the future

uploaded 10th April 2008

THE iCeGS INTERROGATION

Bill Law

It’s only a matter of time before Matt Damon subjects us to The Bourne Interrogation.  But we already have the more-valuable iCeGS Interrogation.

This is a big anniversary year for iCeGS - the International Centre for Guidance Studies.  You may know it as CeGS but, the cool ‘i’ stands for ‘international’ - acknowledging the global reputation of so many of its people. 

A conference is coming up to celebrate the first ten years of CeGS, and to anticipate what iCeGS will now do.  It is on 21st April, in Buxton. 

Speakers include Judith Mallaber MP, Professor Tony Watts, Professor Jenny Bimrose, Dr Deirdre Hughes (all of iCeGS), with Alan Tuckett (NIACE), Richard Worsley (Tomorrow Project) and Richard Longson (ICG). 

You can make contact at the foot of this article.

The upcoming iCeGS conference welcomes increasing policy recognition - guidance is critical for economic prosperity.  And it’s good to find ourselves acknowledged in that way.  We get it at intervals. 

But it’s the iCeGS interrogation that is really interesting.  Good questions can take us farther than familiar claims and recycled hopes.  The announcement goes on to pose three good questions.

1.
about opportunity
‘what has changed for the better in the guidance world since 1998?’

2
about challenge
‘what is the most exciting guidance-related challenge for the next ten years?’

3
about task
‘what is your personal message to the Centre?’

Any ideas?

We might, of course, answer by mentioning – again - our contribution to economic benefits and our – continuing - hope for policy support.  But there is another way. The global, social and political bases for action in our society are changing.  And we need, now, to take hold of how we can best help in this emerging situation.

So! - this is what the iCeGS interrogation got out of me:

the opportunity  ‘The policy frame is changing.  We are being offered more space and freedom to develop what we judge to be useful and sustainable action.  This is an acknowledgement that policy cannot script everything from the centre.  That repositioning gives us real opportunities fully to engage professional insights and abilities.

the challenge  ‘It is the biggest challenge to our professions in two generations.  We need to be able to apply basic principles to local needs and useful action.  It puts our creative use of underlying thinking to a severe test.  There is a lot of brain power and experience out there, and it's time to get it all into gear.’

the task  ‘It has never been more urgent that people know what is going on, and know what they can usefully do about it.  These two issues apply to people's lives - from life-style choices to the survival of the biosphere.  What they do about any of them affects what they can do about work.  Careers work is the learning service which actively engages people in working with these contemporary issues.  iCeGS is in a position to engage the full range of programme methods for working on them.  And this could be a now-or-never moment.’

But where does working with questions like these take us?

the agenda  It gives us an agenda for new action.  And, working with Sue Curtis at Connexions Northamptonshire, the Career-learning Café is developing a practical guide on Frameworks for Reform. 

The material is based on consultations with teachers and managers in guidance services, schools and colleges (see below).  There are two sets of material - a  series of PowerPoints, and a parallel series of handbooks.  Animated PowerPoints are useful for examining ideas in relation to each other as well as for seeing how they build into a basis for action.  But a free-standing PowerPoint can be hard to interpret.  So the illustrated handbooks point to why the ideas are set out as they are, why they are important, to what issues they raise, and to what their implications are for what we actually do.  Together the PowerPoints and handbooks offer a resource for managing reform.

The series is based on three tasks:

> team development: setting out the information, ideas and abilities which advisers, teachers, mentors and other members of our teams need to understand - do that thery are equipped and supported for what now needs to be done;
> scheme development: programme features for the work we now need to develop - for enabling useful, fulfilling and sustainable action in today’s world;
> network development – how we need not only embed this work in our organisations but also to link what we do to the communit-based stakeholders – the groups which give it is meaning and usefulness

At conferences, like the iCeGS one, we often-enough hear about a new set of standards to meet, or targets to chase, or initiatives to buy into.  I get more excited about questions to work on. 

And the iCeGS questions are good ones.  They are good because they demand some serious rethinking.  And the answers are going to present us with some of the most demanding opportunities, challenges and tasks we have met in living memory. 

What more could we ask for?

'get excited about questions to work on'

You are in the magazine section of
The Career-learning Café
www.hihohiho.com
in touch

WHERE NOW?

make contact with the iCeGS conference
take a look at the ‘framework for reform’ ppt
get more information about the Connexions Northamptonshire project

have your say on 'TheiCeGS Interrogation' - use the Café's feedback form
tell a colleague: e-mail the url - www.hihohiho.com/magazine/features/cafbox.html

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