The Canadian Career Development context is presented as a case example of how a professional code of ethics can be developed, disseminated, and regularly renewed, as a tool to strengthen ethical fitness. Using the four stages of learning model, the progression from unconscious incompetence through to unconscious competence is examined, illustrating the importance of a systematic approach to building awareness of relevant ethical codes, developing competencies in ethical decision-making, and engaging in open discussions about ethical dilemmas. This case example has applications to the UK and beyond as the challenges of non-regulated contexts, lack of awareness and support from employers and funders, and working under multiple ethical codes are also explored.
This practice-led case study introduces the PERE (Prepare, Execute, Reflect, Evaluate) Model as a practical framework for delivering meaningful experiences of workplaces in secondary education. While the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) define what high-quality career learning should achieve, and professional bodies, including the Career Development Institute (CDI) and National Institute for Career Education and Counselling (NICEC), articulate why careers education matters, PERE focuses on how to operationalise these intentions through repeatable routines, adaptable tools, and clearly defined roles for schools and employer partners. The paper presents an illustrative example to demonstrate the model’s feasibility and transferability.
This article summarises an event which celebrated NICEC’s 50th anniversary and set the context for future discussions about career development policy. Speakers from various policy contexts discussed skills, employment and workforce development strategies and explored the challenges and opportunities for providing career support services.
This article validates two new instruments which measure careers practitioners’ engagement with green guidance (GG) and their perception of clients’ attitudes towards GG. It builds on existing research focused on the relationship between career guidance and environmental/climate issues. It is a secondary inferential analysis of data collected within a practice-development project focused on the engagement with GG amongst 666 European practitioners. Findings support these measures’ validity, and suggest that practitioners’ attitudes towards GG are influenced by their attitudes towards climate change, in which their perception of their clients’ attitudes towards GG is a mediator. Implications for practice are discussed.
Increased longevity has reshaped later life, yet many psychological and career development models continue to reflect assumptions formed in earlier demographic contexts. In particular, the period between approximately 60 and 80 remains under theorised, often compressed into narratives of decline, disengagement, or retirement transition. This paper reviews selected life-stage and ageing theories and examines their limitations in relation to contemporary later life. Drawing on this analysis, alongside empirical research on meaning and sustained career psychology practice, the paper introduces ThriveSpan, an integrative, meaning-centred framework designed to support wellbeing, identity, and intentional living in the 60–80 life phase.
This article explores what professional integrity looks like in careers education, information and guidance. It draws illumination from the work of Bill Law, especially the DOTS model which he developed with Tony Watts. It encourages the reader to reflect on their own professional mindset and behaviour as career practitioners, offering questions inspired by the DOTS framework and suggests ways in which applying approaches which we might more usually apply to our clients might help us to develop our professional integrity
This editorial sets out the rationale for a themed edition exploring ethics, philosophies and principles (EPPs) and how they impact policy and practice in career development work. It argues that EPPs underpin career development practice, as well as theories and policies, and may be manifest formally in professional development standards, or more broadly in deeply held assumptions or beliefs about the nature of career making and ways to best help clients make progress in their life and work.
The Rise High programme, a collaboration between the University of Derby and the Chatsworth House Trust, explores a progressive, sustained approach to careers outreach with under-represented young people in rural and semi-rural areas. This case study examines emerging evaluation findings, showing early evidence that the programme has strengthened participants’ understanding of career pathways over time and supported the development of skills and confidence. Impacts on university aspirations or motivation in current studies are less conclusive, highlighting potential for future programme development. The case study concludes by situating the programme within the local and wider political context of rurality and hidden disadvantage.
This integrative review explores the extent to which student voice and participatory practices in UK education reflect genuine power-sharing, and their potential application to socially just career education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG). Twelve sources were synthesised using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis method, generating four key themes: structural constraints, psychological safety, agency and representation, and the potential for citizen power. Findings highlight tensions between participatory rhetoric and practice, and propose an original conceptual model combining Arnstein’s Ladder, ethical pragmatism, and participatory action research. The review concludes that future inclusive CEIAG practice must embed student co-design to avoid reinforcing inequality.
Career guidance is often framed around informed choice and individual agency, yet these principles are tested in contexts where opportunity structures are severely constrained. Drawing on routine documentation from a school-based counselling pilot in three secondary schools in Freetown, Sierra Leone, this article presents a practice based ethical analysis. Situating the pilot within small-state career guidance research, it examines how professional principles, including those of the IAEVG, require contextual interpretation. The article argues that ethical career counselling in low-resource settings depends on enacting universal standards through locally grounded practice.
