancy to local authorities, schools and careers companies and has spoken at numerous conferences.  David is a Fellow of the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling (NICEC) and was an affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education for many years.  Most of his work is in the UK but he has worked on projects in East Africa, Kosovo and Pakistan.



David Andrews OBE

David is an honorary life member of the Career Development Institute (CDI).  In 2011 he authored Careers Education in Schools, a book on the history of the development of careers education in schools and which goes on to critically examine current policy, practice and possibilities for the future.  Before moving into freelance work in 1998, he taught in secondary schools and then worked as an advisory teacher in a careers service and an LEA adviser.  David has worked as an adviser to the DfEE, the DfES and the DCSF, but not yet to the DfE.

 

Dr Hazel Reid, Director of the Centre said:  “We are delighted to welcome David and are looking forward to our association with him over the period to come.  His expertise and knowledge will be of great interest and benefit to our students and researchers.”

Career Thinking in Denmark

Dr Barbara Bassot

In early May 2014, Dr Barbara Bassot from the Centre for Career & Personal Development travelled to Svendborg in southern Denmark to a conference for career guidance practitioners.  One hundred people attended and on the first day Barbara presented her latest research on the Career Thinking Session.  She outlined the model, describing its theoretical underpinning and then presented the case of Holly; a young person who was having difficulties deciding her next steps following her course in health and social care.  In the afternoon Barbara ran a workshop where all the participants tried out the model.  Barbara said:  “Watching one hundred practitioners trying out the model was thrilling for me – they didn’t find it easy, but could see how they could use it with some of their clients.  Their feedback was invaluable for my research.”

Statutory Guidance - CCPD response

Last month the document ‘Career Guidance and Inspiration in Schools’ was published by the Dept for Education. The purpose of this we are told is to ensure that all schools are clear about what is expected of them in meeting their statutory duty and to that end it is helpful as a check list for schools. We are also told in the guidance that Ofsted has been giving Career Guidance a ‘high priority’ since its report ‘Going in the Right Direction’ in September 2013. Anecdotally the experience of careers coordinators in schools does not seem to reflect that priority but time will tell.

I would like however to comment on just some of the content of this guidance and the direction of growth in the guidance community more generally.

First of all we should be pleased that Dept. for Education has seen the need for this and therefore the importance of careers work with young people more broadly. Clarification of schools’ statutory duty to provide all pupils ‘with independent (impartial and external to the school) from years 8 to 13’ is helpful. However why a private contractor would be more impartial than someone employed by the school, seems counterintuitive to me. If you want and need your contract with a school to be renewed, you are just as subject to the temptation to be partial as you would if you were employed by the school. Surely the issue should be that if someone is professionally qualified and on the professional register, thereby signed up to the professional code of practice and ethics, it should make little difference what their contract with the school is like. Furthermore we all know that there are many highly competent practitioners who are employed by schools and whose impartiality is  unchallenged by Ofsted. So where is the clarity I wonder?

Secondly the emphasis throughout is on information and engagement by the school with external bodies such as employers and employers’ bodies. This in my view panders to the idea that all young people need is lots and lots of information and inspiration by those already in the labour market. The irony is that this is so soon after Alison Wolf’s recommendation that work experience should no longer be a statutory entitlement for young people  in key stage 4. Rather, says Wolf, they should leave this until post 16, when some key choices have already been made and under-aspiration is unchallenged, gender stereotypic  choices or ill-thought through plans made. Are employers impartial? Will employers present a balanced view of their industry, challenge gender biases or help the young people in front of them to think more broadly? Some of them certainly will. But why encourage engagement with these groups and not with the profession that is trained and experienced in just these issues:careers professionals?

Thirdly and finally there is the reliance on the National Careers Service website and online and telephone services. Again if young people want information this is a useful source. However, like the NHS Direct service for health concerns, they can only deal with what is presented to them. They cannot second guess what is behind the question, what assumptions have been made or read the body language of a young person overwhelmed by their predicament. In short, this service cannot replace the opportunity for a young person to sit one to one with a trained professional who will listen to them and help them to reflect on what they say. Put simply an online service can provide some answers, a one- to- one career discussion with a professional will prompt the questions that they didn’t know they needed to ask.

So this document offers the opportunity to have important discussions with schools, to ensure that at the very least they are fulfilling their statutory duty. But let us hope that the conversation doesn’t end there, but continues into the vital role of the careers professional in preparing young people for the ever more complex world of work. This labour market is changing so fast that no employer, website or enterprise activity can prepare young people for the challenges ahead. It will take all of us working in partnership, with trained professionals at the centre , to do this and our young people deserve nothing less.

Anne Chant, June 2014

CCPD staff present papers in Germany

Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg

Dr Hazel Reid, Anne Chant, Alison Fielding and Rebecca Corfield Tee from the Centre for Career & Personal Development all presented papers at the recent ESREA Conference of the Life History and Biography Research Network.  This year’s conference was located at the Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg, East Germany.  The conference theme was “Before, Beside and After (Beyond) the Biographical Narrative” and all papers presented were considering aspects of the process of researching life histories.

Dr Hazel Reid’s paper concerned the role of the researcher in life history; Alison Fielding’s subject was women’s career identity; Anne Chant’s paper was an exploration of the feminist discourse and its voice in narrative research and Rebecca Corfield Tee presented on the unspoken elements of research relationships.

Magdeburg is located in central Germany on the Elbe River south-west of Berlin. Known as early as 805 AD  Magdeburg was severely damaged during World War II. One of the lasting legacies of the Second World War is the Stolpersteine or ‘Stumbling Stones’ in Magdeberg.  Outside every house where a victim or survivor of the Holocaust lived is a Stolperstein, a brass plaque is laid in to the pavement.  There are now over 40,000 of these plaques laid in cities throughout Europe to commemorate victims of the war in this way.