Can’t believe it’s passed so quickly – where did it go – and that soon we’ll be off into the big, bad world!! 

This course has been life changing for me – whether I get a job in this field or not – as it has shown me that I am actually capable of things that I never thought I could do.  I actually began to, yes, enjoy groupwork and tested my nerve on speaking in front of the class – things I had dreaded, probably because I had never done them.  I have now – more or less(!) – overcome my fears which has given my confidence a huge boost.  And after doing part-time, often mind numbing admin jobs for nearly 18 years while I brought my daughter up, I have spent the last 9 months doing something really interesting that actually gave me a lot of personal insights as well as insights into how to help others.  Really interesting – loved it!  Is that too far…?

So glad there are no more essays, can’t wait to be finished, can’t wait to have a rest, can’t wait to have a job and some money…. (0:

….but….it’s going to seem so weird not to see the usual faces in 408 every day….and have our little chats in the refectory (won’t miss the new coffee machine, though!)….and read each others blogs….and moan about doing essays….and….OK, I’ll stop there – you get my drift….    )0:

It was good to look at Illich’s views on professionalism and Schon’s reflective practitioner but even in the short time since we covered them I can see more clearly why they are important.  The value of questioning ways of doing things, looking at alternatives, not becoming routinised and evaluating practice is much more obvious now that we have spent a bit more time on placement!  Getting ‘critical friends’ to look at your practice and questioning your relationship with management are all clearly useful idea for us once we are practising career advisers.

I THINK I now understand the differences between the dominant philosophies and how they fed into theory and practice such as Rogers, Super and Hollands’ humanism with it’s belief in the core good of humans and it’s focus on rationality and measurement, the ensuing existential critique of this from Heidegger and Sartre highlighting the lack of ‘essence’ and therefore lack of meaning in the human state and Neitzche’s post modernism, acknowledging the social and cultural context of human existence and the cynicism about ‘progress’.  I THINK I can see how these philosophies contribute to different career theories and therefore to different practices.

But I still find it difficult to know where I stand on all of them – I can see aspects of all of them that I would use under certain circumstances and I suppose I instinctively like the ‘tool kit’/'chocolate box’ idea of technical eclectism.  My current favourite (the strawberry cream) is the constructivist/narrative approach as this nicely resolves the psychology/sociology divide and highlights the usefulness of community influences and the limitations/horizons of the individual’s world but I can also see the value of the unpopular coffee cream of matching approaches which I think could still be useful depending on the context and the situation of the individual.  And then there are all the other chocolates in the box which, again depending on the context, may provide useful insights or techniques…

I understand that using technical eclectism should come with theoretical integration and the use of Watson’s ‘personal model’ but as yet I have not developed this.  I am guessing this will come once (or should I say if!) I am practising as a career adviser.  I suppose what I’m saying is that having the background awareness of the philosophical ideas, the different theoretical stances and the range of techniques available, while making choices more complicated and confusing has to be a good thing in the end.  Maybe in time, though, I should try to decide which type of chocolates I like best and stick to them rather than being a glutton and eating them all!  But I will try to always keep up to date with what’s new on the market and any new products or flavours that emerge…

Back at Telford I was asked to prepare and deliver, using a Careers Scotland powerpoint format, 3 pre-exit workshops aimed at different groups of students.  I was given fairly strict parameters about what to include, what not to include and how much interactivity or participative groupwork I should include (very little as it turned out).  The message generally was to spend most of the time on the powerpoint because the students need to be given the information that they will need about CVs, interviews, job searching etc.  The adviser that I was working with felt that  the students had to get a lot of necessary information in a short period of time so keeping it succinct and to the point was key.  After all that we have learned about different styles of learning, about the value of participative groupwork and about the adviser not being the expert, this exercise felt very limiting.  I did manage  though to get a few groupwork activities into each session and my own view was that this was when the students learned most.

A few mornings later Gemma spent a morning down in Telford and I was telling her about what I had to do for my workshops and we were talking generally about powerpoint presentations – pros and cons!.  She told me that she had been asked to do some groupwork as well while she was at Enable but in her case it turned out to be planting!  A fantastic example of differentiated provision for differentiated need!

