FIRST NICE WEBINAR
FUTURES FOCUSED CAREER GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING?
How career guidance counsellors in training perceive career guidance and counselling and how futures perspective is present in their thinking
Riikka Michelsson

Free event with voluntary donation
15th July 2024
3.30-4.30pm (CET)
Live online on zoom

Riikka Michelsson, Senior Lecturer, M.Sc., Doctoral Researcher
Riikka works as a senior lecturer at the Jamk University of Applied Sciences, School of Professional Teacher Education in Jyväskylä. Jamk is one of the five UASs who teach career guidance counsellors (the so-called guidance counsellors at schools, 60 ECTS), along with two (academic) universities in Finland. In both higher education institutions, the students obtain the same qualifications. At the same time, Riikka is pursuing her Doctoral Studies at the University of Turku, Futures Research Centre, thus the emphasis on future thinking in career guidance. Riikka is also interested in dialogical interaction skills and competences in career guidance. This webinar is about her first sub-study and article (manuscript) in the article dissertation process where the overall purpose is to design a futures focused career guidance and counselling model.

Abstract
Educational and career counselling have a long tradition in Finland. Both the education sector and public employment services have provided guidance. Supporting lifelong career management skills has been the focus of developing career guidance and counselling in Finland for some time now. It has been defined, for example, in the Lifelong guidance strategy and in curricula. Research into how lifelong career management skills are supported in practice or how they are understood is not yet exhaustive. We studied how career guidance counsellors in training (the so-called guidance counsellors at schools) perceive support of lifelong career management skills, career guidance and counselling as well as futures perspective as part of their understanding of guidance.
Through qualitative content analysis, we discovered five main categories in the final assignments of students related to career guidance and counselling: Career and employment, Professional skills and learning, Taking your own path, Choices and decisions, and Futures perspective in guidance. Based on our research findings, the understanding of supporting lifelong career management skills and futures perspective in career guidance and counselling is rather weak. Despite the many development measures, there seems to be a gap between policy level and practitioner level understanding and action when it comes to fostering career management skills of the counsellors. Therefore, we suggest that career guidance and lifelong career management skills should be emphasized even more in the education of career guidance counsellors. In this webinar we discuss the implications for education of counsellors.
Keywords: career guidance and counselling, lifelong career management skills, future, content analysis

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