Today I’m presenting at the Canterbury Christ Church University conference on Living now, thriving together: Community sustainability and wellbeing for possible futures conference. This is part of my role as a visiting professor at CCCU. I’m going to be talking about Flourishing while careering in an imperfect world. This is what I’m planning to say. Flourishing while careering through an imperfect worldDownload ..read more

Over the last year or so I have been working with a very inspiring group of Nordic colleagues to investigate research into career guidance policy. This weekend we successfully published our article A systematic review of research into career guidance policy in the Nordic countries (2008-2022). In the article we look at the research which was conducted into career guidance policy in the Nordic countries between 2008 and 2022. We reviewed a total of 60 papers and found that they variously focused on national career guidance systems, career guidance systems for young people, the adult guidance s ..read more

A couple of weeks ago I was very privaleged to take part in a CDI/NICEC webinar entitled Reframing career practice in a hybrid world. The event was hosted by Rosemary Mclean and Cathy Brown on behalf of NICEC and also saw contributions from me, Sikin Jynge and Nalayini Thambar. The whole event was recorded and is now available on YouTube, so I wanted to make it accessible to people here ..read more

Are you interested in studying for an MA in Career Guidance and Development? If so, we are now open for applications for the 24/25 academic year for our MA programme. If you study with us you will become part of the International Centre for Guidance Studies which is the leading global research centre in career guidance and development. The masters will enable you to gain the Qualification in Career Development (QCD) alongside an MA. The QCD is the licence to practice in careers work in the UK. You can apply for the programme on the University of Derby’s website. We are also running a series o ..read more

Last week my colleague Sikin and I tool part in one of the Cutting Edge webinars organised by CDI and NICEC. These webinars are designed to connect research and theory with practice. This webinar included input from us, Rosemary Mclean, Cathy Brown and Nalayini Thambar. We were all discussing the shift of life and work to online and hybrid forms. Sikin and my presentation looked at one option for responding to this through integrated guidance. I’m hopeful that there will be a video of the webinar that I can share in the future. But for now, I’ll just share our slides in case they are of inter ..read more

NICEC Conference 2024 is focused on Career and Sustainability. We are defining sustainability broadly, as ‘the integration of social equity, economic vitality and environmental health and well-being in order to create thriving healthy, diverse and resilient communities now and in the future‘. It will be taking place on the 2nd and 3rd July in Birmingham, UK. Bookings for the conference are now open and it is possible to attend either face-to-face or online. The conference programme is now available and the full workshop programme has just been published. Hope to see you all there NICEC confer ..read more

My colleagues at the Inland Norway University have just released a new book called Ikke bare god å snakke med [Not just good to talk to]. It covers all aspects of professional career guidance in Norway and includes two chapters co-written by me. The book argues that career guidance addresses a range of big and small questions related to life, learning and work. In career guidance, professionals work to develop their students’ or client’s competence to handle the challenges and choices that various career transitions bring with them. By the way, in Norwegian they have the word ‘veisøker’ which ..read more

I have been very pleased to collaborate on a new article with my colleagues Rie Thomsen and Manwel Debono on a new article exploring the legacy of Ronald Sultana. The article is called A legacy of solidaric critique and hope for a better world: A meditation on the scholarly contribution of Ronald Sultana and appears in the latest issue of the NICEC journal. In the article, we reflect on Ronald’s legacy. We argue that he was a major figure in the development of career guidance theory and practice of the late 20th and early 21st century. The article begins by reflecting on and summarising his c ..read more

I’ve just finished a wonderful few days visit to the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN) in Drammen. I was invited to give some guest lectures to their students and to present a paper to their research group on career guidance. I’ve had a great time talking career guidance and research with all of the team and come away thoroughly inspired. I presented new versions of the work that I’ve been involved in on career guidance and social justice (these slides are largely in Norwegian) and then developed a new presentation that looked at the value of international research in career guidance ..read more

I’ve just been involved in a new OECD paper entitled Challenging social inequality through career guidance: Insights from international data and practice. In it we look at the evidence that suggests that class, gender and ethnic and migrant status inequality structures peoples’ careers and examine how career guidance can be used to challenge these kinds of inqualities. This report focuses on school-level career guidance systems and examines how they can more effectively respond to social inequalities. It draws on new analysis of PISA and PIAAC data and builds on the OECD Career Readiness Indi ..read more