However, since my placement finished and I have been thinking about the different learning experiences of the different groups that we were on placement with and in particular the limitations on provision for the large numbers of Further Education students.

Nicely summarising the dilemma Collfield et al (2004) state:  “why should politicians, policy-makers, senior managers and practitioners in post-16 learning concern themselves with learning styles, when the really big issues concern the large percentages of students within the sector who either drop out or end up without any qualifications?”  To address this problem there have been arguments for pre-entry, entry, on-course and exit individual guidance but due to limitations of time and money and with increasing numbers of students possibly on part-time courses who may not need this provision it is recognised that this is not always the most effective intervention.  It is clear that more work is needed on which elements of careers provision should be provided and at what stage, in the further education context. 

It would seem that educational institutions are required to constantly evolve and adapt to changes in client groups and organisational and government priorities.  Government priorities will almost certainly change over time with perhaps the only certainty being that there will always be a pragmatic provision which will be limited by the funding that is available thereby focussing on a ‘value for money’ approach often looking for the best outcome for the least expense.  Resources are always limited and the ability of particular educational institutions to meet the sometimes conflicting needs of their client group and local and national government aims will always affect not only the ‘amount’ but also the ‘type’ of provision.

With a little more investigation, it transpired that he was actually very interested in youth work, community work or social work and in fact had considerable experience in youth work and spoke eloquently and quite movingly about his own experiences in life which had made him both interested and motivated to work in this area.

In the end he was advised about a particular community education course that he could do and was very likely to get accepted on and he was absolutely delighted – he hadn’t even known that such a thing was available.  When the career adviser asked how he would feel if he got on the course he said he would feel “very privileged”.  It was very nice to see such a positive outcome from a guidance interview – probably the most positive that I’ve seen on any of my placements.  

I couldn’t help thinking, though, about how different his life would have been if he had done the engineering that his Dad had suggested.  He clearly had no real interest or enthusiasm for it once he had found out more about it.  His Dad was quite obviously trying to help him get into what he thought would be a relatively safe and secure area of work – well intentioned but not particularly helpful.

But as I said, it was the clearest example I have seen of a positive outcome and left me (and him, I suspect) with a nice, warm feeling!

It was a different era when I grew up there – although not quite pre-historic(!) there was no internet or mobile phones and the highest tech equipment in our house was a recently acquired tv!

Looking back I had a very free early childhood, able to walk to school without my parents from the earliest age, going home for lunch at lunch time, able to play outside with friends and ride our bikes pretty much where and when we wanted.  If anything went wrong there you knew where everyone lived and there was always someone’s door you could knock on for help – no need for mobile phones!  I felt only support at that time.

However, as a teenager the village had very little to offer and seemed like the most constraining, claustrophobic place in the world!   Your parents knew what you had done before you had done it and as you were walking down the road you could see the curtains twitching!  There was a huge pressure to conform to the unspoken norms of the community and to live within its boundaries. 

The village at that time had 7 churches (of varying denominations) and 1 pub and that reflected the collective culture of the area.  Anyone seen coming out of the pub was considered to be on the road to alcoholism!  The man that delivered the coal in the village was one of these, although I’m sure he was just doing what we now consider to be normal behaviour, that is going out for a few drinks on a Friday night after a hard week’s work and maybe having one too many! 

Then there was  the case of the girl who was a talented ballet dancer but became pregnant outside marriage - shock, horror – and who’s career was then finished.  She bravely chose to keep her baby (unlike many other young single mums in those days) and bring her up as a single mum by living at her parents house in our village.  She was always labelled  and treated as a kind of outcast by my parents generation and only managed to live her now restricted life with the then broadminded support of her own parents.

Any teenagers with any get up and go, got up and went!

