Essay About Career Guidance

Career guidance in the Philippines started as vocational guidance. In the early 1970s, people in education and training circles responded to questions raised about the difference between vocational guidance and vocational education. The distinction widely accepted at that time was that vocational education referred to post-secondary education focusing on skills acquisition for gainful employment. Vocational guidance was defined as the service given to students in choosing the most appropriate vocation, i.e. whether he/she should go to vocational education or to college, and if college, what course he/she should take. This service was provided in schools by guidance teachers or by guidance counselors. No systematic information was available

The diversity that characterize students entering higher education is multilayered and complex (van Schalkwyk 2007). Career guidance programs should aim at developing important skills for life and work and, to assist with immediate decisions. If this is true, first, career guidance programs must adopt a learning centered approach and this means building career education into the curriculum. In some countries, career education is neither mandatory nor included in the curriculum however; it is included in curriculum frameworks as an optional element. Where it is included in the curriculum, the way in which it is delivered, for example, as a separate subject or integrated into other subjects, the time devoted to it, and the school grades in which it is delivered, can vary widely from school to school within a country as well as between countries. Secondly, schools must adopt a developmental approach, tailoring the content of career education and guidance to the learners’ developmental stages. Incidentally, some universities