What is a Career Guidance and Counseling Program?
Career guidance professionals bring expertise in theory and knowledge of the labour market and links with employers to the table, while teachers bring pedagogic knowledge and have sustained. The OECD Career Guidance Policy Review defines it as “services and activities intended to assist individuals, of any age and at any point throughout their lives, to make educational, training and occupational choices and to manage their careers”.2This definition includes making information about the labour market and about educational and employment opportunities more accessible by organizing it, systematizing it and having it available when and where people need it.
It is a comprehensive, developmental program designed to assist individuals in making and implementing informed educational and occupational choices. A career guidance and counseling program develops an individual's competencies in self-knowledge, educational and occupational exploration, and career planning.
Why is Career Guidance and Counseling Key to the Delivery of Vocational-Technical Education?Career guidance and counseling programs help individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to identify options, explore alternatives and succeed in society. These programs better prepare individuals for the changing workplace of the 21st century by:
- teaching labor market changes and complexity of the workplace
- broadening knowledge, skills, and abilities
- improving decision making skills
- increasing self-esteem and motivation
- building interpersonal effectiveness
- maximizing career opportunities
- improving employment marketability and opportunities
- promoting effective job placement
- strengthening employer relations
Everyone benefits--youth and adults, male and female, disabled, disadvantaged, minorities, limited English proficient, incarcerated, dropouts, single parents, displaced homemakers, teachers, administrators, parents and employers.
Where are Career Guidance and Counseling Programs offered?Everywhere--elementary, junior and senior high schools, community colleges, technical institutes, universities, career resource centers, correctional facilities, community-based organizations, human services agencies, community and business organizations, skill clinics, employment and placement services.
Where is Career Guidance and Counseling Working?During 1997-1998, four career guidance programs were selected as exemplary in the following sites:
- Dorchester District Two Career Development Initiatives, Summerville, SC
- La Crosse Central High School Guidance/Career Center, La Crosse, WI
- Lewis and Clark Community College: Career and Employment Services, Godfrey, IL
- Rich South High School: Horizon Program, Richton Park, IL
Additionally, States implementing the National Career Development Guidelines have many success stories.
What are the Key Components of Successful Career Guidance and Counseling Programs?- A planned sequence of activities and experiences to achieve specific competencies such as self-appraisal, decision making, goal setting, and career planning
- Accountability (outcome oriented) and program improvement (based on results of process/outcome evaluations)
- Qualified leadership
- Effective management needed to support comprehensive career guidance programs
- A team approach where certified counselors are central to the program
- Adequate facilities, materials, resources
- Strong professional development activities so counselors can regularly update their professional knowledge and skills
- Different approaches to deliver the program such as outreach, assessment, counseling, curriculum, program and job placement, follow-up, consultation, referral
- Ensures qualified leadership and supervision
- Continues expenditures for program support
- Ensures program quality and effectiveness
- Requires career development and activities for special populations
- Promotes counselor training and retraining
- Encourages elimination of sex bias and stereotyping
- Strengthens tech prep programs through recruitment, retention and placement
Counselors have opportunities to participate in an education and training system that integrates academic and vocational education, to encourage individuals' greater participation in further education by articulating secondary and post-secondary education, to renew their commitment to servicing the most at-risk or disadvantaged of our society, to promote program outcomes and performance measures, and to respond to business and economic development.
Read this article to learn about the introduction, committees and scope of guidance services in schools.
Introduction to Guidance Services in Schools :
It has been aptly remarked that guidance is accepted as an integral part of education. Whatever may be the objectives of school education, students need the assistance of teachers and others connected with them to be able to make satisfactory progress. No student has ever been able to manifest and maximize his potentialities on large extent, make appropriate career plans, get a suitable occupation and make satisfactory adjustment in the society without assistance of guidance programme organised in school.
It constitutes parents, teachers, community members, administrators, guidance workers, specialists etc. The cause is, in the modern complex society it has become a difficult task on part of home and community to provide appropriate and adequate guidance to students as per their needs and requirements. Hence, the school has a vital role to play in guiding the students.
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The school as the most important agency provides guidance in:
(i) Manifesting and maximizing the potentialities of every pupil.
(ii) Assessing the pupil’s, needs, interests, abilities, capacities, in doing any work of his suitability.
(iii) Making appropriate plan for his/her future.
(iv) Taking right and appropriate decision in right time.
(v) Taking proper decision regarding selection of a suitable educational career.
(vi) Finding a suitable vocation.
(vii) Making satisfactory adjustments in home, school and the community in a desirable manner.
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(viii) Achieving self-realization, self-direction and self- development.
In the light of above discussion it has been felt that there is need of organizing guidance programmes in schools and the guidance programmes should be organised in nature. Here an organised programme means, every guidance programme is to be organised in a systematic way. It means it must have definite objectives. There should be a guidance committee in every school. The teacher in-charge of guidance service must be clear in his mind about the scope and limitations of such a programme. He must be able to organize minimum guidance services for students.
