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available, both to develop their knowledge and skill levels and to improve their status in
relation to career promotion opportunities.
2.2.2. Induction training
Induction training is common within public employment services where employees follow
structured programmes; these programmes come after recruitment on the basis of general
educational qualifications or qualifications regarded as a proxy for specialised career
guidance training. Frequently their induction covers a range of administrative and procedural
aspects of their work as well as client-interaction skills. In the past, PES training may have
followed a social efficiency tradition, but there are changes in the training offered to PES staff
in many countries and any of the other traditions above may become more prominent,
depending on the policy initiatives which now direct services.
Induction training produces a more varied picture in other career guidance settings.
Notably within education settings, the combination of previous professional training in a
related field such as pedagogy or youth work, with experience of work with the client group
(school, college or university students), can lead to a situation where induction training is not
prioritised. Across the whole range of educational institutions and networks, those moving
laterally into career guidance from other professional roles may bring diverse experiences,
values and motivations. This will be influenced by their earlier professional training (which
itself will have had characteristics of any of the four traditions in the typology outlined above)
and by the values and social purposes of earlier and current work settings.
2.2.3. Continuing in-service training
Continuing training is necessary in a context where change is rapid both in the information
context for much career guidance work, notably labour market information (LMI) and training
structures, and in the operational structures within which delivery teams are based. The pace
of change raises superficial dilemmas, such as information updating, which – when
unravelled – expose profound questions that can only be fully addressed by consideration of
typologies such as the four traditions outlined above. As one example, a country contributor
suggested that labour-market knowledge should be a topic positioned largely within
continuing in-service training because of its rapid change; another commented on the need
for the inclusion of labour market study in initial training to develop sound theoretical
understanding of the complexities related to labour markets, as an essential context for
interpreting ongoing change.
2.2.4. Historical perspective
Training responds to broader social conditions. It is possible to trace the ascendancy of
apprenticeship-style training, academically-situated training (particularly following the
expansion of university-based provision during the last half-century), competence-based
approaches and a reflective practitioner route (Schön, 1987). More recently, much training is
based on a mix of developments from earlier models: for example, aspects of apprenticeship
are evident in the attention now paid to ‘communities of practice’ and situated learning (Lave
and Wenger, 1991). Countries in Europe are adapting their training systems to national
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