Labour Market Prospects of Swiss Career Entrants after Completion of Vocational Education and Training

This study seeks to find the reasons for the rising risk of unemployment for people who have completed basic vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland. We focus on the long-term structural shift on the demand side of the labour market and its consequences for new entrants? chances of employment in the labour force. A detailed analysis of the development of vacancies for such ?career entrants? in the time period 2001 to 2011 suggests that neither a growing occupational mismatch nor a general shift in the level of education to the disadvantage of workers with vocational education can be made responsible for the rising unemployment of labour market entrants. Instead, the available evidence indicates that a diminishing part of the vacancies suited for VET graduates remains open to entrants because of the increasing job requirements with regard to work experience and further education. Basic vocational education and training alone is increasingly less a guarantee for a smooth entry into the working world.

Scarring Effects of Early Unemployment among Young Workers with Vocational Credentials in Switzerland

Background Using a unique, longitudinal survey that follows school-to-work transitions of pupils who participated in PISA 2000, this paper investigates adverse consequences, so-called scarring effects, of early unemployment among young adults who acquired vocational credentials in Switzerland. Methods As social, individual and contextual factors influence both early unemployment and later employment outcomes, taking into account endogeneity is of utmost importance when investigating scarring effects. In this regard we make use of nearest-neighbour propensity score matching and set up statistical control groups. Results Our results suggest that young adults who hold vocational credentials are more likely to be neither in employment nor in education, and to earn less and be more dissatisfied with their career progress later in work life than they would be, had they not experienced early unemployment. Conclusions We conclude that unemployment scarring also affects young adults with vocational credentials in a liberal labour market setting that otherwise allows for smooth school-to-work transitions. This finding runs counter to expectations that standardised vocational degrees, a liberal and flexible labour market structure, and predominantly short unemployment spells protect young skilled workers from scarring in case they happen to experience early career instability.

Gender Segregation in Vocational Education: Introduction

This introductory chapter develops the overall research focus and the aim of the present special issue ‘Gender segregation in vocational education’. Against the backdrop of strong horizontal gender segregation in vocational education and training (VET), we ask how institutional arrangements affect gendered (self-)selection into VET, and to what extent the patterns of the latter vary by context and over time. In order to expand our knowledge about the impact of educational offers and policies on gendered educational pathways and gender segregation in the labour market, we have gathered comparative quantitative studies that analyse the relationship between national variations in the organization of VET and cross-national differences in educational and occupational gender segregation from an institutional perspective. Following a review of the core literature within the field of gender segregation in VET, this introduction presents a discussion of education system classifications and institutional level mechanisms based on the contributions made in this volume. We then discuss gendered educational choices at the individual level, with particular emphasis on variation across the life course. Finally, we conclude our introductory chapter by commenting on the main contributions of the volume as a whole, as well as addressing suggestions for further research.

Vocational guidance in people with special educational needs as the result of visual impairment during the transition stage from high school to advanced education

This work proposes to seek for the factors related to the choices that people with special educational needs make as the result of the visual impairment, during the transition stage from high school to advanced education. Therefore, we have taken into consideration that Vocational Guidance and the transition towards adulthood get specific characteristics in case of visually impaired young people, particularly in what's related to continue with advanced education. The focus of this work is to be able to clarify the existence of factors that make this transition stage easier or harder, through the observation of visually impaired and blind people who complete high school. This matter has aroused interest and concern about the strategies to follow to ensure the successful entrance and remaining in the selected advanced education. However, if we don?t know the factors involved in the described fact, it's difficult to design an appropriate intervention strategy. Then, in order to take acknowledge about the specific issues of visually impaired young people who complete high school, we chose a special school for this disability and some students who will join this project

Subjectivity and professional vocational counselling

In this work, I shall deal with the psychodynamic approach to subjectivity in P.V.C.. To this effect, I want to develop the concept of subject and subjectivity, its variation and historical-social construction and its approach in counselling, from a psychodynamic conceptual framework in P.V.C. with a short reference to the theoretical sources on which this approach is founded.

