Elvis has left the building

I’ve enjoyed the RPE module: it totally made me think and the classes were interesting.  It was good to hear different oppinions – and then have to work out what your own thoughts were.  The module challenged alot of my ideas and persuaded me to change quite a few of them.  Although i didnt always agree with the underlying philosophies, they’re the opposite of my christian faith, i was always able to learn something from them.  I definately found the module useful and i think its relevant to the career advising role.

I read on LONGHOPE’s Blog that she will miss the social aspect of being part of the course group.  Thats totally the same for me. 

Telling a tale

When I first read Savickas’s narrative approach I thought it was ridiculous – he created the ‘Career style interview’ where the client is asked about their favourite book, tv character, childhood hero etc.  I found his questions irrelevant to careers guidance.  However, I’ve since changed my mind about narrative counselling. I can see how story telling allows the client to reveal what is important to them and ensures that the conversation is set in the context of their world view.  I think in other types of career counselling it’s possible for the counsellor’s perceptions and values to dominate over those of the client, simply because those of the client are never sought.

 

In class: Life space maps

 

I think drawing a life space map can be powerful.  It offers a holistic approach to career guidance as it lets you see the bigger picture of your life and how work fits into this.  (Life space maps might therefore be a good activity to use for career education based on ‘how to be idle’).  It celebrates what you’ve achieved, identifies what you want to change and motivates you for the future.  It’s a focused activity which helps to order to your thoughts.  It also reveals your beliefs, values and aspirations – the things that define you.  I think the visual nature of it operates in the same way as ‘reflecting back’ does in interviews –  they both hold up a mirror. 

 

However I not sure how confident I am about using life space maps.  It wouldn’t work with everyone and I’d be nervous that clients might scoff at the suggestion! I asked my friend to draw one so I could get an outsider’s impression of how they found it.  I thought it would be too removed from the norm but he was receptive to it and definitely found it helpful.  I can see how it might be a great tool for working with young people.  At an age when they might find it difficult to speak with adults or to express themselves, this would help them to articulate their thoughts.  The encoded nature of the maps would also give them control over how much they disclose.  Knowing their privacy was protected might encourage them to explore deeper.

 

 

…… But I still think Savickas can get carried away.  For example, he encourages clients to convert childhood recollections into newspaper-type-headlines in order to examine their meaning.

 

Example

 

Clients recollection: While in a campervan as a child, her grandparents tell her to stop moving around.

 

Headline: ‘Little girl annoyed because she must sit still’

 

Message: Powerful individuals have stopped her from pursuing her dreams, she must now move on and speak up for herself.

(Kidd, P.68)

 

Based on the above example I think there is the potential to manufacture problems.  For example, it might have been for safety that she was told to sit still.  It is also perfectly normal for every child to be told to sit still!  I think that by turning this into a story of the ‘client as oppressed’ it is undermining the experiences of real victims who have genuinely had to endure difficult circumstances. 

Person Centred v’s Social Constructivism

Michael Fielding: Personalisation, education and the market

 

My interpretation:

This article promotes person centred learning but it opposes how the government has defined person centred.  He argues that the government’s personalisation agenda is really just a masquerade for using peoples lives (the personal) to promote economic activity (the functional).  A lot of his argument is transferable to guidance and can therefore be used in the ‘This house believes person centred is unethical’ debate.

 

Here’s some of his argument:

1. It doesn’t look at how we become the people we are.  Its superficial because it ignores our past.  (He calls this ‘ahistorical’).

2. It ignores the big questions and is only concerned with ‘what works’.  Ethnical, social and political issues take a back seat.  (He calls this ‘technicist’). 

3. It focuses on individual choices and what they do for the person.  There is no thought for the common good or wider social allegiance.

4. There is no personal or community narrative, nor any evidence of meaning making.  It dismisses the cultures, occasions and structures which would have revealed this.  (He calls this episodic).

 

He concludes that the functional should only exist to promote the personal.  (The ‘personal’ being a vibrant and creative community).

