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Although career education exercises were already included in Parsons's (1909) Choosing a Vocation, it was initially in the 1970s that career education programs were first developed in schools in wealthy countries. Generally speaking, their aim is to help beneficiaries to make better career choices (Hoyt, 1977).
Career education theorists interpret this general objective in markedly different ways. This applies, for instance, to Pelletier and Dumora (1984) who believe that these career education practices must aim at helping adolescents to acquire the skill that will enable them to best cope with various academic and job transitions. The perspective defined in 1957 by Leon was more immediate: Help adolescents to broaden their vocational horizon and choose their job in the most thought-out and most motivated way. Hoyt (1977), who played a major role in the development of career education practices in the United States, expressed a somewhat different intention: to transform attitudes of adolescents in such a way as to develop their "employability" and their "adaptability." This variability in assigned objectives of career education reverts to the more general question of the ultimate goals of career interventions, which I discuss next.
There are two major classes of career education practices from a pedagogic standpoint: those that Hoyt calls "infusion" and those consisting of specific programs. Infusion indicates the use of ordinary teaching to contribute to career education. Career education programs form a series of educational sessions, which are incorporated into the schedule of students along with other regular instruction.
Many career education programs used with young students are based on the traditional model of career counseling: pairing (Guichard, 2001b). These programs lead participants to produce portraits of themselves in terms of interests, values, qualities, academic results, and so on. Students work in the same way on jobs and training. This provides students with a repertoire of shared dimensions describing both themselves and the jobs (or training) that interest them. The structure of these descriptions is obviously determined by taxonomies, which form the foundations of the method. The program leads them to determine a particular mode for the integration of these dimensions and, hence, gives them the ability of pairing their self-portraits with corresponding jobs and training. One of the taxonomies most widely used for this pairing is that of Holland (1966, 1992).
Few career education programs have been rigorously evaluated. Nevertheless, the results for those that have tend to be positive (Huteau, 2001). Adolescents who have participated in such programs tend to know more about jobs, to have a more precise self-image, to participate in a range of activities, and so on. It also seems that career education programs concentrated in the space of a few days are more effective than those distributed in the schedule throughout the year. Furthermore, two French studies (Forner & Vouillot, 1995; Markou, 1997) showed that programs provided by teachers for their own pupils tended to lower the ambitions and goals of adolescents from modest backgrounds.
Collective Development Activities
The three categories of career guidance practices just mentioned are examples of current career intervention; however, there are others that certainly can be included among career intervention practices, although they may not be immediately perceived as such. This applies in particular to interventions known as "collective development activities." Collective development activities can be defined as sets of practices organized and implemented by specific communities in a particular locality that are aimed at the development (e.g., economic, social, cultural) of the communities involved through the development of each of the participants in these activities (Demunter, 1990; Dubar, 1979). These activities range from helping with schoolwork to helping youth realize ambitious projects, such as the creation of a local television channel.
These collective activities are similar in several ways. First, their primary goal is collective development: development of a local community. They certainly produce development of each participant, but this takes place through interactions fostering the development of others and of oneself: Interaction (shared activity) is the basic principle. These actions, occurring in the context of a collective project, energize individuals. They lead to the development of certain competencies (such as being able to work on a collective project or learning how to perform specific tasks) and, hence, to the transformation of representations of self and of one's own possibilities. These collective interactions often involve people from outside the community concerned. They are hence "socially" mixed, which means it is reasonable to hope they can enhance social integration. Collective action also encourages the personal development of these "outsiders." Interactions between participants are not solely related to the activit y at the core of the project in question (schoolwork, for instance). Other things are talked about; more general topics are discussed, for instance, topics that concern the meaning each individual will derive from completion of the project, the way in which it is integrated into his or her life story, the aims the individual might develop in the same field, and so on. Such topics are very similar to those at the very heart of counseling.
Ultimate Goals of Career Counseling
As previously mentioned, the operational objectives of career counseling methods differ notably. These differences are explained in part by more fundamental divergences concerning the ultimate society or ethical goals of these practices. The following four categories of goals for career interventions can be identified.
1. Encouraging the client to build up a realistic view of work and of the job market. This view is that of employers. In employers' eyes, career counseling must contribute to solving the problem of basic inequality between job supply and demand. They note that the expectations of individuals-- adolescents in particular--often focus on fields in which few jobs are available (creative jobs, research, sports, and so on), whereas certain occupational areas (e.g., construction, services) have a shortage of employees. Seen this way, the mission of the career practitioner is conceived as requiring clients to construct more realistic representations of the job market and of the actual possibilities of finding employment.
The expectations of employers may be even more radical. The secretary of the largest substructure affiliate of the Mouvement des Employeurs de France (French Employers Movement) stated that "we are in a world where the unlimited duration work contract is ... a situation in process of extinction" (De Calan, 1997, p. 208); hence, the ultimate goal of career counseling is to prepare youngsters for flexibility.
2. Reducing social inequalities. The intentions of social reformers are very different from those of employers. In general, the effort of social reformers is to prevent career counseling practices from contributing to a reconstruction of an identical undesirable social structure. They want these activities to contribute either to the transformation of this structure or, more modestly, to narrow the gap between dominators and the dominated. This has led, for example, to the development in recent years of career intervention programs intended to promote equal access to jobs for men and women.
More generally, social reformers expect career practitioners to direct their activity particularly to groups that might not seek help spontaneously for themselves: the economically deprived, culturally excluded, immigrants, and so on. These reformers are highly aware of the role that unequal access (because of social origins) to pertinent information regarding training and jobs plays in perpetuating social divisions. Partisans of reform also stress the role of social representations (Farr & Moscovici, 1984) and stereotypes that create feelings in some adolescents from modest social and economic backgrounds that a particular career path is not accessible to them. The mission of career practitioners is then perceived as being to lead clients to transform their representations of self and of their social and occupational positions so that they no longer accept as inevitable a future fate that they have felt to be "unquestionable." Those who extol social reform are often proponents of methods that encourage the c ooperation of people (adolescents in particular) of different social backgrounds to work together to accomplish collective projects. Finally, these reformers ask what role career development practices might have in the economic and social development of countries where growth seems lacking.
3. Forming the citizen. According to their political stance, statesmen may lean toward one or the other of these categories of ultimate goals. They nevertheless cannot neglect one in favor of the other (if they are to avoid the risk of finding themselves in a particularly difficult political position). They see the goal of career guidance practices as contributing to social cohesion. Job placement is a necessary condition for such cohesion. Politicians, therefore, heed what employers have to say about the goals of career interventions. Nevertheless, they are also aware of the risks of a breakdown of social order that can result from exclusion of the most deprived individuals. They are aware of their demands for recognition, misbehaviors, urban violence, and so on. Hence, these politicians cannot neglect the point of view of social reformers, which leads them to recognize that career practices must be incorporated in the wider program of the development of citizenship.
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