Career guidance for social justice

1. Career guidance for social justice Tristram Hooley Workshop at Hong Kong Baptist University 12th February 2019

2. INtroductions • I am Tristram Hooley. I live on the other side of the world in England. I variously work at the University of Derby, the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences and the Institute of Student Employers. • In this presentation I will be drawing on work that I have done with my colleague Ronald Sultand (University of Malta) and Rie Thomsen (Aarhus University). • But who are you?

3. Overview

4. Overview

5. How Do you define • Career? • Career guidance?

6. According to Google

7. What is career? Career is… the individual’s journey through life, learning and work.

8. Expanded notion of work (ENOW) – Wong (2015)

9. A journey or a race?

10. Influences on our career +s focus on what you can control expands possibilities -sresponsibilisation fatalism

11. Reflection • Think about how your career has been influenced in positive and negative ways by… • your actions • your relationship with other people • your interactions in communities • the wider political circumstances

12. Defining career guidance “Career guidance supports individuals and groups to discover more about work, leisure and learning and to consider their place in the world and plan for their futures… Career guidance can take a wide range of forms and draws on diverse theoretical traditions. But at its heart it is a purposeful learning opportunity which supports individuals and groups to consider and reconsider work, leisure and learning in the light of new information and experiences and to take both individual and collective action as a result of this.”

13. Overview

14. Your career • How long have you been in career guidance? • Has your career gone as expected?

15. Origins in social reform • “Frank Parsons was a consistent opponent of that individualism which pits men against each other in the struggle for existence, and an earnest advocate of that individuality that fits men for useful membership in the social body, and so draws them together in mutual fellowship and service.”

16. The concept of ‘fit’

17. Test and tell

18. Challenges to a stable world View

19. A paradigm change An educational model where we teach knowledge and skills A medical model where we solve people’s problems

20. Overview

21. Career and social justice • How fair is career?

23. Power • We make our careers, but we do not make them in the circumstances of our own choosing. • Some people have lots of choices. • Others very few.

24. Young’s Faces of Oppression

25. Discussion • Where have you experienced problems in your career? • Where have these been connected to larger social and political issues. • When do you feel that you have been oppressed?

26. neoliberalism • One way of understanding the complex range of injustices is to view it all as part of neoliberalism. • We understand neoliberalism as a political project rather than a complete system. • Downsizing of the public sector, privatisation of state assets, deregulation of markets, and the withdrawal or restriction of funding for welfare regimes. • Recognising that career guidance can contribute to or oppose neoliberalism?

27. Impact of Neoliberalism • Reduced ability of states to conduct social and economic policy on their own terms • Eroded democracy: ‘virtual senate’ of investors and lenders • Increased concentration of wealth and monopolisation of profits • Deepened social gap and intensified global inequality • Promoted the dismantling of the welfare state • Individualisation of structurally-induced problems • Self-governing responsibility for insuring onself against insecurity and precarity

28. …and so? • Politics and social movements exist in relation to many of these problems. • Some make things better. • Others worse. • Historically career guidance has largely ignored the possibility of social change.

29. Overview

30. The politics of career guidance “Careers education and guidance is a profoundly political process. It operates at the interface between the individual and society, between self and opportunity, between aspiration and realism. It facilitates the allocation of life chances. Within a society in which such life chances are unequally distributed, it faces the issue of whether it serves to reinforce such inequalities or to reduce them.” Tony Watts

31. Problematising key concepts in career guidance • Individualism • Resilience • Adaptability • Career management Can easily become – responsibilisaton -blaming the victim and placing all responsibility with them

32. Career guidance, social justice and neoliberalism

33. The two volumes

34. Five signposts towards emancipatory career guidance • developing critical consciousness • the naming of oppression • problematising norms, assumptions and power relations • building solidarity and collective action • working at a range of levels and scales from the individual to the global. Hooley, Sultana & Thomsen, 2019

35. Naming oppression In Women and Social Justice: Does Career Guidance Have a Role? Jenny Bimrose, Mary McMahon and Mark Watson argue that: • Careers practitioners should use gender aware theory • Acknowledge sexism and patriarchy in conversations with clients. • Engage in advocacy, preventative advocacy and citizen campaigns to improve the position of women in society.

