Professional standards and professional identity: perspectives of career development practitioners in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

School career development practitioners facilitate the career development learning of young people in schools through activities such as career assessment, career counselling, career education, and workplace preparation. Provision of school career development services requires highly specialised as well as broad-based knowledge and skills to support students to manage their lives, learning, and work. To date there is no requirement in Australia or New Zealand for training or qualifications explicitly in career development to enter employment in the field. Consequently, although career development practitioners in schools engage in support and guidance of young people for careers that typically involve training and qualifications, some school career development positions are filled by individuals without training or qualifications specific to the field. A shared understanding of specialised career development knowledge exists across country contexts. Some countries have introduced professional regulation of their career development industry through professional standards. Australia's career industry has a national peak body, the Career Industry Council of Australia (CICA), which introduced and oversees the professional standards. New Zealand does not have an equivalent professional body. Unlike established professions such as teaching and psychology, the career industry remains largely unregulated in most countries. In established professions there are clearly defined entry pathways that assist individuals to construct their professional identity, whereas the entry pathway is less defined for career development practitioners and constructing a professional identity may be more challenging. Greater understanding is needed about the influence of professional standards on the professional identity of individual career development practitioners. To address this gap in knowledge, this research investigated school career development practitioners' perspectives of professional standards and professional identity in two country contexts; Australia where professional standards were introduced in 2006, and New Zealand, which to date has no nationally agreed career development professional standards. Australia has greater professional regulation of the career development industry through the Career Industry Council of Australia and its professional associations and professional standards compared to New Zealand. However, neither country has government policies that regulate the industry. v Publications during candidature No publications Publications included in this thesis No publications included Contributions by others to the thesis No contributions by others Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of another degree None Research Involving Human or Animal Subjects Ethics approval was granted by the University of Queensland Human Ethics Unit on 8

Let’s talk about career guidance in secondary schools! A consideration of the professional capital of school staff in Ireland and England

“…The guidance counsellor is required to deliver a holistic and integrated model of guidance counselling, but may also be required to do curriculum subject teaching (DES, 2012;Hayes & Morgan, 2011;Hearne et al, 2016;Leahy et al, 2016;IGC, 2016). This raises particular concerns about role diffusion, professional isolation and burnout for guidance counsellors who have become over-stretched and under-resourced (Leahy et al, 2016;Mullen, Blount, Lambie, & Chae, 2018;O'Reilly, 2018). The support of teaching staff to reinforce the delivery of the curricular components of careers guidance is extremely important, but this may be a new professional area to participate in that requires a disposition towards career guidance work as well as a new set of skills and competencies (Foxx et al, 2017;Hearne et al, 2016;Lam & Hui, 2010;Hearne and Galvin., 2014).…”