Chapter 2 From Vocational Guidance and Career Counseling to Life Design Dialogues (p. 11-12)
Jean GuichardInstitut National d’Etude du Travail et d’Orientation Professionnelle (INETOP),Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), Paris, FranceUNESCO Chair of Lifelong Guidance and Counselling, University of Wroclaw, Poland
Introduction
As a result of economic and cultural globalizations, Western societies have undergone some major transformations during the last 3 decades. Terms such as postmodern, late-modern, or liquid were coined to describe these changes. Within these societies, the dominant form of work organization also changed: Work and employment became very flexible. Subsequently, the career development issues that people needed to face were modified to such an extent that it could be said that a new paradigm emerged in this domain. The concepts that had formed, for almost a century, the core of vocational guidance and career counseling (centering on the relationships between individuals and work activities) were replaced by a model that concentrated on the individuals themselves, considered as governors of their own work pathways and, more generally, of their lives.
This chapter first recalls the three kinds of factors that played a role in the construction and evolution of the first paradigm – namely (1) a certain organization of work within societies having some specific characteristics, (2) ideological debates about the ultimate end or purpose of the interventions that could be offered to help individuals make their vocational choices, and (3) a domination of some scientific models that led to a consideration of human behavior in a certain way. The following section describes the major characteristics of the paradigm that had begun to emerge in the 1970s, and tries to understand the reasons for its being constituted as it was. The third section intends to answer the following question: Which kinds of interventions are suggested by this paradigm so as to help individuals living in “liquid modernity” face their life and career design issues? As will be shown, two major types of help may be distinguished. But will they suffice to contribute to the resolution of some acute crises with which our world is confronted (as e.g., a deficit of decent work, global warming, etc.)? Shouldn’t we try to give an answer to a quite pressing issue? How to help people combine the care of themselves – and the governance of their lives and career – with the care for distant others and for the “permanence of a genuine human life” (Jonas, 1984, p. 11)?
Construction and Evolution of the Matching Paradigm
Vocational guidance came into existence in Western societies at the end of the 19th century as a consequence of new problems that people had to face: How to find an occupation they could succeed in? This issue appeared at that time and place because of changes in technology (Industrial Revolution) and social transformations (rural depopulation, immigration, etc.), and because these societies were focused on the individual (Elias, 1991), where work was seen as a major occasion to achieve something in life (Schlanger, 2010). In such a context, the “choosing an occupation” issue was seen as a task that should be completed by the individuals themselves, but at the same time as a quite complex one for which they might be helped (Parsons, 1909).
This gave birth to the first paradigm in the domain of career counseling, which may be referred to, in a general way, as the matching of individuals and work. Three different kinds of factors played a major role in the construction of this paradigm. The first one was the Industrial Revolution and the kind of work organization that prevailed then. Alain Touraine (1955) and Claude Dubar (1998) named this the “professional system of work.” In such an organization, workers had stable occupational or professional identities made up of specific knowledge, know-how, skills, etc. These identities were also made of shared values and beliefs and of collective representations, and so on – corresponding to their particular trades. Therefore the first paradigm was initially conceived as a matching of individuals and occupations or professions.
The second category of factors that played a role in this paradigm’s elaboration was an economic, societal, and political dispute about the purpose (or the end, to use a more philosophical term) of vocational guidance’s interventions (Gysbers, 2010; Huteau, 2002, 2009). Was the ultimate goal of these interventions to reproduce the society as it was (children having an equivalent position in the social structure to that of their parents, and men continuing to do “masculine activities” and women, “feminine ones”)? Or was it to develop an overhauled society which would be both wealthier (because all would have a job corresponding to their capabilities) and fairer (because jobs wouldn’t be distributed any longer in relation to the individual’s ethnic or social origins and gender)? This second conception – endorsed notably by Alfred Binet (1907), Edouard Toulouse (1913), and Edouard Claparède (1922) – was close to the views of the American Progressive Movement formed around 1900 by scholars such as John Dewey, Felix Adler, Edward L. Thorndike, and G. Stanley Hall. As Willis Rudy (1965, p. 11) wrote: These people’s hope was “that American education could be made more socially responsive, more helpful in the meaningful reconstruction of the modern social order, more recognizant of the needs of the individual child, more solidly based on an objectively established science of learning” (quoted by Gysbers, 2010, p. 6).