The key innovations in career guidance on labour market

Abstract

Introduction. In a modern dynamic society, new vocations and fields of activity are constantly emerging. The goal of the modern vocational education, information and counselling is to enable the individual to develop a career in the whole life course, full of changes and events. Former approaches have proved inadequate; therefore, new ways are being sought. Therefore, it is necessary to design approaches in managing careers, including those with special needs, and which counselling approaches for a career are best suited to an increasingly dynamic labour market.
 Aim and task. The basic research goal is to find all those innovations in theories and practices that appear in newer career guidance and career counselling approaches. For that purpose,, an longitudinal analysis of articles, studies, guidelines has been carried out that are accessible on web portals. Thus, the most important innovations that are often found in recent theories and practices are revealed.
 Results. System theories and constructivism in career guidance represent an urgent response to changes in a dynamic society, but still include some parts of previous theories and practices. Meaning, the present essentially implies the accumulating and merging of previous approaches that deal with individuals in a way that individuals become agents who manage their own careers. The most important innovations are: learning as the individual's own project, narrative approach with storytelling, reconstruction of self-esteem, self-determination, nonlinear career, empathy in counselling, decision-making autonomy, no directed counselling. So new constructivist perspective continues to influence career theory and practice.
 Conclusions. The study shows that it is impossible to talk about the best universal theories or approaches in the field of career guidance and career counselling, but about the most usable ones, in the given circumstances. The development of practices in career guidance and counselling is most influenced by psychology, and recently also by social-cognitive psychology, but the influence of other disciplines, such as sociology, ethics, economics and others, is increasing. Innovations that have been identified show the integration of diverse concepts; in particular, the contextual view that appears also in other social sciences. In emphasizing the active nature of individuals as self-building, self-renewing and self-organizing system within constructivist approach, it is viewed as important underpinning for the practice which is responding to ever changing times.