There are numerous quality marks in the field of career guidance, both for individuals and for organisations. Often, those quality marks are quite difficult to compare, especially in their underlying rationales and considerations. On the other hand, it has proven to be rather difficult to develop coherent quality assurance systems that meet actual needs, since more often than not they are based on desired outcomes – ‘it must be ISO’ – instead of the underlying needs itself.
The presented certification framework, being developed by Noloc, the Dutch professional association for career guidance practitioners, as part of the EU co-funded QUAL-IM-G project, is based on three principles:
1. It is generic enough to deal with specific needs and circumstances of different target groups, sectors or countries;
2. It is specific enough to grasp the essentials involved in the development of a quality assurance framework specifically targeted on the certification of the profession of ‘career guidance practitioners’;
3. It focuses on actual needs instead of desired outcomes.
The framework itself is being built up by providing answers to the questions raised with respect to numerous elements – categorized in blocks and sub-blocks – that could be part of building a specific certification framework. Providing different answers, will lead to different outcomes and – therefore – different frameworks. This way of developing and implementing makes the framework both a highly flexible concept, as well as a concept that can be fully adapted to local, sectoral or national needs and circumstances.
In the workshop an overview of the main questions to be raised when developing a certification framework will be provided, using the structure of building blocks and sub-blocks. Of course, it is up to the certification framework development team to either skip questions or add additional questions, depending on their actual needs.
