The Guardian published an article yesterday called 20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education. It sets out an interesting set of issues and includes a quote from me about the role of digital literacy in careers. 

 

The government has just launched a Consultation on careers guidance for schools, sixth form colleges and further education institutions.

The consultation runs until Wednesday 1 August 2012 and so it offers a good opportunity to get your voice heard on this issue.

The purpose of this consultation is to gather views on whether the new duty should be extended down to pupils in year 8 and upwards to young people up to the age of 18 studying in schools, sixth form colleges and further education institutions. Subject to this consultation and to the parliamentary process, we are aiming to amend the age range by regulations from September 2013.

I'm in favour of the extension of this duty but I also used the consultation to express concern about the way in which the new duty has been implemented and suggest that the Department consider how it can use Ofsted and the National Careers Service to help schools to engage with their duty.

You may want to make different points, but it would be useful to get a decent response to this.

I’ve been trying to write something about the internet and career development. This is what I’ve come up with so far. I’m hoping that this is going to be the basis of a paper that I submit to the NICEC journal so I’d appreciate any thoughts in the meantime.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the role of the internet in career development. However, I’ve been frustrated by the way in which that discussion tends to become polarised and also by the way in which it is often conceptually loose. Different concepts over-lap and are then talked about as if they are the same thing. So what I want to try and do in this post is to try and frame discussion about career development and the internet a little more clearly.

Career development describes two things. Firstly it describes a process that individuals are undergoing with varying degrees of consciousness, purposefulness and help and support. We are all developing our careers merely by living and moving from one thing to the next. As we move through life doors open and close whether we recognise them or not. At 37 I am now too old to be a professional gymnast – the door has closed despite me never having considered walking through it.

Our first question is therefore concerned with how the internet and associated technologies have reframed the way in which individuals develop their careers. Do people approach and pursue their careers in a different way in the internet age, from how they did before then?

Secondly career development describes the process of actively intervening in the careers of individuals. Consequently this raises further questions about how the internet shapes both the content of career development interventions (what do I need to know to pursue my career in the internet age) and the mechanisms by which the intervention is made (how can I get help with my career via the internet).

Elsewhere I have started to refer to the idea that there is a particular set of knowledge, skills and attitudes that are used to pursue a career in the internet age as digital career literacy. Digital career literacy is a learning outcome for all career development programmes regardless of the media through which they are delivered. It is concerned with our ability to use the online environment, to search, to make contacts, to get questions answered and to build our reputation in positive ways. Digital career literacy is already vastly important to an individuals ability to successfully pursue a career, but it is getting ever more important. Careers professionals who are not in the business of developing digital career literacy will soon find that they are not in the business of developing careers at all.

So the internet provides a context for individuals careers and because of this it also provides a subject for career development programme. However, the internet also provides a powerful channel of communication and consequently provides a mechanism for the delivery of career development interventions themselves. In Careering through the web we argued that this could be through the provision of information (the internet as a massive careers library), automated interactions (the provision of careers assessments and game-like simulated environments) and as a mechanism for human communication. However, within the category of communication the internet also offers a bewildering array of different options for the career development professional.

Online it is possible to communicate with career learners one-to-one (e.g. online career counselling), one-to-many/many-to-one (e.g. through a careers blog or facilitated online learning environment) or many-to-many (e.g. by intervening in broader social media conversations). At the heart of all of these online interactions sits a career professional who needs to understand the psychology of the individual, the operation of the labour market, the technology through which they are communicating and the pedagogy which underpins the intervention that they are providing. In other words, the online environment is likely to require a more competent and sophisticated careers professional than ever before. One who is capable of using the internet to develop their own career, to network with their peers and willing to innovate in their practice across multiple channels.

So in summary when we are talking about the internet and career development we need to be clear as to what we are talking about. The possibilities include:

• the internet as a context for career development;
• career development as a way of supporting individuals to use the internet and develop their digital career literacy;
• the internet as an information resource for career explorers;
• the provision of career assessments, games and other interactives across the internet; and
• the use of the internet as a mechanism for careers professionals to deliver careers education and guidance to career explorers.