This study investigates career guidance practice, focusing on the length of appointments, use of guidance models, and exploration of existential topics in one to-one settings. Data from 84 career guidance practitioners working across diverse institutions and sectors reveal significant variation in appointment lengths and approaches to guidance model usage. The findings show that existential topics – such as career-related anxiety, sense of purpose, and self-identity – are widespread in practice and are viewed as relevant by practitioners. The research offers considerations for future practice and policy.
This article revisits research on the ethical tensions experienced by professional careers advisers from the former English Careers Service after they were transferred into the Connexions service as Personal Advisers. It examines how austerity distorted their practice and intensified the ethical labour required of them. By reconsidering these dynamics through the lens of this special issue on Ethics, Philosophies and Principles, the article identifies enduring questions for contemporary career education and guidance, particularly around care and control, professional impartiality, and the need for policy on and management of career services to sustain moral compass in practice.
This article examines the tension between individual freedom of choice (personal fit) and collective necessity (social fit) against the backdrop of the current labour market crisis. Whereas the focus has historically shifted from social necessity to personal self-development, shortages in crucial sectors are now forcing a moral and political revaluation of what constitutes a ‘good career’. The authors advocate the development of responsive career paths that explicitly link individual desires with societal interests. Through value-driven guidance, a new balance can be found between personal meaning (personal fit) and the solidarity necessary for a sustainable society (social fit).
This article is an exploration of career counselling through a philosophical lens, highlighting its epistemic and ethical dimensions. Career counselling is a technology of the self, reliant on narrative constructions that pragmatically function as enabling fictions rather than predictive truths. The concept of ‘pragmatic idiographic truth’ is proposed to describe narratives validated through lived experience and consequences. Ethical reflection is positioned as integral to practice, challenging assumptions of neutrality and emphasising counsellors’ roles in shaping vocational narratives. Philosophical perspectives illuminate the existential demand for agency and responsibility in navigating work and life.
This article examines how the purpose of career guidance is articulated and embedded in professional identity. Drawing on professional identity theory and John Dewey’s philosophy of education, it analyses contemporary articulations of purpose with particular attention to historical Danish policy texts. The analysis shows that contemporary formulations of purpose are often indirect, whereas earlier texts framed guidance as a democratic and educative practice. Although based on Danish material, the discussion speaks to wider international debates about the societal role and purpose of career guidance. The article argues that purpose should be understood as an immanent normative orientation embedded in professional practice.
Book review of Supporting achievers to unblock sustainable career success: Theory, strategy and practice by Carolyn Parry
Vocational identity, a critical factor in career development, reflects an individual’s clarity and commitment to career goals. This study examined the influence of age, secure childhood parental attachments to mother and father figures, and academic progress (credit hours) on vocational identity among undergraduate students. Using a cross sectional design, data from 298 students were analysed via multiple linear regression and descriptive statistics. The My Vocational Situation Scale measured vocational identity, with mother safe and father safe assessed via the Adult Scale of Parental Attachment-Short Form. Results indicated that the model explained 15.7% of variance in the total score of My Vocational Situation Scale. Age, mother safe, and father safe were significant predictors, with credit hours marginally significant. Descriptive analyses revealed higher vocational identity means for high mother safe and high father safe groups, with the high mother safe/high father safe group showing the strongest vocational identity. Findings suggest that secure childhood parental attachments and younger age enhance vocational identity, with academic progress playing a marginal role. Implications for career counselling include attachment-informed interventions to support students’ career clarity. Future research should explore longitudinal designs and additional predictors to enhance model explanatory power
This case study explores Accelerate, a leadership and career development programme delivered in partnership with a research-intensive UK university to support the progression of underrepresented staff at Grades 7 and 8. Drawing on practitioners’ insights, participant feedback, and light-touch career theory, the article examines how inclusive leadership development can serve as a career intervention while also contributing to cultural change. The paper reflects on programme design, facilitation, and early outcomes, and offers transferable implications for career practitioners working in complex organisational settings.
This study explores the approaches that are used in the education of career professionals in the UK and beyond. Using a survey of providers of initial education for career development professionals, we gathered data to examine the practice and philosophy of these programmes. We find a high degree of consensus around the key areas of education for career professionals and that this broadly maps onto the framework set out by the Network for Innovation in Career Guidance and Counseling in Europe (NICE). There is strong agreement that the education of career professionals should address theory, practice and professional issues and that there are a range of emerging concerns that need to be addressed more in the future (technology, social justice, working across contexts, and emerging practices). Analysing the survey data, one of the key challenges that emerges is that programmes tend to be more focused on individualistic approaches and that this focus often provides limited space for attention to systemic approaches to career guidance. The study also finds some important epistemic and philosophical differences in the way initial education providers consider the role of theory and its relationship to practice. These issues are discussed and implications for initial education providers and researchers set out.
