3rd ESVDC Webinar, October 19, 2023
ADVOCACY IN CAREER GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
On October 19, 2023, the European Society for Vocational Designing and Career Counseling (ESVDC) organized its 3rd webinar, titled “Advocacy in Career Guidance and Counseling: International Perspectives.”
With this webinar, the ESVDC executive board (Jonas Masdonati, Jenny Bimrose, Paulo Cardoso, Laura Nota, and Jacques Pouyaud) aimed to further pursue the critical, transnational, and comparative perspectives that characterized its first and second editions—addressing Next Generation EU and Guidance and migration challenges, respectively. This year’s topic was based on the observation that vocational psychologists and career counselors are increasingly considered key players in promoting social inclusion, with advocacy counseling emerging as an appropriate intervention approach to support clients struggling with systemic barriers. However, both research findings and the experiences of advocacy-oriented career guidance and counseling (CGC) remain rather fragmented. The webinar sought to broaden the understanding of what CGC research states about advocacy counseling, as well as to pave the way for operational and effective advocacy interventions in the career field. International scholars were asked to address the following questions: Why should CGC advocate for social inclusion? Under which conditions is the application of advocacy counseling in CGC relevant and viable? What evidence supports the validity of advocacy counseling and its application in the career field? What are examples of best practices of advocacy counseling in the career field? What guidelines and standards for effective advocacy CGC could be formulated?
Four internationally recognized scholars were invited to share their visions on these questions
Ronald G. Sultana, Professor of Educational Sociology and Comparative Education at the University of Malta, head of the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research (EMCER), and recent recipient of the ESVDC award, presented a paper entitled Troubling Advocacy: The Indignity of Speaking for Others. In his keynote, Ronald Sultana noted the “social justice turn” in critical reflections on career guidance, which has led to a greater interest in advocacy on behalf of vulnerable groups. This is an important development, but Sultana cautions against adopting the notion of “advocacy” in too facile and uncritical manner. Advocacy presumes the activity of “giving voice,” or of “amplifying the voice” of those who are silenced, unheard, or misheard. The notion of “speaking for others” is, however, deeply problematic, for both structural and existential reasons. Our social class gendered and racialized subjectivities can easily lead us to define oppressive situations in particular ways, and to consider some options of transformative practices over others. Liberal, status quo-maintaining views and strategies are readily preferred since these ultimately reflect and further our own interests, even if justice would be better served by significant systemic change. This is precisely why self-advocacy on the part of the oppressed is so important, justifying the assertion “Nothing about us without us.” In supporting the struggle for social justice, as this is defined by subordinated and vulnerable groups, we should therefore beware transforming the Other’s voice and life stories into mirror images of our own. Here the work of the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas is most relevant, for it helps us understand how important it is to recognize the “Other” as being separate from ourselves. In our engagement with the “Other” and on their behalf, we must not reduce them to our sameness. It is this recognition of “alterity,” the “not-me,” that engages our response-ability, challenging us to be respectful and just, and to truly listen to truly serve.
Elisabetta Camussi, licensed psychologist, Associate Professor of social psychology at the Department of Psychology of the University of Milan-Bicocca, and vice president of the Italian Guidance Society (SIO), gave a talk titled Gender Equality and Advocacy Counseling: is Awareness enough? According to Elisabetta Camussi, the phenomena of gender inequality and unequal opportunities often materialize through systemic discrimination, stereotypes, and biases in educational and professional contexts. These attitudes and behaviors are learned unconsciously during socialization by both men and women and act on people subconsciously. They generate expectations based on stereotypical, superficial, and generic descriptions, such as making us consider certain dimensions as relevant only to femininity and not masculinity, and vice versa. Gender stereotypes and biases do influence educational and career choices, limiting one’s free expression, particularly in women, afraid of violating social expectations. Counselors must be aware of these processes and adopt a gender-sensitive approach, based on a non-traditional epistemology, such as Feminist Epistemology. This involves self-reflexivity in research and interventions and a critical examination of one’s social position and its possible impact on the conduct of our counseling. Interventions must be tailored to understand the complex intersections of class, ethnicity, religion, gender, and so on. The methods must adapt to the needs of contemporary social realities. The contribution addressed these topics from a theoretical point of view and also offered some practical suggestions.
Catherine Tourette-Turgis, founder of the University of Patients, Professor and Chairholder at the Sorbonne University, Paris, presenter the paper Advocating for the return to work of cancer survivors: Presentation of a cancer-sensitive skills assessment pilot center. In her presentation, Catherine Tourette-Turgis introduced an ongoing national experiment in France that aims to create a competency assessment sensitive to health challenges, starting with cancer. This experiment is led by the Chair of Competencies and Vulnerabilities at the Patients’ University – Sorbonne University. Prof. Catherine Tourette-Turgis, an experienced counselor with extensive expertise in HIV and cancer counseling, presented the psychosocial impacts of cancer and her experience in training employees of a large company in peer-to-peer counseling related to cancer and work. She suggested discussing how counseling in the field of cancer recovery can make a significant contribution to career counseling for individuals of working age who are cancer survivors.
Jane Goodman, Professor Emerita of counseling at Oakland University in Michigan, vice president for the International Association of Educational and Vocational Guidance, and past president of The American Counseling Association, The National Career Development Association (NCDA), and The Counselors for Social Justice, addressed a talk titled A Counselors Guide to Advocacy: A Three Dimensional Model. In her presentation, Jane Goodman sustained that Counselors have an opportunity to advocate both with, and for, the people with whom we work. According to her, we can empower our clients to advocate for themselves by teaching them advocacy skills. We can also (perhaps at the same time) advocate for them by developing allies and representing their interests at the organizational and systemic level. In her session, Prof. Goodman described the American Counseling Association three-dimensional advocacy model using the metaphor of starfish, salmon, and whales. She also looked at how we can use advocacy to engender hope, a critical component of individual change.
In summary, several key messages emerged from these presentations. Generally speaking, advocacy is a complex, multi-level form of CGC intervention, covering both actions involving oppressed or marginalized social groups and actions on behalf of these populations. In any case, the “target groups” for advocacy counseling are extremely varied, which raises the question of whether general guidelines are relevant, given that each cause involves specific leverages and struggles. What is more, speaking “on behalf of others” can be sensitive and double-edged, and lead to the imposition of the dominant worldview on oppressed groups. Another pitfall is that of overlooking our own biases and stereotypes in providing support, for instance with regard to gender issues. Although more complex, support involving these groups and creating the conditions to enable them to speak—rather than speaking for them—thus seems more promising and ethically sustainable. In concrete terms, this can be achieved by drawing on existing initiatives that, for example, empower people living with illness (by transforming the illness experience into a source of learning and competence) and strengthen the hope of marginalized social groups.
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