Career development learning and work-integrated learning: towards a self pedagogy

This paper is an exploration of the relationship between career development learning and work-integrated learning. First, it highlights research conducted by the National Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services on behalf of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. The research project explored the contribution of career development learning to work-integrated learning in Australian universities. Second, it highlights the conceptual linkages between career development learning and work-integrated learning which are expressed in notions of the career self-management competencies of self-awareness, opportunity awareness, decision learning, and transition learning

A research agenda for career development learning in higher education

The theme of the NAGCAS conference 2010—Through the Looking Glass: Career Development in the 21st Century—brings into focus notions that are inherent in higher education: self-assessment; reflection; surface and depth; the personal ideal that is held in hope, and the reality that is perceived. This paper is an exploration of those notions in terms of career development learning (CDL) and adult learning. Moreover, this paper explicates the correspondence between CDL and theories of adult learning with the intention of formulating a research agenda for CDL in higher education

Career development, management, and planning from the vocational psychology perspective

This chapter is a consideration of career development, planning, and management from the perspective of vocational psychology. Before describing career development, management, and planning, the chapter begins with a brief overview of the discipline of vocational psychology, highlighting recent trends toward its redefinition. This is followed by a description of the significant constructs and theories of vocational psychology, along with the paradigms under which they are subsumed. In concluding, there is reiteration of a call for paradigmatic diversity in theory, research, and practice

Academic credit and career education for engineering and surveying students

Research has indicated the potential of career education for academic credit at university. This case study describes how a university careers service integrated careers education workshops into the academic curriculum of an engineering and surveying faculty. Workshops on Job Skills and Career Transition were presented to 118 undergraduate students. Participants completed assignments for academic credit. These were 'marked' by career counsellors and follow-up careers counselling was provided to interested individuals. This pilot project confirms the utility of curriculum-integrated career education. Implications for career education across an entire undergraduate degree course and on-line education are raised

The challenges of improving access to sexual health services to improve the sexual health of the nation

This research study is set within the national context of deteriorating sexual health. It is an attempt to discover the issues and influences behind the modelling of NHS sexual health services and what is made available to the service users. These services are having difficulty meeting the high demands of the public and achieving government targets that have been placed upon them to tackle the unprecedented rise in levels of diagnosed infection and prevent unintended conceptions. A qualitative survey of professionals and client discourse was the design for the fieldwork, consisting of interviews and focus groups of sexual health service leads, practitioners and service users, a total of 89 voices. These were analysed within a framework of feminist and complexity theory. This research exposed that the services themselves have historically experienced serious marginalisation. This has affected allocation of resources and maintained a closed shop culture, which, unless changed, allows little room for improvement. This issue is well known and yet allowed to remain hidden. The findings demonstrate that the "top to toe modernisation of the NHS", stated within the NHS plan 2000 (DH), is not greatly evident within sexual health services over 2005 to 2006, when the fieldwork was carried out. The services have not, in most cases, been redesigned around the needs of patients, access has not been improved and the roles of nurses in many services have not been extended to address these access issues, but in some cases actually blocked from doing so. The Modernisation Agency has had little effect. Service users have not felt the effect of the devolved power promised so they could have influence and service providers are not often centred on them. Attempts to improve this situation are frequently thwarted by poor strategic planning and obstruction by senior clinical staff, who fear loss of position or power. Alongside this there was evidence of insufficient workforce fit for purpose, including commissioners, key to these developments. Where services were shown to be aiming to modernise and develop integrated models of provision, this came from a strong ethos of having service users at the centre of care anda vision to improve access and quality of provision. NHS Health trusts are not allowing sexual health to be centre stage. Any improvements in services will not be sustained without a change in culture within these services themselves, as well as within the wider NHS and society generally. Investigation of theactual quality of service provision and what the public want requires a national research driver. The insider role of the researcher created opportunities to capture stories that would otherwise have been missed by an outsider. This allowed debunking or demystifying some outdated views of the functioning of sexual health service provision and the reasons for their lack of progress. The complexity theory framework gave a frame of reference for why services function the way they do, either as silo-centred or transformed. It also illustrated that forcing structural changes or service redesign, within a top down approach will not achieve a whole systems transformation. An integrated sexual health service model was demonstrated as a complex system that allowed transformation to evolve where there was success in impacting patterns of thinking, behaviour and values of the service providers. These micro-patterns allowed a rich complexity to emerge bringing positive outcomes and maybe even supporting government targets as more new patterns emerge. This was opposite to silo-centred thinking, evident in the more traditional settings. Modernisation processes and normalisation of sexual health services, alongside integration, would be assisted using complexity principles

Internet career fairs in Australian higher education

[Abstract]: Internet Career Fairs have become a feature of the Australian graduate employment recruitment market. Internet Career Fairs offer considerable benefits in terms of resources and marketing by employers. They also offer an additional form of access to employment information that is used by students to explore their graduate employment opportunities. With the advent of Web.2 technology and sophisticated platforms such as Second Life, there is far greater potential to expand the interactivity and appeal of internet Career Fairs. In context of a description of the broader use of internet technology used for the delivery of career development services in Australia and its universities, this briefly paper describes the first 3-dimensional internet Career Fair established on the Second Life platform by an Australian university Career Service

A Guide for small meetings in Las Vegas

This paper is a deliverable guide for successful meeting in Las Vegas. The guide was created through an industry and academic review of literature. There are nine segments that are explored in order to encourage small associations and groups to hold their meetings, conventions and conferences in Las Vegas. The segments in the paper also provide information for non-professional and inexperienced meeting planners. The suggestion for future research is an experimental design process that tests the use of registration management systems and their value to small meetings