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Education, training and labour market systems are increasingly being challenged by global developments, such as new and rapidly changing technologies, the 4th Industrial Revolution, demographic changes and climate change. All these have a profound impact on the lives of individuals and on society. The development of technology, especially information and communication technology (ICT), has boosted economic globalisation by providing new opportunities, but also new risks, as does the green transition. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated and amplified existing trends and challenges. Despite these uncertain developments, there is little doubt that a fast-evolving world and a changing labour market will require individuals to become lifelong learners, to acquire new competences to cope with change and to adapt and further develop existing competences. There is also a growing demand for valid information on changing labour markets and future prospects. This goes along with a growing need to support people in managing more frequent and complex transitions within and between education and work. In this context, there is a greater need than ever for career development support. At the same time, career development support 􀂱 that is lifelong career guidance, and in particular career education, and career development support for workers 􀂱 itself faces challenges in adapting to the new circumstances. Changes in delivery and developing the innovation capacity of career development support services are required to achieve deeper impact and empower individuals to manage their own career paths. Technology is already having an impact on traditional services, and the concept of career-management skills is increasingly gaining ground, not only in Europe but also on other continents. In order to help countries respond to the challenges of the green and digital transition, the COVID-19 recovery and regional specificities such as brain drain, but also to inform national policies, practices and future EU and ETF activities in general, the ETF has reviewed the national career development support systems of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. For these six countries, the ETF has also developed a regional synthesis report. The national reports were used as a source for the development of the regional synthesis report, which aims to provide of a clear and concise outline of the state of the national career development support systems in the six Western Balkan countries to allow for peer learning, and summarises key recommendations for further system development., peer-reviewed

Questo articolo analizza l'educazione al lavoro nelle scuole e come questa può contribuire alla prosperità e al benessere degli studenti. L’articolo fornisce una panoramica internazionale dei recenti sviluppi sul “career learning” e sul “career development”, rilevandone la crescente importanza per una maggiore competitività delle economie basate sulla conoscenza. A seguito delle grandi trasformazioni sociali e tecnologiche, il “lavoro significativo" mantiene la sua importanza come fonte di realizzazione e benessere. Tuttavia, nelle economie neoliberiste, gran parte del lavoro è sempre più causa di angoscia, difficoltà, sfruttamento e persino abuso. Per tali ragioni, nell’articolo si sostiene l’importanza di un'autentica “career education” che aiuti gli studenti a comprendere la natura del “lavoro significativo”, ad aspirare ad esso ed a decodificare le cause che ne vanificano l'accesso. Si afferma, inoltre, che un'autentica educazione al lavoro dovrebbe fornire gli strumenti intellettuali, incoraggiare a immaginare modi socialmente più giusti e soddisfacenti di coesistenza ed a raggiungere una certa misura di controllo individuale e collettivo sulle forze che plasmano le vite., This paper focuses on work education in schools and explores how it can contribute to the flourishing and wellbeing of students in a democracy. It first provides an overview of the recent developments in ‘career learning’ worldwide, noting the increasing importance that it has been given as a contributor to enhanced competitivity in knowledge-based economies. Despite major societal and technological transformations. In the neoliberal economies, however, much of the work is increasingly the cause of distress, hardship, exploitation and even abuse. For this, an authentic career education helps students understand the nature of meaningful work, to aspire to it, and to decode the causes that frustrate access to it. It is argued that, an authentic work education should provide the intellectual tools and encourage to imagine more socially just and fulfilling ways of living together, and to gain a measure of individual and collective control over the forces that shape lives., peer-reviewed

What is the potential of career guidance in a time where the coronavirus is disrupting work and life as we know it? How can we as career practitioners respond in a situation where we do not know what the world will look like and where we, as well as the citizens we meet, will have more questions than answers? In this article we argue, that supporting people to manage their way through the crisis is not enough. Career guidance should also help people to think about and shape the ‘new normal’., peer-reviewed

