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CHANGING METAPHORS FOR CAREERS WORK shows how we use metaphors more than we know - especially when we run out of direct observations, but still need to make deeper sense of working life. And, when it comes to metaphors, there is always a choice. But we should be careful about the ones we choose. You’ll find two in this article - career as a ‘race’ and as a ‘journey’. Does one work better than the other? And would that be the one that is becoming more dominant? Or the one that is more basic? Metaphors are not just word play. You'll see that the way we use them shapes what we do - and how we do it.
NARRATIVES FOR WELL-BEING is a handbook telling of both how we can use stories, and why we should. It updates the Café’s work on storyboarding and illustrates, with examples, several practical refinements. You’ll find greater emphasis on the key features of narrative - ‘sequence’, ‘points-of-view’, ‘turning-points’ and ‘change-of-mind’. There is now also a range of ways in which students can usefully reflect on their own experience. The new material is carefully signposted so that you can find your way about - in your own order. There are continuing updates on useful narrative thinking. This handbook now replaces Career-learning narratives - telling showing and mapping.
THE iCeGS INTERROGATION looks at why some brain-rattling questions are more useful than new set of standards to meet, or targets to chase, or initiatives to buy into. It announces the Café's Frameworks for Reform project. The project supports programme managers in the team-, scheme- and networking-tasks that working on those questions now identifies.
CAREERS EDUCATION AND GUIDANCE - OUT OF THE BOX wonders whether we could be boxed in by our own mindsets. And if we were, how would we know? Try the self analysis to find out more. The discussion links stories of the conflicts and commitments of contemporary work-life to some of our most valued beliefs and hopes for our work. It wonders whether beliefs and hopes may be cramping our style. And it sets out a strategy for finding more elbow room.
RELOCATING CAREERS WORK IN CURRICULUM argues that some of the most pressing issues for contemporary careers can only be enabled by using well-managed schemes of work in a well-positioned curriculum. There was never a time when people needed more to know what is going on in working life - locally and globally. And there was never a time when they more needed to be able to work out what to do about it. Furthermore, careers work can least-of-all afford to ignore the way in which these changing realities are penalising people from some backgrounds more deeply and more unfairly than ever. All of this means that our clients and students need to be able to take command of their own learning. That means being self-propelled in finding out, checking out and working out what to do for a useful, worthwhile and sustainable life. And they need to go on doing that - life-long and life-wide. We can't help them enough with this through tick-box help and cut-and-paste learning. So how do we put ourselves in a position to help them more?
CPI - A COVERAGE-PROCESSES-INFLUENCES MODEL FOR CONTEMPORARY CAREERS WORK is a DOTS-extension model. It is designed to take account of career development in today’s world. People are changing the way in which they manage contemporary career. And we are changing the way in which we help them. But our professional models do not accommodate what we do and how we think and plan for it. This one-page pdf introduces CPI coverage of how people balance work roles with other roles, how they process that learning into a basis for sustainable action, and what social-and emotional influences they need to negotiate.
CAREER-LEARNING NARRATIVES - telling, showing and mapping points you to the practical steps for using narrative. Contemporary careers work increasingly draws on informal learning; and that means learning from experience – your own and other people’s. And experience is best set out as a story. This 19-page pdf shows how students and clients learn from the ‘people’, ‘places’, ‘talk’, ‘events’ and ‘meanings’ - all woven into a well-rounded story. It uses story-board graphics to point to the most useful features of narrative - ‘sequence’, ‘other people’, ‘point-of-view’ and ‘turning points’. The workbook is based on Bill’s earlier work on narrative ‘Fewer lists, more stories’. A PowerPoint supports the pdf with an animated version of the story-board technique.
WHY CAREERS WORKERS NEED THREE BRAINS - and why brain #3 urges 'use more stories!’ - argues that our field is best organised around three brain-buzzing tasks: (1) finding out what is going on: (2) drawing out what people make of those events and pressures; and (3) working out what we can best to do to help. That’s why you need three brains. It’s also why you get so tired. Bill tracks some of the paths – one in particular leading to more use of narrative in how we help.
WHAT ELSE IS BILL UP TO? – a list of 2007-8 projects and events that Bill is helping with - and which might also be useful to your work.
DIAGNOSING CAREER-LEARNING NEEDS takes you into an interactive method for developing an appreciation of students’ and clients’ career-learning needs. It helps you to see how different individuals and groups need us to develop different patterns for working with ‘useful information’, ‘deep-laid feelings’, ‘significant attachments’, ‘background cultures’, ‘learning processes’ and ‘meaningful purposes’. There is an online interactive version of this method in the Café. But this supporting pdf has been updated to show how this thinking links to the coverage-process-influences (CPI) model for career development. The 20-page pdf signposts you to where you can get more on the background theories underpinning the model and also to where you can get more help on the CPI model itself.
THE FUTURE OF CAREERS EDUCATION IN SEVEN-AND-A-HALF CHAPTERS is Bill’s take on the recent QCA review of KS3-4 curriculum. That set of proposals presents careers work in schools with the biggest challenge we have faced in a-generation-or-more. And it’s refocusing of our work - from ‘employability’ to ‘well-being’ - will have implications for curriculum development in all sectors. This examination of the possibilities is in a browse-able version. But you can also get a 17-page pdf version, which also examines the links between the QCA review and Bill’s LiRRiC proposals to the QCA. There is also a PowerPoint. In all cases you might wonder what on earth Bill thinks is going to happen so quietly and inevitably that it can only justify a half-chapter.
CAREERS EDUCATION – THIRTY YEARS, THIRTY ISSUES, THREE QUESTIONS sets out serious concerns for young people and for how schooling tries to help them. Some of it is written by Gordon Brown and some by David Cameron. David Dimbleby, John Humphrys, Anita Roddick get a look in. As do David Starkey and Jacqueline Wilson. Not to forget the usual suspects: an archbishop, a baroness, a professor of education, a clinical psychologist, a government adviser, a head of service. And, of course, research institutes and quangos. You may be relieved to hear that you’ll hear, as well, from parents, teachers, students and former students. Not a bad line-up – with quite a lot of agreement about what we should now be doing – much of it resonating with the LiRRiC proposals (see below).
WHAT CHILDREN LEARN ABOUT WORK - OPENING DOORS introduces a KS 1-2 development pack that you can get, for the price of postage, from The Careers Research and Advisory Centre. Find how to get it in this article. Also find why, now more than ever, we need to talk with our 5-10 year-olds about how we make a living. Especially about what they can find out, and what they guess, goes on at work. If you’ve come across just one 10 year-old with assured plans to become a ‘celebrity’, then read this article. And find out why ‘doctors and nurses’ is not going to help. Our children need more games. And we need to know how their imagination is filling in the gaps.
LiRRiC
IS LIFE-ROLE RELEVANCE IN CURRICULUM and the background for this monograph, in the moving-on section, is an on-going policy rethink on the
11-19 curriculum. A magazine article links the LiRRiC proposals to recent media headlines concerned for young people and what we do to help them. The proposals have been well received in QCA and seem likely to be represented in its forthcoming proposals for psd in the curriculum. A magazine feature looks at the implications for careers education. But the implications are wide-ranging - for citizenship, personal-social-and-health education, the work-related curriculum and education-for-enterprise.
They are set out fully in the monograph. LiRRiC integrates all of this
into a coherent whole, and make that whole integral to
the overall curriculum. A PowerPoint summarising the main points is in the magazine section.
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