Guidance Community Discussion Space

The role of the UK GRAD Programme is to support the academic sector to embed personal and professional skills development into research degree programmes (RDP).  According to their website their vision is: 'for all postgraduate researchers to be fully equipped and encouraged to complete their studies and to make a successful transition to their future careers.'  the website at http://www.grad.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/p!eecddL  includes information about events, and has a 'Just For Postgraduates' section which offers advice on common research management challenges, overcoming hurdles and links to resources.

If this is an area of interest to you, see also the section on this site relating to post graduate career trajectories.  for additional links and resources.

1. What role can guidance play in encouraging those interested in IT , particularly women, those from ethnic minority groups, those with a disability and those in the third age?
2. How can guidance support and help promote women in the IT professions?
3. Should guidance try to influence gender subject decisions in higher education?
4. How can equal opportunity issues in IT be addressed and overcome?
5. Are career planning and career strategies of particular importance to those working in IT?
   

It would appear to me that the tendency of some IT roles to move towards a higher and higher level of specialisation in a particular array of software or set of skills would require considerable efforts on behalf of the individual to maintain professional development and keeping abreast of developments or risk redundancy in this fast moving industry and the exponential growth of technology. Specialism may bring initial high rewards but may later lead into a professional cul de sac. Career planning in this sector is vital.

The National Autistic Society website includes a section on 'Tips for interviewing people with autism / Asperger's syndrome'.  Although it is primarily aimed at employers in a job interview context, the general guidelines they outline are (I think) really helpful for a guidance context.

The website points out that people with autism or Asperger syndrome thrive in a structured and well organised environment and have many strengths that are advantageous to an employer, such as accuracy, good eye for detail, reliability and meticulous application of routine tasks. However, they may have varying (but often mild) difficulties with the following:

Clear understanding of verbal and non-verbal communication such as body language, facial expressions, idiomatic language etc. They may take words literally.

Building social relationships, starting and maintaining conversations on general topics that may not be of particular interest to them.

Imaginative activity: may have narrow interests and find it hard to think in abstract ways. Their literal interpretation of the world means they are much more comfortable with facts rather than hypotheses.

The website then goes on to outline 'reasonable adjustments' that could be made by using quite simple techniques such as rephrasing questions.  A really helpful resource to inform guidance interviews?  Does anyone have any other insights into this area of work?

Researchers from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics (LSE) compared the life chances of British children with those in other advanced countries for a study sponsored by the Sutton Trust. Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Steve Machin (2005) in their study of Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America found that social mobility in Britain - the way in which someone's adult outcomes are related to their circumstances as a child - is lower than in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. And while the gap in opportunities between the rich and poor is similar in Britain and the US, in the US it is at least static, while in Britain it is getting wider. Internationl comparison showed USA and Britain had the lowest social mobility. Norway has the greatest social mobility, followed by Denmark, Sweden Finland and Canada, with Germany between the two extremes, but still much more mobile than the USA and Britain.

Comparing surveys of children born in 1958 and 1970, the researchers found Britain's low, and declining, mobility was in part due to the strong and increasing relationship between family income and educational attainment. For those born in1970, additional opportunities to stay in education at age 16 and 18 disproportionately benefited those from better off backgrounds. For a more recent cohort born in the early 1980s the gap between those staying on in education at age 16 narrowed, but inequality of access to higher education has widened further: while the proportion of people from the poorest fifth of families obtaining a degree has increased from 6 per cent to 9 per cent, the graduation rates for the richest fifth have risen from 20 per cent to 47 per cent. 

The researchers concluded: 'The strength of the relationship between educational attainment and family income, especially for access to higher education, is at the heart of Britain's low mobility culture and what sets us apart from other European and North American countries.'

The Employer's Forum on Age have produced a fact sheet 'Avoiding the Age Trap' that explores whether employment history really help you to identify the right candidates or does it catch you in an age trap.  It  highlights some of the issues explored in the EFA's guide to recruitment, and demonstrates the EFA's age bias free application form.

I've just come across a summary document that considers the impact of ageism and discrimination against older people, and notes that this has devastating effects, not just on over-fifties but,  on over-forties too!  I've already added it as a new resource on the Website, but to alert users to this latest update, you can also access it from this comment, by clicking on the 'resources' button above.

The report is based on qualitative research carried out  by SMA Associates for the Third Age Foundation, its opening paragraph states:

Why do so many people who want to work find it difficult to so do? Why are employers reluctant to employ ‘older people’? Is it purely the effect of discrimination and ageist attitudes? Or are there some other reasons? Whatever the causes, what can and should be done to achieve change for the better in the future?

This piece of qualitative research begins to find some answers to these difficult questions. It is a
contribution to the increasingly urgent debate about how to ensure that as many people as possible,
from all age groups, can find suitable work, which benefits both employers and the wider economy.
With the current concerns about the effects of the ageing population on future pension provision
and, as this report shows, the striking lack of pension provision for many people now in their forties
and fifties, the policy implications are more significant than ever.

Food for thought perhaps!

The references provided here by Marcus in his comment are an extremely helpful addition to this section on group work.  However, I would question the underlying assumption that 'guidance group work' has a shared meaning across the guidance community.  The range of contexts in which group work is delivered by people broadly described as guidance practitioners is now so wide that I would argue that it's not unreasonable to assume (though I don't think we have relevant research evidence?) that general theories of learning may offer the types of flexible frameworks required across various situations. 

What do others think?