A routine perspective on implementing reflective career conversations in education

ABSTRACT

Reflective career conversations are a necessary instrument in the career guidance of students in vocational education. These conversations help students to learn from their (work) experiences and gain a better understanding of their motives on the labour market. Research shows that in a society in which change seems to become the only constant factor, knowing one’s own motives in work is important. However, the introduction and implementation of reflective career conversations in Dutch vocational education is problematic. In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘routines’ to better understand the nature of these problems. The concept ‘routine’ allows us to understand in much more detail what is required to induce the necessary behavioural changes that are required from teachers, students and management. Recognition of the complexity of this process and the willingness to invest are necessary prerequisites to prevent reflective career conversations from becoming the next ‘trick’ or ‘trendy innovation’.

KEYWORDS:

• Implementation
• routines
• reflective career conversations
• educational change
• behavioural change
• vocational education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Peter den Boer is lecturer at the VET college ‘ROC West-Brabant’. His fields of interest are career guidance and career learning, teacher team learning, educational change and organisational change.

Ir Aimée Hoeve is senior researcher at the Research Centre Quality of Learning of the HAN University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. Her research interests focus on workplace learning and routine change, development of vocational expertise, design of hybrid learning environments and co-makership VET and industry.

Notes

1 The concept of reflective career conversations refers to the specific conversational techniques used in order to induce and support reflective processes in an individual. The reflective processes first of all relate to a person’s motives, that which propels someone in life, especially in labour. For more information about these specific conversational techniques, we refer to Meijers and Lengelle (2015, 2016) and Kuijpers and Meijers (2015). The concept of career learning entails learning for one’s career. The realisation of that encompasses an educational environment that is practice-oriented, dialogue-oriented and demand-oriented simultaneously (Kuijpers, Meijers, & Bakker, 2006).