In 21st century, HE students have more feelings of insecurity because of the changing world of work and society. At the same time, resources for career guidance are limited and academic staff is struggling in identification of their role in supporting students’ career related tasks.
Embedding employability into the academic curricula has received increasing attention during the last decades. There is also a need to understand how employability and work life relevance are transferred into career planning skills. The traditional means and methods of developing employable and confident graduates in HEs include developing students’ career skills, linking curriculum learning and career skills, supporting students’ career and professional identity development and learning from experience and career information (LMI). However, the co-operation between the academic staff and the career services often contains challenges though there is a mutual understanding that the curriculum needs to have working life relevance.
This method has been developed to the practical needs for co-operation between the career services and the academic staff. It is used to identify students’ career concerns and categorize the career related activities in studies in HE (Lairio & Penttinen 2006; Penttinen, Skaniakos & Lairio, 2013). The co-operation between career counsellors and academic teaching staff can clarify different kind of activities to support students’ career related processes in HE. The theoretical framework for the method lies on the ideas of Savickas’s (2005) career construction theory and the sociological viewpoint introduced in Careership theory from Hodkinson and Sparkes (1997).
The method is introduced by active group work. A clear theory-driven model is introduced for organizing a workshop which helps to develop the co-operation between career service and counsellors and academic staff.
