Recently, the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection launched the National Policy Framework for Career Guidance in Kenya. The policy document spells out three categories of practitioners students should mine career information from. Actually, career information focuses on cogent content that assists individuals in career development. It captures skills, career path, learning opportunities, occupations, labour market trends, education programmes, training institutions, government or non-governmental programmes and job openings. Getting down to the brass tacks of today’s career guide, we focus on the three categories of career guidance practitioners: Career educators, career counsellors and career information specialists.
Firstly, career educators comprise of teachers, trainers, tutors and lecturers. Career educators also spill to industry experts that teach career education in their relevant fields of expertise. The experts include: Master Crafts Persons (MCPs), employers and professionals. Ideally, the industry experts have the capacity to help students understand relationship between knowledge and skills learnt in class and the world of work. This enriches career education programmes for it assists students to engage in experiential learning through active work experiences of industrial experts. This underscores the essence of job shadowing, which in high school happens through academic trips and tours.
Secondly, we have career counsellors who are highly heterogeneous in terms of their qualifications. While the qualifications framework and Code of Ethics for psychologists is governed by Counsellors and Psychologists Act (2014), there is no specific framework for career counsellors. Ostensibly, career counselling is offered by individuals with diversified qualifications including education, theology, economics, psychology, human resource management, et cetera. Then, roles of career counsellors and psychological counsellors are entwined as ‘guidance counsellors’. Comparatively, some countries have made efforts to professionalise career counselling through the establishment of qualifications frameworks and professional bodies. For instance, in Austria, providers of the country’s free adult education guidance programme must be certified by Information, Counselling and Orientation for Education and Career (IBBOB) certification. Career guidance advisers also use the European Career Guidance Certificate (ECGC), which is based on the standards of Quality Manual for Education and Vocational Counselling. Consequently, professional associations have been established for career counsellors in several countries. For instance, there is the Career Development Association of the Philippines, Polish Association of School and Vocational Counsellors, National Association for School and Vocational Guidance in Romania and South African Association of Educational and Vocational Guidance.
Lastly, there are career information specialists, which also has three sub-categories starting with statisticians and analysts; responsible for data collection, analyses and storage. We have operational officers that focus on data interpretation and development of career information. There are senior officers responsible for career information dissemination and capacity building. Currently, there is no well-defined qualifications framework for career specialists. Comparatively, in Canada, a good percentage of career information specialists wield a bachelor degree in career guidance. They learn on the job and get on-site training. They work primarily in employment and career development organisations.
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