We live in a society where there is an increasing need for various guidance skills, such as navigating processes of change, dialogue, and setting of common goals. Here, professionals of guidance can offer their support, and there is a growing need for them.
- Text Nina Venhe | Photos Suvi Roiko and Mostphotos
“Everyone knows what happens if a medical doctor makes a mistake. However, the consequences of a mistake made by a guidance professional aren’t necessarily equally well known,” Professor of Career Counselling Sanna Vehviläinen says, explaining people’s understanding of the field.
Although guidance is present everywhere in our society, few people can instantly explain what guidance professionals do for a living.
“Most people can, of course, name guidance counsellors working in schools and other educational institutions. Many of our guidance students, too, may initially think that they will graduate to become solely guidance counsellors. However, as their studies progress, they start to understand how diverse this sector is.”
Jobs in guidance are often linked to education and employment. On the other hand, they are also closely linked to the development of working life and organisations. For example, professionals of guidance often work in human resources management, in trade unions and in labour administration.
“In the past decades, jobs in guidance have become increasingly professionalised. At the moment, however, the only regulated professional title is that of a guidance counsellor.”
The University of Eastern Finland is launching its popular specialist training in career guidance for the fourth time. One of the aims is to strengthen professionalism in career guidance on a research-based basis.
Guidance helps in navigating change
Guidance gives tools for many tasks, and the need for guidance professionals keeps on growing.
“We live in an information and learning intensive society, which means that we are all constantly dealing with changes both at work and on our free time. In addition, people may change their career and switch to new professions many times over the course of their life. Guidance expertise is one way to support people in navigating change.”
Our time is also characterised by a strong emphasis on individuality. It is thought that everyone must be able do something meaningful and unique with their life.
“People’s sense of self and their personal life are seen as projects that can be worked on with the help of different counsellors and coaches. The more self-direction is required, the more demand there is for guidance.”
Assessment is challenging
As guidance becomes increasingly important, it is also necessary to assess it, and to study its effectiveness. Guidance often deals with complex issues that are simultaneously influenced by many factors. Therefore, measuring the effectiveness of guidance has proven to be difficult.
“What is thought about the objectives of guidance among institutions and decision-makers may not necessarily be the outcome reached with the client.”
For example, the objective may be to find employment; yet it may become clear during guidance that it is not the desired outcome for the client in that particular situation.
For this reason, guidance research needs new, multi-method approaches to study the effectiveness of guidance.
“Research helps us to see whether we are investing in the right things in guidance. From the point of view of assessment, the most important thing is to know whether the client is able to work on things that are relevant to them, and whether guidance has an effect on the main obstacles to their agency.”
New approaches to guidance situations
One angle to the effectiveness of guidance is to ask whether the comprehensive school succeeds in levelling out differences in people’s social background. Guidance as part of the school's activities is one of the factors that can be used to maintain or eliminate inequalities.
“At the moment, it looks like the family’s the socio-economic background still dictates the direction of the pupil’s education path. Through research, we want to identify the factors in guidance processes that contribute to inequalities. We also want to actively seek practices that help guidance to build social justice.”
Vehviläinen is also interested in the mechanisms that take place in guidance situations, and interaction in guidance stands at the core of her research.
“We have thought about how the way of a school or an employment office to give guidance may be tuned to a certain view of ‘a normal client. In a guidance situation, people often sit in an office-like “adult space”, which for many young people is a foreign and unsettling setting to begin with.”
In addition, many other unnoticed things can happen in the discussion practices of guidance which may end up ignoring aspects of the client’s experience based on their age, ethnic background or some other factor.
“On the other hand, many everyday micro-level practices can also facilitate collaboration, strengthen agency and foster good dialogue. These good things don’t just magically appear but require support from research as well.”
Nowadays, Finland is home to a lot of high-level research into interaction in guidance.
“A key issue in guidance is whether it is possible to create a safe space where the client can reflect on their choices, be heard and find ways to move forward in life.”
A key issue in guidance is whether it is possible to create a safe space where the client can reflect on their choices, be heard and find ways to move forward in life.
Sanna Vehviläinen
Professor
The future cannot be fully controlled
The amendment of the Act on Compulsory Education, the entrance examination reform, the reform of vocational education and training...Today’s young people live in the midst of major changes and increasing study-related pressures. Major decisions about one’s own life are expected to be made earlier and earlier.
It is the task of guidance counsellors to find ways to talk about life, choices, performance and study-related decisions without maintaining a pressure-creating culture also in guidance.
“Universities, too, increasingly focus on just performance, and students try to make precision choices about everything. There is no room for error, and students fear that a single wrong choice will have a negative effect on everything.”
Vehviläinen says, emphatically, that the purpose of guidance is not to paint a picture of a future that can be fully controlled.
“It would therefore be essential to dismantle ideas that feed such an image. Rather, young people should be shown that it’s okay to make mistakes in life and to rely on others. Schools and educational institutions aren’t meant for the perfect student alone; instead, they should support everyone's strengths. The idea of having control over everything is alienating and immediately excludes a large number of people who feel incapable of doing so.”
A task for all
At the University of Eastern Finland, professionals of guidance are currently organising joint events for everyone at the university in order to crystallise what guidance at the university means, and how it is part of everyone's work.
“The purpose of the events is to harmonise the quality of guidance and promote equal access to it. After all, almost everyone working at the university is involved in giving some kind of guidance in issues relating to learning, academic theses, internships, studying, or student well-being.”
Through holistic guidance, students will learn academic skills, find their own path and grow as individuals – and they will know where to seek relevant guidance also in the future.
“This is why we want to make our guidance expertise available to the entire university. I’m hoping it will be used diversely!”
Guidance Expertise and Professional Agency project 2022–2024 (Finnish Work Environment Fund)
Photos of Sanna Vehviläinen:
https://mediabank.uef.fi/A/UEF+Media+Bank/46123?encoding=UTF-8
https://mediabank.uef.fi/A/UEF+Media+Bank/46122?encoding=UTF-8
SANNA VEHVILÄINEN
- Professor of Career Counselling, 1 Jan 2022–, University of Eastern Finland
- Born 1967 in Espoo, Finland
- Doctor of Education, 1999, University of Helsinki
- Title of Docent in Adult Education, 2001, University of Helsinki, and 2004, University of Tampere
- Title of Docent in Counselling Interaction Research, 2020, University of Eastern Finland
KEY ROLES
- Full-time freelancer and entrepreneur, 2018–2020
- Professor of Career Counselling, University of Eastern Finland, 2016– 2018
- Senior Researcher, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, 2015–2016
- Project Manager, University of Tampere, 2013–2014
- Senior Researcher, University of Tampere, 2011–2013
- University Lecturer, University of Helsinki, 2007–2010
- Senior Researcher, University of Helsinki, 2005–2007
- Researcher, University of Helsinki, 2004–2005
