Learning for now or later? Career competencies among students in higher vocational education in the Netherlands

This article focuses on the question: which aspects of a learning environment, aimed at fostering career learning, correspond with the development of career competencies among university students in the Netherlands? A questionnaire-based study was carried out among 4820 students and 371 career counsellors in 11 universities. Four career competencies were identified: career reflection (reflective behaviour), work exploration (exploring behaviour), career action (proactive behaviour) and networking (interactive behaviour). The results show that the existence of these competencies among students in higher vocational education correlates with a learning environment that is characterized by a practice-based and inquiry-based curriculum, which offers students the opportunity to engage in a career dialogue. The existence of a career dialogue, in which students can discuss the personal and societal relevance of the real-life problems they encounter, and the experiences they have, proves to be essential. Without a dialogue the learning potential of a practice- and inquiry-based curriculum is limited.

[1]  R. Light,et al.  Making the Most of College , 2001 .

[2]  Fred J. Hanna,et al.  Coincidence, Happenstance, Serendipity, Fate, or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity , 2002 .

[3]  Brian H. Kleiner,et al.  The managed heart: the commercialisation of human feeling – and its dangers , 2001 .

[4]  R. Connell.  Working-Class Families and the New Secondary Education , 2003, Confronting Equality.

[5]  Unfolding the Dance of Team Learning: A Metaphorical Investigation of Collective Learning , 2008 .

[6]  David Johnson.  Bridging the Learning Divide: A Study into Adult Learning and Peer Mediation in the Workplace , 2009 .

[7]  Jaap Scheerens,et al.  Career Competencies for the Modern Career , 2006 .

[8]  R. Lapan,et al.  Vocational Interests and Career Efficacy Expectations in Relation to Occupational Sex-Typing Beliefs for Eighth Grade Students , 2004 .

[9]  Frans Meijers,et al.  Mentoring in Dutch vocational education: an unfulfilled promise , 2008 .

[10]  D. Stuss,et al.  The frontal lobes and theory of mind: Developmental concepts from adult focal lesion research , 2004, Brain and Cognition.

[11]  G. Bateson,et al.  Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity , 1979 .

[12]  Phil Hodkinson,et al.  Careership: a sociological theory of career decision making , 1997 .

[13]  J. L. Holland,et al.  Making vocational choices : a theory of vocational personalities and work environments , 1984 .

[14]  Celeste P.M. Wilderom,et al.  Career success in a boundaryless career world. , 2005 .

[15]  Joaquín Alegre,et al.  Measuring organisational learning capability among the workforce , 2007 .

[16]  R. Sultana,et al.  Career Guidance Policies in 37 Countries: Contrasts and Common Themes , 2004 .

[17]  陳雪雲.  新書介紹－－Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress , 2001 .

[18]  Charles K. Fadel,et al.  21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times , 2009 .

[19]  B. Malik,et al.  Critical Reflections on Career Education and Guidance : Promoting Social Justice within a Global Economy , 2005 .

[20]  Julie Farthing.  Book Review: Career Guidance and Public Policy: Bridging the Gap , 2004 .

[21]  Kathleen M. Sutcliffe,et al.  Special Issue: Frontiers of Organization Science, Part 1 of 2: Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[22]  Michael B. Arthur,et al.  The New Careers: Individual Action and Economic Change , 1999 .

[23]  J. Mezirow.  Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress. The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. , 2000 .

[24]  M. Easterby-Smith,et al.  Organizational learning: debates past, present and future , 2000 .

[25]  J. Krumboltz,et al.  A learning theory of career counseling. , 1996 .

[26]  P. Kuusela.  Dialogical Self Theory . Positioning and Counter-Positioning in a Globalizing Society by Hubert Hermans , 2011 .

[27]  Frans Meijers,et al.  Differences and similarities in the use of the portfolio and personal development plan for career guidance in various vocational schools in The Netherlands , 2008 .

[28]  Jeroen J. G. van Merriënboer,et al.  Performance‐based ISD 10 steps to complex learning , 2002 .

[29]  Christine T. Ennew,et al.  Weapons of mass instruction? The rhetoric and reality of online learning , 2006 .

