Page 77 - Professionalising-career-guidance-practitioner-competences-and-qualification-routes-in-Europe

(e) Canadian standards and guidelines for career development practitioners: this set of
standards is highly elaborated, with a core cluster (five areas) and six areas of
specialisation; each area is divided into a number of functions, which are further divided
into competences;
(f) Professional standards for Australian career development practitioners: seven broad
categories, subdivided into up to 10 areas, often including one which explores
specialisations for that area;
(g) Ireland, framework of competences for guidance practitioners: this framework comprises
five main areas, some further subdivided, and each then supported by statements of
knowledge and understanding and what a practitioner will be able to do;
(h) United Kingdom national vocational qualifications (NVQs): occupational standards for
advice and guidance have long been included within the UK’s NVQ system. These
standards have undergone several revisions since their first development in the early
1990s; currently they comprise 30 units of competence, with a small number of units
being compulsory for accreditation (the exact identification of these depends on the level
of the award being sought);
(i) Estonian Qualification Authority: professional standards of career counsellor, career
information specialist and school career coordinator have been approved in
December 2005. The standard for career counsellors was updated on the basis of a
previous 2001 standard, whereas the two other standards were introduced as new in
2005.
Other standards exist or are under development, but at the time of this project none of
these were available in a sufficiently complete form or in an accessible language.
Each competence framework was reviewed at the beginning of this project to identify the
principles underlying its design and use. Once the draft framework had been developed by
the project, it was checked in detail against each existing framework to make sure that no
areas of competence considered significant elsewhere had been omitted.

5.2.2. The scope of the competence framework
Earlier studies (McCarthy, 2004; OECD, 2004; Sultana, 2003) explore the relationship
between tasks and roles undertaken by those who act as career guidance practitioners. As
noted (Section 2.1.), career guidance is frequently a set of tasks undertaken by someone with
another main specialist role, either acting alongside those for whom it is their main job or, in
some countries, as an alternative to establishing a specialised professional role. The
competence framework presented here focuses only on those tasks that relate to career
guidance delivery, whether as a specialism or as a sub-specialism. This distinction in roles is
frequently blurred: a teacher in conversation with a pupil may cover personal, educational and
career issues within one episode, and personal concerns frequently traverse such neat category
distinctions.
To set boundaries for the tasks to be covered by this competence framework, it was
decided to adopt the working definition of career guidance that was developed within the
OECD review (2004, p. 19), and which has been widely acknowledged elsewhere. It serves
as a useful definition for the purposes of this project:

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