career guidance research paper

Third International Handbook of Lifelong Learning pp 1–14 Cite as

Lifelong Career Guidance: Between Autonomy and Solidarity

• Ronald G. Sultana 5  
• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 21 September 2022

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Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

This chapter sets out to first define career guidance, looking briefly at its “scientific” origins at the turn of the twentieth century in an effort to match personal traits and labor market requirements, a goal that has been pursued since the times of the classical Greek philosophers. It documents the increasing policy attention to career guidance worldwide, triggered by a series of reviews that involved more than 55 high- and middle-income countries. The chapter shows how such policy “busyness” has informed current iterations of career guidance, giving rise to a lifelong paradigm in response to the expected transition to a knowledge-based economy. Frequent and swift technological changes, it has been argued, require flexible, adaptable workers who are ready to train and re-train in order to maintain their use-value in an unstable labor market. The chapter argues that at the level of pragmatic support to individuals and groups, career guidance informed by liberal ideas has a role to play in serving both the private and the public good. It is however also argued that such a liberal model does not adequately take into account the systemic and structural nature of the problems of capitalism, and ends up responsibilizing individuals, letting the state off the hook and to default on its social contract with its citizens. The chapter concludes by demonstrating the need for more emancipatory forms of career guidance, which bring together the insights generated by vocational psychology with the more structural considerations afforded by social science.

• Lifelong career guidance
• Emancipatory career guidance
• Vocational guidance
• Knowledge-based economy
• Flexicurity
• Risk society
• Social contract
• Social justice

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Ronald G. Sultana

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Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK

Karen Evans

Lifelong Learning Institute, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore, Singapore

Wing On Lee

3S Research and Consultancy Insitute, Vienna, Austria

Jörg Markowitsch

Dept of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

Miriam Zukas

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Sultana, R.G. (2022). Lifelong Career Guidance: Between Autonomy and Solidarity. In: Evans, K., Lee, W.O., Markowitsch, J., Zukas, M. (eds) Third International Handbook of Lifelong Learning. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_22-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_22-1

Received : 11 November 2021

Accepted : 19 January 2022

Published : 21 September 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-67930-9

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-67930-9

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