36. Developing critical consciousness In Career Guidance and Social Justice in the Encounter between Caste and Neoliberalism in India Anita Ratnam argues that: • Careers practitioners need to understand caste and recognise its relevant to career. • Careers practitioners should actively work with those of lower castes and help them to recognise the way that caste shapes both their own psychology and the opportunity structure. • They should provide them with tools to help them grow in confidence and challenge the structures.

37. Problematising norms In Norm Criticism: A Method for Social Justice in Career Guidance Frida Wikstrand argues that: • Careers practitioners must be aware of their own assumptions and expectations clients. • Support clients to challenge what has been taken for granted. • Help people to see themselves and their position in society.

38. Building solidarity In Widening opportunities for career guidance - Research circles and social justice Bo Klindt Poulsen, Randi Boelskifte Skovhus and Rie Thomsen • Bring together researchers and practitioners to improve practice. • They argue that the act of the research circle is an act of collective solidarity. • The research circle opens up opportunity to work together, support each other and seek to change things.

39. Working at a range of levels In Do Employment Services Need to be Neoliberal? Alex Nunn argues that: • Practitioners can work to subvert and bend policies to the needs of their clients. • Seek to embed such local interpretations of policy into the usual way of doing things and the ‘common sense’ of the profession. • Support calls for ‘inclusive governance’ to bring users into the running of services. • Use data critically in the service of social justice aims. • Campaign for different policies that recognise the complexities of people’s lives.

40. Exercise: Have you ever felt that a client/student has… • talked about working in a job (or considering working in a job) that doesn’t pay them fairly? • been being marginalised in their life and work? E.g. feeling that they aren’t respected. • been fed up with being told what to do by their boss or colleagues? • been forced to conform to ‘norms’ by others? e.g. being told how to dress, act or behave in a way that makes them uncomfortable. • experienced aggression that makes them uncomfortable or actual physical violence? How did you talk to them? What other options might you explore? Five signposts developing critical consciousness the naming of oppression problematising norms, assumptions and power relations building solidarity and collective action working at a range of levels and scales from the individual to the global.

41. References • Hooley, T., Sultana, R.G. and Thomsen, R. (2018). Career guidance for social justice: Contesting neoliberalism. London: Routledge. • Hooley, T., Sultana, R.G. and Thomsen, R. (2018). Career guidance for emancipation: Reclaiming justice for the multitude. London: Routledge. • Law, B. (2012). The uses of narrative: Three scene storyboarding – learning for living, http://www.hihohiho.com/storyboarding/sbL4L.pdf. • Pryor, R. & Bright, J. (2011). The chaos theory of careers. London: Routledge. • Wong, V. (2015). Youth transition to work in an age of uncertainty and insecurity: Towards an expanded notion of work for insight and innovation. Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 1(1), 21- 41. • Watts, A.G. (2015). Socio-political ideologies of guidance. In Hooley, T. and Barham, L. (Eds.). Career Development Policy and Practice: The Tony Watts Reader. Stafford: Highflyers.

42. Conclusions • Career is a power and expansive concept that helps individuals to live their lives in the way that they want. • Career guidance describes purposeful interventions designed to support individuals in their careers. • We live in a political and unequal world which defines and constrains our careers. • In such a situation career guidance cannot be neutral. • The five signposts help clarify how we can makes a difference to social justice.

43. About me Tristram Hooley Professor of Career Education, University of Derby/ Professor II, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences/ Chief Research Officer, Institute of Student Employers Email: t.hooley@derby.ac.uk Twitter: @pigironjoe Blog: https://adventuresincareerdevelopment.wordpress.com/