 

The bit of the article that caught my attention was his phrase ‘communal nature of individuality’ as it seems to reconcile the ideas of community and the individual, instead of them being a dichotomy.  In the class discussions I found it difficult to choose between them as I think it might be possible to have both.   For me, person centred is the method/attitude of the counsellor and social constructivist theories are the framework.  By placing person centred within postmodernist theories it means that you can recognise that everyone is unique, and has individual worth, but it also allows you to recognise the influence of external factors, barriers and networks. 

 

{I also think it needs both because:

1. Individual choices: For example, you can have two siblings in the same family (thus the same community) but they can see things in totally different ways.  It can mean they lead very different lives because of the choices they make.  In this scenario it would be the individual, not the community, that was important.

2.  Sometimes people will have reasons to want to leave their community, or their own community will not accept them, or they may feel very isolated and have no sense of community – letting them speak in individualistic terms might therefore be the most appropriate.}

 

From class 22.5.08

Person-centred theories: After the debate I decided to take a second look at the 3 conditions and put them into my own words:

1. Genuineness: just being real. 

2. Unconditional positive regard: For me, I translate it into ‘respect’ because I think you can always demonstrate respect or act in a respectful manner towards another person, even when you’re expressing a difference of opinion.  I would also strive to be non-judgemental.  However, I’m just not sure what Roger means when he describes unconditional positive regard as, ‘a warm acceptance of each aspect of the client’s experience as being part of that client’.  “Warm acceptance” seems like a step beyond being non-judgemental.  I could remain professional and I could maintain a neutral stance by not displaying disapproval or approval but I’m not sure this is Roger’s ‘warm acceptance’.  I think there are certain situations where unconditional positive regard could therefore be difficult. 

3. Empathy: putting your self in the client’s shoes.  I think this can be achieved.

 

The EC approach: getting off the fence

D.Blustein, E.McWhirter, J.Perry: An Emancipatory Communitarian: Approach to Vocational and Development Theory, Research and Practice.

 

My interpretation: 

The EC approach might be summarised as follows:

1. It’s not an equal playing field.  Some people are disadvantaged by their circumstances and by social structures.  Previous approaches have sought to empower the individual by promoting meritocracy, personal advancement and free competition.  However, when people have different starting points this just perpetuates injustice.  Instead, the EC approach promotes communion, distributive justice, co-operation and a social activist agenda.

2. Its an action orientated moment, founded on 5 core values.  It seeks to change oppressive environments as well as help the individual.  (It’s a top level as well as a ground level approach).  It tries to prevent individual deficit models by examining the social context.

3.  It was also concerned with the role of power.  It aims to affirm the voices of those who have been made powerless by their circumstances.  It does this by emphasising the power they can have as a community and by involving them in interventions and research.  I think the latter point is a good one.  Instead of treating individuals as research fodder you could ask them what problems they want researched, thereby giving them the control. 

 

(The article made me think of Martin Luther King.  He said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” and “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality”).

 

This approach makes a lot of sense to me.   It’s about helping people to overcome disadvantage as well as trying to remove the underlying issues that cause disadvantage.  My only reservation was that by focusing so much on long term change it might limit how useful it was for the present.   For example, it might be like trying to tackle the long term issues of homelessness, such as providing affordable quality housing, but not doing anything to provide shelter in the meantime.  However at the end of the article (p.170) it comments that, ‘those who are interested in promoting social justice will not likely be oriented around prevention, public policy work and social advocacy at all times of their professional lives.  This degree of time commitment is seen as unhealthy and not encouraged’.  Social activism as an aspect of your professional work, not as main component, therefore seems the best approach to take. 

