Introduction to Vocational Guidance
Vocational Guidance, the helping of persons to plan their lifework. Vocational guidance is also called career counseling. It is available in the United States not only to young people but to adults as well. The counselors, teachers, and administrators who give guidance try to help persons answer such questions as: What kind of work should I take up? What training shall I need and where can I get it? What are the opportunities in the work I would like? Should I change my job?
Counselors assist individuals in making decisions about their future plans and career directions. They administer and interpret various kinds of tests to help individuals evaluate their interests, aptitudes, and abilities. They also instruct individuals in jobhunting strategies and skills and assist them in preparing rsums. Counseling help is also given to an individual to deal with emotional difficulties caused by the loss of a job or from job-related stress.
A person may also obtain guidance through books that list and describe careers. Vocational guidance books, however, usually do not contain the most up-to-date information on pay and opportunities—two important aspects of a career that may change from year to year.
Who Needs Vocational Guidance?
The need for vocational guidance has grown as a result of the greater variety of jobs and skills required in modern society, and greater awareness of how widely people differ in interests and abilities.
Whatever a person's work, a high degree of efficiency is usually important. To achieve this, individuals have to be satisfied with their jobs. The choice of a vocation affects not only the quality of their work but also their relationships with others and their usefulness to the community.
Young people need help in finding their real interests and capabilities. They need help in making a realistic, as opposed to fanciful, choice of a career. And they need guidance in planning for a well-rounded education as well as for specific training for a particular vocation.
Adults, too, are often in need of vocational guidance. A person may realize, after months or even years in a particular occupation, that he or she is unsuited to the work and unhappy in it. Circumstances may force a person to leave one kind of job and seek another. After retirement from a job, older persons often find they still need to work. Women who leave work to have children often need or want to reenter the job market when their children reach school age. Immigrants need help in adjusting to jobs in their new homeland. Disabled persons require help in training for and adjusting to jobs.
Vocational Guidance Programs
Vocational guidance usually covers six areas: (1) studying or surveying the various kinds of occupations; (2) determining aptitudes; (3) choosing a vocation; (4) preparing for work in the chosen vocation; (5) finding a job; (6) adjusting to and gaining competence in the job.
For young people, vocational guidance may be spread over a period of years. Specific guidance may start in the seventh or eighth grade, where students may read books and watch films and videotapes that deal with careers. They may visit factories, farms, stores, or other places of work such as hospitals, courtrooms, and airports.
In high school, a student may decide upon an occupation with the help of a counselor. The student may take vocational education courses, such as auto mechanics or bookkeeping, or take part in career-related activities offered by such organizations as 4-H clubs, the school newspaper, or the school art club. Vocational guidance counselors may help the student find a part-time job. Young people who are leaving school may be helped in finding and adjusting to full-time jobs. Many colleges and universities have guidance and testing programs, often as part of their job-placement services.
Adults usually have limited time to spend in a vocational guidance program. When problems arise with regard to choosing a job, training for it, or adjusting to it, they may seek vocational guidance from their state employment service or from such agencies as the YMCA.
CounselorsIn a broad sense, anyone who helps a person with a career problem is a counselor. Parents, religious leaders, teachers, employers and supervisors—all help direct vocational choice and performance.
However, vocational counselor is applied more strictly to a person who has had training in psychology with emphasis on vocational problems and may have an M.A. or Ph.D. degree. Counselors may be employed by schools, religious organizations, government agencies, charitable and correctional institutions, or private counseling agencies. In some states a counselor is required to have a license in order to practice.
American Counseling Association (ACA)founded in 1952, is the largest of the professional guidancecounselor organizations. Membership is about 60,000. Headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia.
History of Vocational Guidance
Vocational guidance as a means of helping a person make a free and intelligent choice of occupations originated in the United States. Its organization was largely the work of Frank Parsons, a professor of law and civil reformer. In 1908 Parsons founded a vocational guidance bureau in Boston as a public service. Within a few years vocational guidance services were available in the public schools of many large cities. Guidance was extended to young people in rural areas in the 1920's.
Vocational guidance in many European countries in early days was based more on national industrial need than on the needs or desires of the individual, and was more dictation than guidance. Democratic nations have adopted a pattern similar to that in the United States and, like the United States, have greatly expanded their guidance programs since World War II.