Career guidance in collaboration between schools and work organisations

ABSTRACT

When students have an unclear image of an occupation, it has negative effects on their career. To form a realistic picture of work, it is important that students have practical experiences and career-related guidance. A two-year project has yielded insight into collaboration between schools and work organisations. We present the results of a desk research on 17 performed studies, four case studies and 34 interviews. Results show that collaboration between schools and organisations takes place mainly through divided responsibilities rather than shared responsibilities and that a career dialogue with students is still often missing. Recommendations are made regarding how to promote career guidance for vocational education students through authentic collaboration between school and work organisations.

KEYWORDS:

• Career guidance
• career development
• counselling training
• qualitative methods
• practice based learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marinka Kuijpers is professor at the Welten institute of the Open University in the Netherlands and director of Loopbaangroep, organization for career guidance.