 

I think this is relevant for career advisors as they frequently operate in a sphere of influence and negotiate with both sides.  For example they may work with school pupils but also with colleges, they may work with young people but also the training provider, they may work with those made redundant but also employers etc.  I think this places them in a unique position of being able to understand all the different needs and having the potential to feedback ideas, advocate or negotiate, innovate or change.  I do believe that with a positive attitude there is always the potential to make a difference and improve things no matter where you work, even if it’s just in small ways.  (For example on placement I spoke with an employability adviser who ran a ‘Fit for Work’ week.  She set up a display in the office and used NHS pamphlets on health /depression and she tried to encourage healthy eating by setting up taster sessions of unusual fruit.  It received a good response and the outcome was that the centre continues to offer free fruit.) 

 

 

 

.

Confusions about Community

V.Barker, A.Watts, T.Sharpe & A.Edwards : Building career guidance capacity in the voluntary and community sector

 

This article analyses the Kent and Medway Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) programme for adults.  This is a partnership model where community and voluntary groups are contracted by the government to provide a service.  This is favoured by the government as it allows them to access clients who have been traditionally hard to reach.

Thoughts from the article:

1. (p 461) Providing IAG training to community workers produced the opposite outcome of what was intended.  This training, instead of equipping the community workers to provide guidance, made them more aware of their own limitations in their efforts to provid guidance.  This served to protect the professionalism of the Community Learning Mentors (who are qualified career advisors) as it created an ongoing need for their expertise.

2.  The article described ‘community-based guidance’ which is resource sharing & joined up working within a community location.  Using the ‘Competing conceptions of community’ handout you could argue that this approach matches the description of  ‘provision’ which is, “when communities are encouraged to provide services previously provided by the state, a kind of creeping privatisation”.

This is different from working with and in partnership with the community to deliver guidance which might be considered as true community guidance.

 

 

Failings of Group work?

R.Higgins & J.Westerguard: In search of Guidance Models for the Group Context 

My interpretation:

Career group work doesn’t have its own identity, it just delivers information as a supplement to the guidance that is given in 1:1 interviews.  Aware of its own faults it over compensates with entertainment (fun, games, quizzes) and offers no opportunity for participants to reflect.  It replicates the classroom with the teacher as the expert and the learning is geared towards future use rather than immediate application. 

The article then goes onto to analyse the best methods for teaching DOTS and ensuring guidance outcomes.

Their conclusions are neither radical or complete but I agree that there needs to be models specifically for group work.  I also agree that professionals display a lack of confidence in group work methods even as they use them.  Maybe a model using G.Kelly could be developed: the group setting could be used for comparing vocational constructs & safe role play.  ‘Group work guidance’ should capitalise on its differences from 1:1 guidance and the main difference is people. This would make the most important aspect of the model the interaction that takes place between group members not what is cascaded down from the ‘expert’ group leader.  I imagine ideas could be borrowed from group therapy models.

From class 20.3.08 :

1. We had a discussion about the role of counselling in career guidance:  At the start of the course I didn’t see why the two should be matched but I do now.  I think it is viable for career guidance to include some counselling.  I can see how talking about career issues could lead to talking about personal issues.  However there is a difference between listening to someone and counselling someone.  As career advisors we should always do the former but the latter needs additional skills.  In class I think we spoke about the two interchangeably.  If we are to be career counsellors then we need to be trained in ‘counselling’ and at present the Pg dip. doesn’t provide this.  

Personal Constructs

Greg Neimeyer: Personal Constructs in Career Counselling 

A more straightforward article than others (phew!)

My interpretation:

 

An approach that allows the individuals own experiences to take precedence in the interview.  It involves examining their personal constructs and the role they play in vocational choice as well as other things.  If I was trying to define “constructs” in a creative way, without just repeating his matrix /under grid terminology, then I would probably describe them like an aperture in a camera.  (This isn’t perfect) They are the means that people use to create their reality just like the aperture is the means that the camera uses to create an image.  The aperture, which controls how much light to let in, and constructs, which control how much ‘reality’ to let in, are both mechanisms for determining what we perceive.

 

I thought the article made some good points -:

1. Personal constructs are used to organise our experience and to anticipate and interpret events.  I think it’s so important to recognise this.  When our constructs are wrong (i.e. self defeating or destructive) helping people to think/perceive/measure something in a new way, an alternative construction as G.Kelly puts it, can be life changing. It’s the half full/ half empty glass argument.

