Assessing career guidance skills in order to contribute to the empowerment of pupils

Abstract

The assessment of career guidance skills can provide value to pupils and their actions and contribute to their life projects. This requires an awareness of the elements involved in skills development and thus to the identification of these elements by teachers and their pupils. These elements form part of a common reference system that is essential to empower each person, enabling them to participate and be recognised as someone who can fulfill themselves and contribute to society. In this article, we conducted a retrospective analysis of the assessment forms proposed to teachers and students in the first years of secondary school in French-speaking Belgium. These assessment forms were included in a guidance booklet prototype that aimed to facilitate access and support the production of written evidence pertaining to elements of knowledge (on the self, school world and on the professional world), and elements of context, as well as action verbs. Altogether these items could be combined to create and formalise "guidance skills". The analysis showed that if pupils and teachers manage to take ownership of the reference system translated in visual images, it is essential to guide them to use them to define and explain the skills practiced. The development of assessment tools for career guidance skills should include a training on the cognitive strategies that can be used to assess skills. This is essential to recognise and value the skills developed, and to empower pupils to transfer their skills to other situations.