I did leave as soon as I could and loved the relative anonymity that Edinburgh offered along with the variety of people, the range of things to do and sheer bustle of it compared with the sleepiness of the village.  I suppose I kept that view over years – enjoying going home for weekends and occasional holidays for a bit of rest and recuperation – but always almost relieved to get away again!

The village is still considered to be ideal – still relatively safe – for bringing up young children and for retirement and does still have a disproportionate amount of young families and older people living there.

It was only once I had children myself that I saw the attraction again of this kind of community.  Suddenly the value of family and supportive community where everyone knows everyone became much more appealing.   Safety and security suddenly seemed much more important than facilities and bustle.  Same place – different perspective!  I didn’t succumb, however, and looking thought by now teeanage daughter’s eyes am glad to be living somewhere with relative freedom.

However, even now, going back the feeling of claustrophobia does come back to me and although my experience was relatively affluent with no real material deprivation and no terrible experiences I can still recognise the power of the collective culture on my feelings and behaviour at that time. 

I can only imagine how that must feel in areas of much greater material deprivation with far fewer means of escape…

I suppose after those ramblings I’m saying that communities – depending on their prevailing culture – can be both good and bad things.  They can offer both support and control and can affect, particularly teenagers’ views of the world and the possibilities that are open to them.  Awareness of these pressures can only be a good thing for career advisers.

Then I decided, now that it’s the holidays, that I would read a book for pleasure rather than as part of our course as I’ve not had time to do this since October! (I probably shouldn’t be doing it now either, but never mind…).

Anyway, I decided to read Barack Obama’s ‘Dreams of my Father’ which he wrote in 2004.  I’ve not finished it yet but was struck as soon as I started reading it by how much of it made me think about the theories we are learning about in class, in particular personal construct theory and narrative theory. 

Much of the book is about his recollections of his childhood which were to a large extent built from the stories that his family had told him.  He also attempts to recognise what formed him, what created his identity and what led to his current views and opinions.  A couple of examples of this are as follows.  In a quote from the first page:

“I…went to work with the belief that the story of my family, and my efforts to understand that story, might speak in some way to the fissures of race that have characterized the American experience, as well as the fluid state of identity – the leaps through time, the collision of cultures – that mark our modern life.” 

and a few pages further on:

“I learned long ago to distrust my childhood and the stories that shaped it.  It was only many years later…that I could circle back and evaluate these early stories for myself.  Or, more accurately, it was only then that I understood that I had spent much of my life trying to rewrite these stories, plugging up holes in the narrative, accommodating unwelcome details, projecting individual choices against the blind sweep of history, all in the hope of extracting some granite slab of truth upon which my unborn children can firmly stand”

While I was reading I couldn’t help thinking that this was a good example of personal construct theory where in this case he recognised that his identity had been constructed over time – often through the power of his own family’s stories or narratives – and that he was attempting to make some sort of coherent sense or ‘truth’ out of it all.  Furthermore, he was attempting to ‘re-write’ the narrative in a way that he would find more ‘truthful’ – hence the book.  In this case he was clearly aware of the fact that identities can be ‘fluid’ and that there can be different interpretations of the same narrative leading to a different view of identity. 

I’m now finding that the stuff we’re learning is colouring a lot of what I’m reading or watching on telly, when I’m chatting with friends and even when I’m negotiating with my teenage daughter!  I keep seeing bits of humanism, bits of existentialism, bits of construct theory etc wherever I go!! 

Which I suppose makes me think  that when we’re working as advisers (which I hope will be soon!!) as well as the practical tools that we have been given our practice will be informed – whether we like it or not – by all the theories we have absorbed throughout the course.

So much for switching off…!!

Perhaps it doesn’t matter at the end of the day.  Maybe as long as we have an understanding of all of them its using elements from each at the appropriat time and with the appropriate person that is the key?

But I was thinking about my Centigrade interviews and how much time had been spent, both by the pupil and myself, by them in filling in the questionnaire,  by me in reading through their reports prior to the interview and preparing accordingly and then in the interview itself.  I then thought about the story telling we had done in class and started to compare how much had been revealed about the person and what their view of the world and their place in it was from both exercises!

