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Research group Career Development and Guidance

Career Development and Guidance is an international research area which focuses on youth and adult learning in relation to educational and vocational choices and their career development and mobility.

Foto: Jens Olof Lasthein

Group description

The research area has two focuses: first, pedagogical work aimed, at guiding youth and adults through their questions surrounding education, occupation, and career choices, both as individuals and as groups.

The second research focus is on educational policy development, institutional practices, as well as individual and group approaches. Not least in relation to the structured conditions tied to social positions, and identities, such as class, gender, ethnicity, and ability.

Research within this area is particularly current as educational systems and work life are becoming more fragmented, are rapidly changing and becoming more transnational. Choice of education and occupation have become more complex and demanding of a task, require individuals to make choices long before they have entered work life, and it is no longer a given that one can secure a career in a long-term (lifelong) position.

At the Department of Education, research is conducted surrounding the following themes:

Educational/pedagogical coaching and counselling
Dialogue and power during a counselling session
Career guidance and political governance
Race, gender, and career development in higher education
Equity, acceptance and differences created in guidance
Guidance for those with special needs.

The research group’s activities and research questions are, in some key respects, related to the professional knowledge attained in career counselling, and are even related to the Bachelor of Education Programme in Careers Counselling and the Master’s Programme Career Development and Career Counselling. The group’s members actively teach in the diversity studies programme, the teacher education programme, as well as courses in pedagogy.