In German secondary schools, usually teachers plan and organize career education, often aside their teaching obligations (CE-teachers). As schools must promote equality of opportunity, career education should also address individual needs. Our study investigates school management’s and CE-teachers’ stance and perspective regarding facilitating individuals` career development through individualised career education.
Individuals’ career development can be based on Savickas´ (2011) Career Construction Theory. Accordingly, school-based career education should be examined i.e. regarding its content, organization, assessment modes and the necessary teaching personnel (Sultana, 2018). The Thuringian model of career education combines aspects of individual career competence development, the school-organizational level and teachers’ skills to accompany career education (Driesel-Lange, Hany, Kracke, & Schindler, 2010).
Delivering helpful career education programs requires involvement from teachers and a clarification of their roles (Hooley, Watts & Andrews, 2015). However, there is little research on school management’s and teachers’ perspectives on career education and the tasks and challenges that arise through its individualization.
This study is part of a larger, mixed-method design-based research project. The sample contains members of school management and CE-teachers at eleven secondary schools. In 2018, we conducted twenty-two guideline-based expert interviews. The interviewees come from two main, four comprehensive and five grammar schools in the states of Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Twenty interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed with a qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (2010).
First analyses showed that different levels of awareness regarding the necessity of career education exist among school management. The commitment to deliver individual support and to tackle the related organizational challenges strongly differ between school types. Also, schools in social hotspots seem to implement the idea of an inclusive society better and more intensively in terms of career education.
