1. Lecture to Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, 13th October
The only thing worth fighting for is the future Rethinking career guidance as an instrument for social justice
Tristram Hooley, Professor of Career Education, University of Derby

6. Choosing a vocation (1909)
No step in life, unless it may be the choice of a husband or wife, is more important than the choice of a vocation… You may not be able to get into the right line of work at first. You may have to learn your living for a while in any way that is open to you. But if you study yourself and get sufficient knowledge of various industries to determine what sort of work you are best adapted to, and then carefully prepare yourself for efficient service in that line, the opportunity will come for you to make use of the best that is you in your daily work.

7. What Parsons stood for
Frank Parsons was a consistent opponent of that individualism which pits men against each other in the struggle for existence, and an earnest advocate of that individuality that fits men for useful membership in the social body, and so draws them together in mutual fellowship and service. (Kent, 1908: 636 from Plant and Kjærgård, 2016)

9. What are we doing?

11. OECD definition
Career guidance refers to 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…
The activities may take place on an individual or group basis, and may be face-to-face or at a distance (including help lines and web-based services). (OECD, 2004)

12. An international policy area
55 national reviews of career guidance systems. Policy and practice exist in many more countries.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s there were a number of large scale cross national studies conducted by OECD, EU, World Bank, ILO etc. which drew out key themes in policy and practice.

13. Key themes
While a small private sector exists in many of these countries – the majority of funding comes from the public sector in all countries where it impacts on a majority of the population.
Career guidance is best organised as a lifelong system, but in most places it mainly exists in silos within the education system.
Responsibility for career guidance is typically spread across a range of ministries. This weakens it as a policy area.

16. Public policy rationales
Learning aims
Participation in vocational and higher education.
Reducing early school-leaving.
Enabling learning mobility
Efficient investment in education and training.
Lifelong learning
Labour market aims
Labour market efficiency
Flexibility/flexicurity.
Supporting employment mobility
Youth employment. Active labour markets Effective skills utilisation. Employee engagement.
Social aims
Active ageing
Social equity.
Social inclusion

17. Economic benefits

19. The politics of career guidance
Careers education and guidance is a profoundly political process. It operates at the interface between the individual and society, between self and opportunity, between aspiration and realism. It facilitates the allocation of life chances. Within a society in which such life chances are unequally distributed, it faces the issue of whether it serves to reinforce such inequalities or to reduce them. Tony Watts

20. Socio-political ideologies of guidance
Radical (social change)
Progressive (individual change)
Conservative (social control)
Liberal (non-directive)

21. Transforming structures
CG policies
CG practices
Habitus
Career
These are all sites for struggle and contestation about the kind of world that we want to live in…

23. Challenging the faces of oppression
Challenge
Exploitation. Unfair compensation and coercion.
Notice, highlight and challenge issues of inequality, low pay and precarity in the labour market.
Empower individuals and groups to challenge this.
Marginalisation. Loss of work, power and respect.
Understand who is marginalised and locked out of the labour market and work to help them to reingage.
Powerlessness. Always being on the receiving end of orders.
Help people to understand what power is and how it operates.
Encourage people to seek autonomy and self-efficacy.
Cultural imperialism. Imposing ‘norms’ on people.
Respect difference and reaffirm pluralism.
Violence. Random, unprovoked attacks.
Challenge individual and institutional violence (advocacy) and encourage others to challenge it (empowerment).

25. 5 questions career guidance should ask
Who am I?
How does the world work?
Where do I fit into the world?
How can I live with others?
How do I go about changing the world?

26. References
Kent, A. (1908). Memorial Services in Memory of Professor Parsons in the Nation’s Capital. Washington.
Hooley, T. (2014). The Evidence Base on Lifelong Guidance. Jyväskylä, Finland: European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network.
Hooley, T. (2015). Emancipate Yourselves from Mental Slavery: Self-Actualisation, Social Justice and the Politics of Career Guidance. Derby: International Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby.
Hooley, T. and Barham, L. (Eds.). (2015). Career Development Policy and Practice: The Tony Watts Reader. Stafford: Highflyers.
Hooley, T. and Dodd, V. (2015). The Economic Benefits of Career Guidance. Careers England.
Hooley, T., Shepherd, C. and Dodd, V. (2015). Get Yourself Connected: Conceptualising the Role of Digital Technologies in Norwegian Career Guidance. Derby: International Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby.
Hooley, T. and Sultana, R. (2016). Career guidance for social justice. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 36, 2-11.
Law, B. (2012). The uses of narrative: Three scene storyboarding – learning for living,
Parsons, F. (1909). Choosing a Vocation. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Plant, P. and Kjærgård, R. (2016). From mutualism to individual competitiveness: Implications and challenges for social justice within career guidance in neoliberal times. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 36,

27. So where does this leave us
Career guidance offers individuals and societies a mechanism for managing change.
But change is not pre-determined it is political and contingent on our actions (and those of others).
Career guidance therefore has to be understood as a political act which facilitates change.
We therefore need to be careful to develop models of career guidance that change society for the better.

28. Tristram Hooley Professor of Career Education
International Centre for Guidance Studies
University of Derby
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