[30]  Training,et al.  International handbook of education for the changing world of work : bridging academic and vocational learning , 2009 .

[31]  Carrie R. Leana.  The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism , 1998 .

[32]  J. L. Holland,et al.  Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers , 1973 .

[33]  J. Bruner.  Acts of meaning , 1990 .

[34]  Frans Meijers,et al.  The relationship between learning environment and career competencies of students in vocational education , 2011 .

[35]  F. Meijers,et al.  New perspectives on career and identity in the contemporary world , 2002 .

[36]  Joachim Doll,et al.  Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , 2021, International Organization.

[37]  G. Richard.  International Best Practices in Career Development: Review of the Literature , 2005 .

[38]  F. Meijers,et al.  Identity learning: the core process of educational change , 2005 .

[39]  Marinka Kuijpers.  Loopbaanontwikkeling in het beroepsonderwijs; draagvlak en daadkracht : Intreerede van Marinka Kuijpers aan de Haagse Hogeschool voor het lectoraat Pedagogiek van de beroepsvorming, 2 november 2007 , 2007 .

[40]  Thomas N. Garavan,et al.  Collective Learning Processes and Human Resource Development , 2008 .

[41]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[42]  J. Rotter.  Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. , 1966, Psychological monographs.

[43]  K. Magnusson,et al.  Junior High School Students' Career Plans for the Future , 2006 .

[44]  F. Meijers,et al.  Hoe spannend is het hoger beroepsonderwijs , 2006 .

[45]  P. Creed,et al.  Gender Differences for Optimism, Self-esteem, Expectations and Goals in Predicting Career Planning and Exploration in Adolescents , 2004 .

[46]  Sharon F. Conley,et al.  Organizational Learning in Schools and School Systems: Improving Learning, Teaching, and Leading , 2006 .

[47]  D. Riverin-Simard.  The Future of Career: Career development in a changing context of the second part of working life , 2000 .

[48]  M. Karp,et al.  School-Based Career Development: A Synthesis of the Literature , 2004 .

[49]  T. F. Harrington,et al.  Practice and Research in Career Counseling and Development—2005 , 2006 .

[50]  J. Krumboltz,et al.  The School-to-Work Transition from a Learning Theory Perspective. , 1999 .

[51]  Km Kariene Mittendorff.  Career conversations in senior secondary vocational education , 2010 .

[52]  Robert W. Lent,et al.  A Social Cognitive View of School-to-Work Transition. , 1999 .

[53]  J. Shotter.  Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructionism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind , 1993 .

[54]  Richard S. Prawat,et al.  Current Self-Regulation Views of Learning and Motivation Viewed Through a Deweyan Lens: The Problems With Dualism , 1998 .

[55]  R. Matthews,et al.  Vygotsky's philosophy: Constructivism and its criticisms examined , 2005 .

[56]  A. Bandura.  Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory , 1985 .

[57]  Richard Fox.  Constructivism Examined , 2001 .

[58]  Thomas Bailey,et al.  Working Knowledge: Work-Based Learning and Education Reform , 2003 .

[59]  J. Krumboltz,et al.  Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities , 1999 .

[60]  A. Kronman.  Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life , 2007 .

[61]  P. Creed,et al.  Antecedents and consequences of career decisional states in adolescence , 2005 .

[62]  R. Light,et al.  Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds , 2001 .

[63]  F. Meijers,et al.  What are vocational training conversations about? Analysis of vocational training conversations in Dutch vocational education from a career learning perspective , 2009 .

[64]  Vincent Tinto,et al.  Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition. , 1988 .

[65]  A. Giddens.  Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age , 1992, The New Social Theory Reader.

[66]  T. Fenwick.  Understanding Relations of Individual—Collective Learning in Work: A Review of Research , 2008 .

[67]  S. Rathus,et al.  Making the Most of College , 1991 .

[68]  M. Savickas.  The Theory and Practice of Career Construction. , 2005 .

[69]  Frans Meijers,et al.  Leading the process of reculturing: Roles and actions of school leaders , 2007 .

[70]  S. Schwartz,et al.  Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition , 1987 .

[71]  Jaap Scheerens,et al.  Career competencies for career success , 2006 .