Dieses Papier befasst sich mit der schulischen Berufsvorbereitung und untersucht, wie diese so konzipiert werden kann, dass sie zum Gedei- hen und Wohlbefinden der SchülerInnen in einer Demokratie beiträgt. Zunächst bietet es einen Überblick über die jüngsten Entwick- lungen im Bereich „Career Learning“ weltweit und weist auf die zunehmende Bedeutung hin, die diesen als Beitrag zur Verbesserung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit in wissensbasierten Volkswirtschaften beigemessen wird. Der Beitrag verdeutlicht, warum eine zentrale Rolle der Arbeit im Lehrplan gerechtfertigt ist: Trotz bedeutender gesellschaftlicher und techno- logischer Veränderungen, die eine „Post- Arbeitsgesellschaft“ vorhersagen, behält „sinn- volle Arbeit" ihre Bedeutung als Quelle der Erfüllung und des Wohlbefindens sowie als Kennzeichen für ein gelingendes Leben. Ein Großteil der in neoliberalen Volkswirt- schaften verfügbaren Arbeit ist jedoch zuneh- mend die Ursache von Leiden, Not, Ausbeutung und Missbrauch. Es werden Argumente für eine glaubwürdige Berufsorientierung vorgebracht, die den Schülerinnen und Schülern hilft, das Wesen sinnvoller Arbeit zu verstehen, danach zu streben und die Ursachen zu entschlüsseln, die den Zugang zu dieser Arbeit behindern. Es wird dargelegt, dass glaubwürdige Berufsvor- bereitung - wie alle aufklärerischen Unterneh- mungen - die intellektuellen Werkzeuge zur Verfügung stellen und zu moralischer Ent- schlossenheit ermutigen sollte, sich sozial gerechtere und erfüllendere Formen des Zusammenlebens vorzustellen und ein Maß an individueller und kollektiver Kontrolle über die Kräfte zu erlangen, die das Leben formen., peer-reviewed

This paper draws on my experience and involvement in two comparative research projects on career guidance (CG) in the Mediterranean region that were carried out within ten years of each other (Sultana & Watts, 2007; Sultana, 2017). Here I highlight the main learning point from this research in the ‘global South’, namely, that ‘context matters’. There is an increasing interest in our field in the manner in which local realities shape career. Nevertheless, there is still a tendency for many of the leading theoretical models to either privilege ‘universalisms’ over ‘localisms’, or to consider localisms as mere exotic exemplars of cultural diversity, requiring theory ‘adaptation’ and ‘adjustment’. Instead, I approach such diversity as an opportunity to prise open spaces for critical reflection about how career guidance can serve the interests of global justice. Such a position draws on post- colonial perspectives and ‘southern epistemologies’ that critique the universalising claims about knowledge we find in Euro-American narratives. These master narratives also underpin what we understand by CG, providing its core assumptions, and defining as well as guiding its interactions with society. Here I first look at some of these assumptions, with a view to troubling and further unsettling their taken-for-granted nature. I then argue that ‘localisms’ are not only more likely to be relevant and useful in response to the specificity of context – they are also more likely to serve the interests of social justice., peer-reviewed

Interview with Prof. Ronald G. Sultana, lecturer at the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research at the University of Malta, N/A

The article is a review essay of the publication International handbook of career guidance, edited by J.A. Athanasou and R. Van Esbroeck., N/A

This paper considers some of the debates surrounding the term competence and the relevance that these have for the development of competence frameworks. Such frameworks are increasingly on the agenda, since they purport to support training programme development, to identify competence gaps, to promote self-development, and to ensure common standards. This paper shows, however, that notions of competence have specific meanings in particular contexts, that they have been contested, and that they have fallen into and out of favour over time. The paper concludes by teasing out the implications that competing definitions of competence have for the guidance field., peer-reviewed

Between 2001 and 2004, the OECD, the European Training Foundation, CEDEFOP and the World Bank carried out extensive reviews of career guidance, looking broadly at related policy and practice in both the labour-market and the education sectors. In 2002, the European PES Network’s Expert Group carried out a study on personalised services with a special focus on guidance and counselling, documenting examples of interesting practice in six Public Employment Services (PES). The present study, commissioned by DG Employment,Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities in October 2004 in collaboration with the Heads of PES Network, sets out to build on the accumulated knowledge of the previous reviews by drawing on the responses of 28 countries—the EU25 plus three EEA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland)—to a questionnaire survey that was specifically developed to facilitate the identification and examination of the place of career guidance in the Public Employment Services across Europe., peer-reviewed