Quality in Career Guidance: A Complex Concept
Explore the multifaceted nature of quality in career guidance, as seen through the eyes of seasoned expert Erik Hagaseth Haug. Delve into structural, outcome, and procedural quality aspects, and learn how diverse perspectives shape our understanding of quality. Uncover the importance of a context-resonant quality framework for professionalizing career guidance effectively.
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Introductionary lecture Quality in career guidance Erik Hagaseth Haug Bari November 2022
About me Associate Professor at the Department of social work and guidance. About 15 years of experience as guidance practitioner in the sector of career education and career guidance. Worked on national, regional and municipal development projects. My main areas of expertise are the development of quality and innovation in career guidance services. Selected publications: Haug, E.H. (2021) The importance of a context resonant quality framework in continuous professionalization of career guidance: the case of Norway. In Rethinking professionalism of career practitioners in the digital context. Cedefop. Haug, E. H. (2016). Kvalitet i norske skolers karriereveiledning [Quality in Norwegian schools career guidance] (Doctoral thesis). H gskolen i Innlandet Haug, E. (2016). Can you hear the people sing? Quality-development in career guidance in Norwegian Schools: A study on the importance of awareness of different voices. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 37(1), 12-18. Haug, E., Hooley, T., Kettunen, J., & Thomsen, R. (Eds.). (2020). Career and Career Guidance in the Nordic Countries. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Sense. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004428096.
Agenda for this lecture The concept of quality in career guidance Quality assurance and continuously quality development The importance of a context resonant quality framework in continuous professionalization of career guidance
Defining quality in career guidance The Oxford dictionary defines quality as the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something . Hooley and Rice (2018) describe quality assurance in career development as a range of techniques that can be used to ensure consistency in the way that activities are approached. (p. 2).
Structural quality (the organization of the servide) Outcome quality What makes it excellent? Procedural quality (the quality of the methods and approaches used in guidance) the degree of excellence measured against a standard
Quaility in career guidance a complex and contested concept If you scratch below the surface, we discover that we have different views about what quality really is. This is likely to depend on who we are, our social background, the evaluative criteria we use, past experiences, and so on. Most importantly, different people have different expectations and standards (Sultana, 2018, p. 8). Photo: leaderproject.eu
Structural issues The OECD (2004) argued that there were three main models of delivery for school-based career education and guidance. Internal (where guidance is delivered primarily by the school), External (where guidance is mainly delivered by an external body working into the school, and Partnership (where guidance is jointly delivered by the school and an external body).
Integrated Career Guidance and Career Learning The development of integrated guidance requires careers professionals and service designers to explore questions of what technologies to use and how to use them. This includes considering how digital learning environments should be designed, considerations of what the role of educators and careers professionals are and critically, questions about how online provision can be symbiotic with the activities that take place face- to-face.
Procedural issues Source: ILO Resource Handbook (Hansen, 2006)
Need for an awareness on different underlying understandings Hooley and Rice (2018): quality systems are not neutral, but rather a tool that lends power to particular groups, and privileges certain sorts of practice and certain kinds of outcomes above others How issues of quality are conceptualised and addressed in the field of career guidance varies across different countries and contexts for policy and practice Quality assurance is an attempt to provide a framework against which policy and practice can be checked.(p.473).
Four approaches to quality assurance in career guidance Hooley and Rice (2018, p. 480) propose four approaches to quality assurance in career guidance: 1. regulatory approaches that focus on legal requirements imposed on providers as a means of improving quality 2. advisory approaches that describe what quality looks like for providers, and may include exemplars of good practice for them to follow 3. organic approaches who view quality as being defined by the provider and the professional; and 4. competitive approaches view quality as being driven by customer responses.
Quality assurance and continuously quality development scratch below the surface Continuously Quality development Are we doing the right things? Quality assurance Are we doing things right? 1. What are the key issues careers guidance in my organization are set to solve? 1. What are the stated objectives for career guidance in my organization? 2. How does the representation of key issues affect the objectives for career guidance in my organization? 2. Do we achieve the objectives through (a) how we are organized, (2) the content/methods we have chosen? 3. Do we achieve the objectives through (a) how we are organized, (2) the content/methods we have chosen? Haug, 2016
Structural quality (the organization of the servide) Outcome quality What makes it excellent? Procedural quality (the quality of the methods and approaches used in guidance) the degree of excellence measured against a standard
Many potential problem representations / expected areas of excellence Examples of expected outputs for guidance in schools (Hughes & Carson, 2018, p. 16)
An awareness of the need to ground career guidance approaches in the specificities of economic, social and cultural realities is needed to secure that the action taken resonates the specific issues in a given context This implies that before a quality framework can be fully utilized, in this case as a resource for the development of the digital guidance service, it has to be adjusted and customized according to the given contexts. Such contextualization is framed as context-resonance (McMahon et al., 2014) It implies taking a framework in context perspective that considers complexity and avoids oversimplification of societal structures and mechanisms that potentially affect the usefulness of it.
Final recommendations A quality system cannot just be a framework that is written down (Hooley, 2019). If it is going to have an impact, both on an individual and societal level: it needs to be implemented and governed carefully. build on lessons learnt from other countries and theoretical contributions on the complexity of quality as concept, combined with a sustained awareness of the need to be context resonant for national, regional and local characteristics, and that the further development should be based on co-creative measures
Website for supporting the schools www.guidingschools.eu THANKS!
Further reading Haug, E.H. (2021) The importance of a context resonant quality framework in continuous professionalization of career guidance: the case of Norway. In Rethinking professionalism of career practitioners in the digital context. Cedefop. Haug, E. H. (2016). Kvalitet i norske skolers karriereveiledning [Quality in Norwegian schools career guidance] (Doctoral thesis). H gskolen i Innlandet Haug, E., Hooley, T., Kettunen, J., & Thomsen, R. (2020). Setting Nordic career guidance in context. In Career and career guidance in the Nordic countries (pp. 1-20). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill |Sense. doi:10.1163/9789004428096_001. Hooley, T. (2019). International approaches to quality in career guidance. Oslo: Skills Norway. Retrieved 16.11.20 from: https://www.kompetansenorge.no/globalassets/karriere/international-approaches-to- quality-in-career-guidance.pdf Hooley, T. & Rice, S. (2018). Ensuring quality in career guidance: a critical review. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, online first. doi: 10.1080/03069885.2018.1480012. Sultana, R.G. (2020). For a postcolonial turn in career guidance: the dialectic between universalisms and localisms, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, DOI: 10.1080/03069885.2020.1837727.
Question for reflection in next session How do I understand quality in career guidance? What does quality in career guidance mean for me? What does it mean for my school/my work place?
