Why did your organization want to participate in the IMPROVE project?Observator pentru Dezvoltare Înva?arii Permanente ODIP was invited to participate to the IMPROVE project after the withdrawal of the Bulgarian partner. The topic was of interest for us, we already knew some of the partners with whom we had a fruitful collaboration in other international projects, so it was a good opportunity for us to exploit our expertise in the career guidance and counselling field and to participate in building something valuable at European level.
In your opinion, what is the benefit for your context?
In Romania, we have a growing guidance and counselling network, especially in the field of education. Meanwhile, the professionalization of the practitioners is still a matter of individual choice. Only the big universities in Romania have a Master Degree in counselling, but it is not compulsory for performing this profession. Practitioners follow continuous education in different fields (psychotherapy, guidance and counselling, human resources management), as these courses are important for updating their information and open their perspectives, but professional opportunities to test their competence against a clear and coherent criteria in the guidance and counselling area are missing.
How would you briefly describe the IMPROVE pilot experience?
We organized our pilot as a professional development event under the constructivist approach, inviting the participants to learn together with the expert-evaluators about their strengths and weaknesses. The opinions about the Romanian pilot were favourable on both sides: trainers consider that "it offered a real learning opportunity for the candidates who started to reflect upon their tasks as practitioners in the individual career counselling". On the other side, candidates consider that "it was something new, innovative and efficient, professional", raising their self-esteem, offering the possibility to compare their competence against good benchmarks in the field: "it was for me a necessary process of self-analysis", "it was an opportunity to reflect on what I have done so far and to what I have to do in the future".
What types of resources, tools, activities do practitioners in your context use to improve their competence, abilities and skills?
In Romania, there are different options and routes for those who want to improve their abilities: master degrees in guidance and counselling in the big universities, training courses in centres subordinated to the Ministry of Education (Teacher training centres – the offer is available only for teachers), participating in exchange experiences offered by the Lifelong Learning Programme (Comenius, Grundtvig, Leonardo da Vinci, Study Visits), participating in projects developed in international partnership which often offer also a training course (eg.: Distance Counselling, MEVOC, ICT Skills – all organized by the Institute of Educational Sciences), training courses offered by private ONGs (eg: Centrul Educa?ia 2000+). The national Euroguidance conferences are a good opportunity for practitioners to meet and share their experiences. International books in the field are rare, therefore national researches have been undertaken and resources have been developed especially by the Institute of Educational Sciences. Beside the libraries of the Psychology and Educational Sciences faculties, an electronic library has been recently opened by the Romanian branch of the National Board for Certified Counsellors NBCC.
In the guidance context, do you consider that knowledge of or day to day conscious use of theoretical frameworks to be missing?
Yes, we consider that practitioners are often using different tools, but the theoretical frame is missing or not explicitly clear for the practitioners. In the Romanian pilot, questions related to theories and authors were the most difficult (according to the scores obtained). This was surprising because the initial preparation of Romanian students is comprised of a lot of theoretical things (this is still a weak point of the entire Romanian educational system, but things are changing started with the new Educational law 1/2011). It was really surprising to find out that sometimes practitioners do not remember the names and the theories behind the tools and approaches they use. Nevertheless, candidates appreciated the evaluators recommendations related to the need to better link theory with practice.
More broadly, how would you describe the guidance (professional and academic) context in your country? Could you highlight examples of good practice?
The career guidance and counselling domain in Romania is mainly offered by two networks: in the educational sector there are 41 centres with 2200 practitioners in compulsory education (school counsellors) and 23 centres in the tertiary education. In the employment sector there are 41 centres, 70 local agencies, 141 working points, 16 professional training centres. EURESS and EUROGUIDANCE networks are also actively involved in offering information and counselling for those interested to work and/or study abroad.
Romanian participated in a lot of international studies (ETF, CEDEFOP, OECD, World Bank) and policies become favourable to this area: occupational standards were developed for counsellors working with the unemployed people (1990), school counsellors (2010) or vocational counsellors (working with persons with disabilities – 2011) and some initiatives have been piloted especially in the area of Competency Frameworks (within the international projects MEVOC, ICT Skills I and II or EAS). An entire line under the ESF funds is dedicated to transition from the school to the world of work; a national curricula is in place for pupils following compulsory education and the new education law (1/2011) supports the development of new school programs in the area of guidance and counselling.
Some good practices we can mention are: the PLOTEUS portal, the Guide to the world of occupations www.go.ise.ro (Romanian version), the European Priority Area project developed by UNICEF, for teachers and parents from socio-economically disadvantaged areas, with the aim of making the school offer more open to parents` need and to motivate them to send their children to school. The ultimate aim of this project is to reduce the drop out in the 103 schools participating in this programme through an integrated approach oriented to managers, children, teachers and parents. 37 school counsellors are actively involved in working with parents under the Parents Counselling component within this project.
The Career Counselling research is strongly supported by the Guidance and Counselling research department within the Institute of Educational Sciences Bucharest (www.ise.ro). The latest researches comprise valuable information about tools like the Educational Portfolio (2009, 2010) or Methods and techniques to be used in career Counselling (2006).