In fact we need to be talking about all of these – but we need to be clear which one we are talking about as we do so.

Going out with me is just great. I really know how to throw a good party. Hence the other night me and my partner (AKA The  Student Support Manager at the Department of Economics, University of Leicester) found ourselves playing the Careers board game as a Friday night treat.

To be fair she did actually buy me the game, so my insistence on a Friday night busman's holiday is not as cruel as it might sound.

Apparently devised by a sociologist and first manufactured in 1955 the set that we've got was probably produced sometime in the 1960s - thankfully before the politically correct replacement of the glamorous career of "uranium prospecting" with "sports".

In essence the aim of the game is to achieve the blend of money, happiness and fame that you seek. Despite its 1956 origins the game actually embodies a "boundaryless "conception of career. Individuals are not matched to a career on the basis of their attributes and traits. Rather they enter the free market, making purposeful career building decisions and regularly switching from one career to another. 

The game begins with players thinking about how they want to blend money, happiness and fame and then their own blend guides the strategies that they pursue throughtout the game. Player keep score on their own career scorecard which they keep secret from the other players. 

The game has a very clear message that pragmatic and dynamic career planning is essential if you are going to realise your career aspirations.

One interesting thing is that there are multiple routes into most of the careers in the game. In general education, experience or plain old money will get you into a career that you want to pursue.

I rather enjoyed the game (although I lost!) I'd definately play again.

Would it be good as a part of careers education? Maybe, although it might go on a bit too long. However, the process of thinking about what you want and then pursuing flexible strategies to achieve it probably hammers the right kind of messages.

Anyone fancy a game?

[I’m on strike today so this post is essentially my cyberpicketing. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow]

I’m striking today to try and exert some influence on the pension company, my employers and ultimately the government. I was trying to think about how to explain why I’m taking this action to readers of this blog.

I originally fell back on the language of rights. I could write that I have the right to spend the last quarter of my life with a decent standard of living. After a lifetime of not particularly brilliantly paid public service I think that it is wrong to say to public sector workers that they should live out their last years in a miserly fashion. But, I’m not sure that the language of rights really has much pull any more.

I could go for the approach of pleading pity and outrage. Like my colleagues, my take home pay fell this month. I look forward to paying more for a pension that ultimately pays me less. For those people who aren’t striking I wonder what you would have done if someone had walked up to you and taken £20 out of your wallet? Yet what is currently happening to our pensions is effectively that and yet some people are taking no action whatsoever. Why they make this choice I cannot understand. The idea that public sector pensions are not affordable is simply a nonsense. This is all about political choices – currently the choice is being made that public sector workers should have a worse standard of living to pay for the deficit. Consequently our wallets are being snatched and notes ripped out. Feeling any outrage yet?

Ultimately I’m not sure that the language of rights or outrage really take us anywhere. Rights only count for anything when you can enforce them. Enforcing them takes power and currently our rulers and employers have lots of power and we have very little. Equally outrage is only worth something if it gets you somewhere. Otherwise you are just shouting at the telly for no purpose. Shouting at the telly is what they invented the X Factor for; you don’t need politics, pensions or industrial relations to provide an outlet for that particular urge.

So I’m going to try and explain this action in terms of hope and optimism. I believe that people are powerful. Human beings have enormous capacity for creativity, kindness and co-operation. What is more when human beings come together into groups they are capable of building rockets that go the moon, parliamentary democracies and global communication networks. As Hamlet says “what a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable” and yet together we are even more. We can overthrow tyrants, we can build a welfare state that demands "from each according to his ability” but provides for “each according to his needs." We can found a state on the premise that “all men are created equal” and that everyone should have the opportunity for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – we are incredible!