2. I like how the grid reveals the individual’s occupational values not just their preferences.  I think this is important.

3. The articles says that this technique explores the “spectrum of the self, earliest sense of self to a self you might dream of’. If this can genuinely be achieved then it seems like a good approach.

 

From class 19.3.08:

1. We spoke about how we can become a whole different person when put in a different setting or when mixing with different people.  I think people and situations bring out different sides of your character.  However, I don’t think it should cause us to have a different set of values. I think if we fundamentally change then that can be due to our lack of integrity sometimes not because we lack an essence.

2. I think Kelly makes a good point about learning alternative ways of seeing the world so that we can choose not be trapped in the past and therefore avoid the ‘victim’ mentality.  Easier said than done sometimes but definitely the right approach.

   

Humanism?

Martin Heidegger – Letter on Humanism

My interpretations -

Page 250: He opposes humanism and its reliance on ‘logic’.  To think against ‘logic’ is not to appeal to the ‘illogical’ but rather it is an attempt to look at the beginnings of logic and how it came to be called that. 

Page 251: We don’t let things just be, we always have to accord value to them.  When we do this -  it is immediately subjective.  In the process we sell things short. 

(I’m seeing a theme here. See entry on Nietzsche below)  

Overall: I think humanism is flawed (I don’t believe in a strict allegiance to rationality – some things cant be explained by reason alone) but Carl Rogers approach still makes sense to me.

 Foucault: The Limits of Humanism

My interpretations –

Humanist myths promise freedom so we enslave ourselves to them.  Foucault doesn’t like the Humanist reliance on “scientific truths” as he believes they are a product of political power struggles.  He thinks these false truths have also influenced our ethnics and subsequently our sense of right and wrong.  What we consider right, and thus normal, therefore becomes something scientific that can be measured. 

I thought his ‘madness’ example was weak.  He says that hospitalizing the insane and recognising their condition, instead of grouping them with criminals, was a political action not a humanitarian one.  They have swapped one kind of prison for another.  This could be right, however it could also be true that it was motivated by a compassionate desire to help and ease suffering and if it wasn’t then it is now.  Maybe I am over-simplifying his arguments – but to mistrust/ challenge everything is not admirable even if you do it with great intelligence and articulate arguments.  Its easy to be a questioning cynic.

 Implications for Career Advising

I can see how humanism leads to ‘client centred’ career guidance but I wasn’t sure what career guidance would result from Heidegger/ Foucault thinking or what existentialist career guidance might look like?  I don’t think I would like it but it would be interesting.

 From class 12.3.08

1. Brief point about Rollo May and how clients should get out the victim role : This was related to clients coming to a Career Advisor (CA) for answers.  I don’t think of a CA as giving answers (although they may know resources where some answers can be found), I think they should be part of a process to help a client reach their own answer.  I read Krumboltz’s: A learning Theory of Career Counseling and thought that it presented this idea really well.

2.  I thought the many benefits of Reflective practice (RP) as opposed to Evidence based practice were made clear in class today.  I am totally persuaded by it.  I think it keeps you creative, effective and always learning.

Breaking Dots

Journal Article – Phil McCash: We’re all career researchers now: breaking open career education and DOTS 

Interesting article that encourages a more creative approach (which I’m all for).  It requires that Career education becomes a ‘subject’ in its own right.  To ensure that pupils / students were equipped to construct/research their own career development models they would first have to be taught and taught over some time.   His paper proposes the new approach of “students as career researchers” - he is really just advocating experiential learning – which is always a winner as it reinforces learning and brings additional skills/ confidence in the process.  Although I didn’t fully understand his point of ‘self-environment interpenetration’, he did persuade me that there are some problems inherent in DOTS:

 

