NICE HANDBOOK – Academic training of Career ... - Nice-network.eu

In this chapter we address the following questions:◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆What will help teaching staff to motivate students to learn, to explore, to research, to act,to innovate, to reflect?How do we provide students with relevant learning content and competences which promotetheir academic and professional development?How do we stimulate the use of innovative and fruitful teaching and learning methods inour programmes?What fruitful methods are there to assess the development of student competences?How do we use assessment methods to evaluate our curriculum?What competences does a professional in academic training need to educate studentsadequately?Our answers are presented in the following chapters, with each aspect addressed inturn.After an introduction to our cooperation in WP 3 (Chapter 7.1), we look at innovativeteaching and learning methods in Chapter 7.2. Similarly, Chapter 7.3 offers a frameworkfor understanding teaching and learning resources. These chapters are followed by adiscussion of assessment approaches in Chapter 7.4, after which we look at the competencesof higher education faculty members in Chapter 7.5.We conclude by offering some pointers to support the development of state of the arttraining programmes to educate effective CGC professionals at university level (Chapter7.6)7.1 IntroductionJan WoldendorpThis chapter considers approaches to teaching, learning and assessment which aim to ensurethe NICE Core Competences (NCC) – namely Career Education, Career Counselling, Career Information& Assessment, Social Systems Interventions & Development, Programme & ServiceManagement and Professionalism – are delivered in professional training programmes offeredby Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Approaches need to be adapted to the very diversecontexts (geographical, economic, social and political) in which the education of CGC professionalstakes place.Participants in the Career Guidance and Counselling ProcessWhen examining academic training in the field of career guidance and counselling, one canidentify four interlinked layers of participants in this process. Each group will have an impacton the others and can be viewed as part of a system which needs to be reviewed and refreshedso we continue responding to changing needs of clients in a changing world.◆◆Layer one: the individualBeing in charge of one’s career is a complex thing. It brings a lot of responsibilities and the individualneeds to draw on competences, such as self-knowledge, the ability to choose a direction,skills of information gathering, decision-making and networking.◆◆Layer two: the CGC professionalA CGC professional in this process must demonstrate special competences and show confidencein their ability to work with specialist methods and tools.◆◆Layer three: the educatorProfessionals who educate these CGC professionals in their turn require specific competencesand need to master special training including assessment methods and techniques.Academic Training Approaches◆◆Layer four: the teaching programme leadershipThis leads to the fourth layer in the field of influence. This focuses on the question of what isneeded to develop or redesign academic training programmes in career guidance and counselling,so they in turn help CGC professionals address the needs of individual clients.In this chapter the authors aim to do exactly that. As professional educators in career guidanceand counselling, the authors have tried their best to pinpoint what is needed to develop a stateof the art training programme to educate CGC professionals. To do so they have collected datafrom across the network NICE. This brought a rich overview on contemporary practice fromuniversities all over Europe that are engaged with the process of training CGC professionals.107