Page 6 - euroguidance-insight-2018-autumn

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Dialogue and cooperation: one way to provide

quality assurance in career guidance

The dialogue among stakeholders plays an important role for quality assurance in career
guidance as identified by a project focusing on improving the quality in career guidance.

There has been a persistent need to create a plat- quality; quality assurance standards, including ethi-
form for cooperation based on mutual consent cal issues and appropriate legislation; relevant train-
among members which will enable the sharing of ing and supervision made available for counsellors;
professional experiences, supporting career guid- cooperation and peer learning; accessible sources of
ance as a profession. Based on this idea the Associ- information; tools and knowledge regarding the eval-
ation for Career Guidance and Career Development uation of career guidance and a clear declaration of
(Sdružení pro kariérové poradenství a kariérový roz- responsibility for quality in career guidance.
voj, SKPKR) was founded last year. Together with At the beginning of this year, several meetings in
the Slovak Association for Career Guidance and Ca- different regions of the Czech Republic were orga-
reer Development, which plays an important role in nized to invite more stakeholders to the discussion
this project, the Czech Association became a partner regarding quality in career guidance. These meet-
of the Erasmus+ project – Improving of implementa- ings have opened various aspects of discussion rele-
tion of quality assurance in career guidance project.
vant for quality assurance, e.g. different expectations
The goal of the project is to strengthen the imple- and demands on quality from clients, counsellors,
mentation of quality assurance in career guidance managers and service providers as well as higher
based on the experiences of existing quality assur- requirements regarding the quality on counsellors
ance systems at national and international levels themselves, which may be due to counsellors feeling
(e.g. the National Career Guidance Award as one of overwhelmed, unrecognized or neglected in their ef-
quality assurance initiative in the Czech Republic). forts, therefore providing a lower quality service.
A structured dialogue among stakeholders has been Consequently, the Czech Association for Career
an important tool for identifying successful factors of Guidance and Career Development in cooperation
existing quality assurance systems. with the Euroguidance Centre will organize a joint

Based on the data gained from the surveys, which fo- seminar for all relevant national stakeholders to dis-
cused on quality assurance, we concluded that quality cuss quality assurance in the Czech Republic in June
assurance is generally considered to be the responsi- 2018. The programme will be supported by inspira-
bility of individual counsellors, and that organisations tional best practices from partner countries and one
often only provide partial guidelines on how to strive of the speakers will be Karen Schober from Germany
for it. Quality is often understood to be a combination who will share from her vast experience.
of positive feedback from the clients, the qualification It is clear that dialogue and cooperation among stake-
level of counsellors, the quality processes set up by holders is playing an important role for quality assur-
the organisation providing career guidance and/or the ance in career guidance. However, the practicalities
focus on counselling process and its impact. of hearing the opinions of all involved and finding a
shared consensus seems to be rather challenging.
Respondents also expressed their recommendations
regarding the improvement of quality assurance: a Kateřina Hašková, Association for Career Guid-
shared understanding of career guidance and its ance and Career Development