The ESRC seminar series entitled: ‘Re-framing service delivery, professional practices and professional identities in UK careers work’ is being organised by Professor Jenny Bimrose and Dr Sally-Anne Barnes from the Institute for Employment Research in partnership with Professors Laurie Cohen and John Arnold from Loughborough University.  The series will comprise 6 one-day seminars. The title of the second is: ‘Professional associations & professionalism: exploring the ‘Balkanisation’ of careers guidance, the role of the associations and their inter-relationships’ at the University of Glamorgan on 31st March, 2011.  More information on the seminar series is available.

The seminar series entitled Re-framing service delivery, professional practices and professional identities in UK careers work is being funded by the ESRC and being organised by Professor Jenny Bimrose and Dr Sally-Anne Barnes from the Institute for Employment Research in partnership with Professors Laurie Cohen and John Arnold from Loughborough University.  The aim of the series is to contribute to and integrate knowledge in relation to three major policy agendas that all have careers guidance as a key strand: the Europe-wide lifelong learning agenda; social equity agenda; and the up-skilling agenda. The series will comprise 6 one-day seminars; the first of which was held at the University of East London on 1 December.  It was successful in attracting key stakeholders in the field of careers guidance.  More information on the seminar series is available.

Dr Sally-Anne Barnes was the keynote at the VUE conference “Discourses on guidance and counselling: Existence, communities and retention” in Denmark on 25 November 2010.  Sally-Anne presented on the longitudinal study into the nature of effective career guidance tracking the career trajectories of the recipients of guidance undertaken with Professor Jenny Bimrose.

The NGRF website has moved to a new home on the University of Warwick website.  As part of the move we are reviewing and updating the content.  25 sectors have been updated in LMI Future Trends using the latest labour market information from the Sector Skills Councils and key resources such as Working Futures 2007-2017 (which takes into account the recent economic climate), the latest Employer Skills Survey 2009 and the 2009 UK Employment and Skills Almanac.  This LMI is now available to use.  The Making Guidance More Effective section is currently under review and will reflect new policy and practice.  As part of the redevelopment, the LMI learning module is being revised and revamped to not only include new data sources that are available, but to also take advantage of new technologies.  Watch out as new content will be coming online shortly. 

If you would like more information or would like to contribute to the NGRF, please contact us at: guidance.research@warwick.ac.uk

The new publication ‘Stories of careers, learning and identity across the lifespan: Considering the future narrative of career theory’ by Professorial Fellow, Jenny Bimrose and two IER Associate Fellows, Dr Mary McMahon (The University of Queensland) and Professor Mark Watson (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) is now available.  The paper has been published by the Institute for Career Guidance with the support of the ICG Research Committee.

The paper is located within the context of the present debate about modern and post-modern career research, theory and practice.  It considers the construction of career stories of individuals across the lifespan.  The stories told by the children, adolescents, adult women and men illustrate a range of theoretical constructs related to career development and career construction.  Importantly, these constructs are derived from both modern and postmodern career theories.  The paper demonstrates that individuals’ stories provide for a rich and inclusive narrative that crosses the divide between modern and postmodern career theory. In so doing, it illustrates a possible future direction for the development of career theory.