Given this is it too much to ask that one of the richest countries in the world can find a way for those who have taught its children, healed its sick, swept its roads and so on to have a good quality of life from the point at which they stop or taper their paid work to the point at which they die? Perhaps an even sharper question is whether it is too much to ask for those of us in the public sector to take one days less pay in pursuit of a better life for us and our colleagues? Strikes get ignored when people don’t observe them. When we all stand together we cannot be ignored.

So if you think that paying off the budget deficit is more important than having a public sector which values its workers and ensures that they have a decent standard of living when they retire, then enjoy your day at work. If you don’t agree with this then you shouldn’t be in today. If you are in, use the day to join the union and stand with us next time.

I'm going to Dublin in a couple of weeks to talk about blogging and career.

This is the sort of thing that I thought I might do. What do people thing?

I've wacked lots of YouTube clips into this presentation which means that you'll probably be able to get a better idea of the sort of thing that I'm going to say than the usual presentation aid that I post.

Anyway, for once I've done it far enough in advance to have time to change it if anyone has got any good ideas - so over to you.

 

I'm giving a presentation in Kent on Monday. They seemed to like the Prezi format so I'm having another go.

We've just produced a new publication for the national HE STEM programme. The publication explores how young people talk about their career.

The research found that there is considerable confusion about a range of career vocabulary both amongst young people themselves and between young people and the adults who seek to influence and inform their careers.

The publication argues that confusion about vocabulary cannot simply be solved by teaching young people the “correct” meaning of different words. The report explores the relationship between the words that we use to talk about career and the way that we think about career. In particular it examines how the different vocabulary and conceptions of career held by young people and adults complicate the career learning that takes place both in school and outside of school.

Moore, N. and Hooley, T. (2012). Talking About Career: The Language Used by and With Young People to Discuss Life, Learning and Work. Derby: iCeGS, University of Derby.

I will be speaking at a NIACE event on the National Careers Service on the 30th May alongside Helen Plant (NIACE) and Joe Billington (Skills Funding Agency).

The event promises to explore the implications of the new service and help providers to think about how the service will relate to the rest of the adult learning landscape.

For further details or to book your place visit the NIACE website.

Today I'm presenting at a conference on non-religious identities based on the work that we did on Religion and Belief in Higher Education.

This is what I thought I'd say 

I thought that this might be a place to set out my own religion and belief position as it was something that others made incorrect assumptions about when I was working on this project.

• I am a pluralist. By this I mean that I understand and welcome the fact that there are multiple religion and belief positions in society. While I defent my right to try and convince people of the value of my own position I also see value in other positions and believe that society and the state should guarentee the space within which this pluralism can operate.
• I am a secularist. By which I mean that I believe that the state should be kept seperate from religion and belief and that it should not give additional rights to any one position. This position includes a concern about things like public funding for religious schooling as well as to a belief that the Church of England should be disestablished. Secularism, in this sense, is a political position that I think that it is possible for a religious person to share. My belief in secularism does not mean that I think that religious people should stay out of politics or never speak of their religion in this context, only that state funding and state power should not be used to entrench religious positions.
• I am an atheist. By which I mean that I do not believe in a deity or any other kinds of spiritual or supernatural force. I believe that the universe is essential a rational one that it is possible to understand. This does not mean that I claim to understand it, nor that I believe that everything in the universe will ever be understood by humans.  
• I am a humanist (just about). By which I mean that I believe that humanity has the ability to solve its own problems and to manage its own affairs without the need for a deity. Humanism is a fundamentally optimistic position that argues that human beings have huge capacity for creativity, co-operation and mutual support. As a humanist I believe that we can and we ultimately will find a way to better govern ourselves and to create a world where individuals are respected and able to contribute to the greater good. However, while I genuinely believe this, I look around the world and see plenty of behaviours that challenge this belief. So my humanism at times seems most like a blind faith, but it is one that I continue to hold onto.

So there you go. I don't know whether anyone is really interested in this - but I feel that it is important to be clear. I have some research interests around religion and belief and this can lead people to jump to the wrong conclusions.