Page 31 - Professionalising-career-guidance-practitioner-competences-and-qualification-routes-in-Europe

Postgraduate training in Iceland, soon to be extended to a full master’s qualification, has
trained people for careers work in all sectors: schools, public employment service, higher
education and the workplace. A newly increased emphasis on guidance in the workplace has
been strengthened by outreach delivery through nine lifelong learning centres, established
as part of a Leonardo da Vinci programme.
Elsewhere, as described later, specialised training is more specific to particular sectors.
Shared initial training, with appropriate specialisation, can be anticipated to make a strong
contribution to the development of a distinctive identity for career guidance practitioners,
which is separate from other professional identities. The benefits of a more coherent identity
for the career guidance profession include greater public awareness of the availability of
career services and of their potential usefulness to individual citizens. A counter-argument is
that services targeted to particular populations can more directly address specific needs
related to the age, stage and other conditions of the service user. But it is difficult to see
anything but advantage in moving towards common-core elements of basic training (as, for
example, in the new postgraduate qualification in Malta). This will enhance networking
between sectors, increase the possibility of job mobility between sectors for individual staff,
and contribute to building a profession and academic research community capable of
working across sectors. Where the available training is provided on an in-service basis, such
common-core training is less feasible. However, there is currently a distinct shift towards
raising levels of qualification, through training delivered within the higher education sector,
and this permits consideration of a concerted move towards common-core elements of
training.
In a few instances, however, there has been regression in the provision or coordination of
training. No specialised courses in career guidance exist in universities in either Flemish- or
French-speaking Belgium, and the limited number of academic posts with a career guidance
specialism has recently been reduced. The nascent interest in specialised training in
French-speaking Belgium will need to address this issue.
The UK has, for many years, had two paths to professional qualification: one largely
based on postgraduate academic study, the other through competence-based workplace
accreditation. Recent legislative changes in England to the delivery of young people’s
services have moved responsibility for accreditation of workplace training for career advisers
to a separate body, potentially placing in jeopardy the ability of staff to move between adult
and young people delivery sectors with the ease that was previously possible. By contrast,
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland offer all-age guidance services.
A few small countries do not, or have not until now, provided specialist training of their
own, but instead have accessed such provision in other countries. Thus career guidance
practitioners in Liechtenstein have traditionally accessed specialised training at master’s
level in Switzerland; those in Luxembourg have followed psychology degrees in other
countries, though with no requirement that these should include a specific career guidance
element. Postgraduate training in career guidance is also not available in Cyprus: staff there
undertake such study elsewhere, most frequently in the UK, but sometimes in the USA or
France. For those completing the postgraduate qualification in career guidance in the UK,

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