I now see that using storytelling or symbolic/picture storytelling can perhaps tell us more about a person using less time and resources than systems such as Centigrade, while keeping outcomes much more in the client’s domain.

I suppose I believe in the post modernist view that people should be allowed to take risks and that they will learn more if they are allowed to take these risks than if they are over directed into predictable but perhaps safe options.  As someone famous I’m sure said (but I can’t remember who!) it is in the making mistakes that the learning is done (or something to that effect!).  I suppose that is why employers now value experiences such as gap years where horizons are broadened and people gain life experience and new perspectives. 

I think it is also a generally held view in early years and primary education that children have to be allowed to determine their own limits/abilities by testing them in order to grow in confidence.  In doing that, they are bound to have the odd accident or make the occasional mistake but that is how they find out what their own abilities really are.  Perhaps the constructivist approach allows for this expansion of the person’s horizons in a way that Centigrade doesn’t.  If anything, the Centigrade system, by its very nature, limits the persons view of what is available to them.  This is fine if they already know that they want to go on to Higher Education but there are many other possibilities available to them that may make them happier which cannot be revealed by that type of questionnaire.

I felt that the Centrigrade interviews, although the questionnaires revealed a lot about the pupil through their answers, limited my knowledge of them to those answers!  Consequently it felt like I was directing them to discuss more about the outcomes of the questionnaire than about any other thoughts or feelings they might have.  The interview, while filling in some of the gaps, was focused so much on the results of the questionnaire that there was little time left to talk about any other options/thoughts they may have been having.

I keep wondering what I would have found out about them if they had instead been asked to write a story or to go through the exercise that we did with Grant in class.  That’s the first time I have sat down and thought about my life as a whole in that way and I did see unifying threads going through it that I hadn’t seen before.  Also speaking to my partner in class about her story, while making me feel like I understood her much better (even though we have already known each other for nearly 6 months) actually helped my understand mine more as well!

OK,  I had my doubts, but I think I’m a convert!

However, in the real world, it’s hard to see what setting this could be used in because of pragmatic considerations such as time constraints, as it must surely be quite a lengthy process if it is to be done effectively.  Also if you are to avoid bombardment of the client with questions drawing out the relevant information would also very time consuming?  Perhaps that is my lack of experience, though, as I have only observed Careers Scotland and Connexions which are similar in lots of ways.  Maybe using this as a tool is more feasible in, say, voluntary organisations?

Also, I’m still not entirely sure (although I understand that this is a different psychological model to psychodynamics) that unconscious thought processes (or at least thought processes that it is hard for the client to recognise) wouldn’t contribute to their personal constructs.  Can these constructs be changed so easily, depending on what has created them in the first place?

Also, does it only work on the premise that there is a problem within the client that needs fixing rather than just a need for information or support?

As always, I seem to have more questions than answers, but it does seem to be a very useful tool which would provide perhaps otherwise unseen clarification of areas of contradiction in a clients thinking which may be causing them problems.

I have been struggling to understand existentialism, humanism etc. and worrying about how they are relevant to careers advisers, so decided to take the time to read the link to Jean Paul Sartre on Grant’s blog, even though I find it really hard going!  Although I still found it hard to read I did suddenly think, when I read the quote above, that I disagree with the premise that we are completely free to make our own decisions.  When you are interviewing young people from seriously deprived backgrounds, it is hard to believe that their circumstances, whether at home or in their community, have not impinged on their freedom to make certain choices.

I think that is the value of careers education – in countering the circumstances that some people may face in their daily lives, such as racism, sexism, drugs, alcohol etc.  People cannot choose something that they do not know exists but also, sometimes they need to be helped to see how barriers that they may believe are insurmountable can be addressed. They may also need information about potential choices and the knowledge that support exists if they want it.  I think this can best be achieved through careers education rather than the individual interview.

If they then choose to continue with their current path that is then a free choice – otherwise their choices are sometimes seriously constrained by circumstances and so the existentialist view that their circumstances have no bearing on their actions is unconvincing.