1. DOTS is old fashioned thinking – Lack of evolution doesn’t always concern me, correct ways of doing things can stand the test of time, however the method of delivery should keep up with the times.  So I don’t disagree with all of DOTS, I think as a framework it is a good starting point, but the way it is taught might suit the McCash revamp. 
2. DOTS says ‘work can provide self fulfilment’:  I agree that your sense of identity should not be dependant on your job.  For some people work is a means to get by and nothing more (‘live for the weekend’ mentality): this can be an uncomfortable thought for me particularly if it involves a low skill, low paid, repetitive, unsatisfying job.  I’m not career driven at all but I do think work can be a good place for personal development.  However if a talent, energy and skills are being used in other areas of  life then a job might not be as important as we make out.  The important thing is that potential is reached within life.  If someone is comfortable with the job they are doing and want nothing more from it then that should be fine.  The point is good: maybe there’s no shame in work just being a source of income.  It’s the work – life balance argument again.
3. McCash suggests the role of career education is to challenge worldview generalisations and compare our ideas against theories.  It’s philosophical but seems like a good approach.

 

From class 5.3.08:

 

1. My summary of Nietzsche is: “Believe nothing, challenge everything”.  Admirable to be a thinker but at some point you need to stop and accept that we are simply not smart enough, and never will be, to work it all out.  I think we do need to have a safety point cut off and a genius might go further but they also need to know limits.

2. Debate about speaking to a Career Advisor about the best time to have a family:  I thought this was a fair point.  I don’t believe in planning out your life to say “at this age I will do this”, I find that too presumptuous, but there would be nothing wrong with speaking to an Advisor about opportunities for going part time / job share if you were starting a family. 

3. Theories: I wasn’t sure if I was a pluralist eclectic?  I believe there can be common points that all advisors agree on and that your personality might influence the rest.  Still thinking this one through – maybe by the end of term I will have decided.

4. Realism Debate: I think there is a place for realism.  It doesn’t need to be negative, it can be the practical side of your dreams that helps you plan your steps. However, when someone is seriously misguided I do think they need to be challenged, albeit gently.  I’m not sure you get many people who want to follow their dreams – often people have removed the opportunity themselves by deciding it was just daydreams. 

How to be idle

Tom Hodgkinson : How to be idle – 9am and 11am Chapters 

I think Hodgkinson’s main difficulty is the loss of choice, independence and control that comes with having a job.  I had to keep flicking back and forth to work out what his definition of ‘idle’ actually was.  I decided that it seems to be based round constructive leisure time (for example Page 28 promotes time to “pursue your own projects”) as opposed to laziness and doing nothing.  He makes the occasional good point: The new enemy of leisure is related to the desire for possessions and status. (p.26) I would agree with this.  But overall he didn’t persuade me with his arguments.  He did entertain me though!

 

I had a look at The Idler webpage to see what ‘projects’ self proclaimed Idlers were ‘pursuing’ but it was predominantly a collection of complaints about previous bad jobs and being drunk.  (ok, thats a sweeping generalisation – but I had expected that it would show more creative/ inspiring examples of how people were spending their free time)

 

 I think he is confused in his definition of ‘skiving’: he thinks a ciggie at 11am or day dreaming in the classroom qualifies as skiving – but having a work break or losing your concentration arent really examples of proper rebellion.  However, pulling a sickie is proper skiving and he quotes that ‘idleness to be sweet must be stolen’. 

 

When I was reading these chapters it made me think of A.S. Neil’s Summerhill school, England .  The school’s most important rule is the right to play.  All lessons are therefore optional.  I think Hodkinson would probably like this ethos.

 From class 27.2.08 : Two things I found interesting:  The brief discussion on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and how it can be criticised for telling you how to think.  I only know a little about it but I’m persuaded on its merit and that it can be really helpful so the comment caught my attention.  Secondly, just talking about the work-life balance in class made me want to make better use of my free time!  I used to be really into photography so I made a point of getting my camera out this week and taking photos and I also made more time for catching up with folk.  So the class was quite helpful in motivating me.