The organisation of guidance services is not be the major responsibility of anyone person. Rather it is the joint responsibility of the headmaster, the counsellor, the career master, teachers, administrators, specialists and community members. They have to play important roles for making any guidance programme in the school a grand success.
It is essential to mention here that although there is the need of organizing guidance programme in primary schools but it’s organisation on wider extent and full-fledged manner lies in secondary schools. So in our saying and writing the organisation of guidance programmes in schools means in secondary schools and vice-versa.
The School Guidance Committee:
Saying anything and doing accordingly is a matter of difference as there lies difference between hail and heaven. For achieving the goals of every programme in any field or area, there should be a systematic, deliberate and consistent effort behind it. Otherwise the goals of the programme will be lopsided. In order to avoid this and not to provide any chance in bringing difference between hail and heaven in the field of guidance programme there should be the necessity of a guidance committee.
In other words, it can be visualized that in order to organize guidance services or programmes properly and systematically for achieving its goals there should be a guidance committee with the following personnel. A detail discussion on it is given below. Different types of guidance committees may be necessary for different institutions as no single pattern or structure can fulfill the needs and requirements of all schools; large and small, rural and urban, boys and girls and government and non-government etc.
However, for a secondary school, there must be a guidance committee for organizing and monitoring its guidance programme properly, although this committee may vary according to the availability of human and material resources. Hence, let us know the composition of the guidance committee or school guidance committee.
1. The Principal or Headmaster:
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The principal or headmaster of the school should be the chairman or chairperson of the school guidance committee.
2. Counselor or Career Master or guidance teacher:
The school counselor or career master or guidance teacher acts as the secretary cum-governor of the school guidance committee. A full time counselor may be appointed if possible. In his absence, a teacher trained in guidance has to do the job of the career master. Even if a school possesses a full time counselor, it may also have a trained teacher in the staff to give necessary assistance to the counselor.
3. Staff representative (One-Member):
The senior teacher of the school acts as an ex-officio member of the guidance committee.
4. The School Medical Officer:
The medical officer of the school acts as a member of the school guidance committee.
5. Chairman or Secretary of the Managing Committee: Member.
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6. The Physical Education Teacher (P.E.T.): Member.
7. A Few experts in different fields available in the community.
Scope of School Guidance Service:
The scope of school guidance service encompasses its objectives, facilities and opportunities provided to students and the extent of activities as far as a school can organize. The scope or subject matter of guidance services or programmes in any educational institution or school depends upon proper utilization of its resources—physical, financial and human resources.
For proper organisation of guidance services in schools the scope of school guidance programme constitutes the following things:
1. Collection of information about the students for pupil inventory service.
2. Establishing a guidance centre or guidance point.
3. Organisation of career talk, career conference, visits to colleges, universities etc.
4. Organisation of guidance exhibition.
5. Propagation of educational and occupational information.
6. Maintenance of cumulative record card (C.R.C) for each pupil.
7. Organisation of orientation talk for newcomers.
8. Providing counseling to pupils relating to their adjustment problems.
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9. Organisation of educational talks regarding different educational careers.
10. Keeping relation with other agencies such as employment exchange, training institutes and institute of higher education.
11. Keeping contacts with school leavers to determine or know the effectiveness, of guidance and counseling.
12. Organisation of short-session guidance programme for school leavers in college education, occupational life and social life.
Besides the above things, minimum programmes of guidance in school constituting three major aspects are also included in its scope.
These are as under:
1. Data Collection Service:
It is a specialized service involving the collection of data on pupil’s abilities, interests, aptitudes, scholastic achievements, personality traits, family background etc. This information will help the career master or guidance worker to understand each pupil and to provide them suitable educational and vocational guidance.
The above data can be collected through achievement tests, personality tests, intelligence tests, diagnostic tests, interest inventories, observations, interviews, questionnaire, clinical studies, rating scale etc. For better presentation and accurate guidance, the information so collected should be maintained in the cumulative record cards.
2. Occupational Information Service:
The function of this service is to avail information regarding various training and educational courses for the job market. Such information can be collected from offices or institutions like colleges, employment exchanges, the state bureau of guidance, recruiting offices of armed forces or publications like employment news, information bulletins, employment bulletins etc. Besides information about jobs and training facilities available in the country and abroad may be provided to the pupils through talks, career conferences, demonstrations, pamphlets, notices etc.
3. Counselling:
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Counselling is intended to provide personal or individual guidance to students through interviews or other ways of personal contacts. The educational or scholastic, vocational and personal problems as well as problems of adjustment are dealt in the counseling sessions. For doing this work properly, the counselor has to first establish relationship or rapport with the pupils in a friendly, cordial and co-operative atmosphere.