School guidance counsellors learning through work experience placements

Abstract

Work experience placements feature increasingly in mainstream schooling. They are seen as presenting young people with engaging and relevant learning opportunities. As with other changes in our understanding of schooling, this shift carries implications for the ongoing education of teachers. One way of preparing teachers with some of the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to implement work experience programmes in school is to give them the opportunity to taste ‘work experience’ for themselves and then to reflect on their own learning. This article reports on the reactions of trainee school guidance counsellors to placements in a variety of settings as a compulsory part of a one‐year, full time training course. The data suggest a pattern of course participants moving from initial resistance towards greater empathy for young people in workplace situations.

Notes

1. For a fuller exploration of some of the issues facing employers offering placements see Jeffers (2003).

2. It is also worth noting that in some schools teachers other than guidance counsellors have taken responsibility for work experience so that a complex pattern of provision is emerging.

3. Some of the challenges for guidance counsellors arising from these curricular changes are explored in ‘The guidance counsellor and the senior cycle’ in Guideline, newsletter of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, October 2003.