Reflections on vocational guidance and counselors' training in contexts of global change

Vocational guidance (V.G.) is currently facing both theoretical and methodological reconsiderations. This demands rethinking ethical and scientific assumptions, counselors' role and training. V.G. provides a space to receive information about oneself as well as about labor world and for the elaboration of projects for the future. Many guidance situations in teenagers and young adults are described in this paper, highlighting the main current emergent aspects. There was a remarkable protagonism of those seeking guidance and the reflective frame of the guidance. This frame prepares for the educational stage changes and also for occupational insertion working on aspects that widen autonomous choice and the development of social abilities and attitudes to carry out the vocational project and the development in work. Troubled sociocultural and economic transformations demand an on-going training on the part of counselors. To that end, possible fields of concern and subjects to be worked in said training are suggested.

Vocational guidance and development of competences

The present "post modern" socio-cultural modalities and the restrictions of the economic globalization lead us to reflect about the configuration of the transformations in the Vocational Guidance, committed to the concepts of "freedom", "epistemological knowledge", "competences of the subject and new roles of the school. This first exploratory incursion if the research has the purpose of retrieving the concept of freedom from the existential philosophers Heidegger and Sartre and of introducing the subject of "competences" from the social theory of Habermas. The aim is to establish new bonds between the Vocational Guidance and the above-mentioned philosophical lineaments: the freedom of the subjects and the possibility of development of those "competences" that allow to establish social, ethical and epistemological interrelations in the sphere of the Vocational Guidance, that promote a greater solidarity facing the "era of emptiness" of the post-modernity supported by Lipovestky.

Vocational guidance: origin, evolution and current state

The socio-professional sources of the vocational guidance are reviwed, in the world and in Latin America. It stands out that psychology, as science and as a profession, possesses vigorous links to this practice that, however, tends to its epistemic and praxic emancipation in some nations. The contemporary prob- lems of the guidance are presented in their economic, politics, cultural and pro-fessional dimensions.

The computer paradigm in vocational guidance

The technological advances in last decades have transformed the external resources of Vocational Counseling, Occupational Information and assessment of clients. Most computer systems follow a behaviorist-cognitive approach. However, the use of vocational counseling software is not exclusive to one conceptual approach. Computers are introduced in education from primary school; counselors and other educators are expected to use those systems. The attitude of counselors ranges from enthusiastic acceptance to complete refusal. Many counselors fear that computers will replace them. An underlying theory holds that counseling is based on the counselor-client interaction. A computer- client interaction cannot be considered vocational counseling. Counseling has five basic aims: prevention, assistance, education and development, service of diverse groups and research. The most relevant trends in computer-based counseling are: tests and questionnaires based on computers, adaptive development, computarized information, vocational counseling systems and research. Basic aims and the potential role of computers in achieving them are discussed. Present vocational counselors can use the technology of computers to link the past of our profession to its promising future. In view of these premises we have developed two computer systems that assist the vocational counseling process: "Professional Interests Questionnaire, Computer Version", and "Computer-based System of Vocational Counseling".

Vocational and occupational counsseling: a strategy of preventive intervention directed to Young men and women from the interior of the province of Buenos Aires

This work belongs to one of the activities that are carried out in the Vocational and Occupational Guidance Center (V.O.G.C.) of the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences at the L.P.N.U. In the year 1994 the Vocational/Occupational Guidance Programme for Municipalities was created, destined for work with adolescents who are attending their last year at secondary schools in the interior of the Province of Buenos Aires . The Programme aims at fostering the development of spaces for reflection related to the educational/working projects of the adolescents who are close to entering university. The proposal is based on the methodology of work groups, in the journeys preoccupations are sheared, the worries and fears experienced by the students are shared with their hosts, possibilities are used as ground for construction, dealing both with aspects of their current situation and their future possibilities. From the analysis of the group productions collected throughout these years, we have developed a student's profile that - although it resembles the one obtained from local adolescents- adds new questions and points of view, thus increasing the complexity of the balance of forces related to the question of having to make a choice.

Vocational guidance in people with special educational needs as the result of visual impairment during the transition stage from high school to advanced education

This work proposes to seek for the factors related to the choices that people with special educational needs make as the result of the visual impairment, during the transition stage from high school to advanced education. Therefore, we have taken into consideration that Vocational Guidance and the transition towards adulthood get specific characteristics in case of visually impaired young people, particularly in what's related to continue with advanced education. The focus of this work is to be able to clarify the existence of factors that make this transition stage easier or harder, through the observation of visually impaired and blind people who complete high school. This matter has aroused interest and concern about the strategies to follow to ensure the successful entrance and remaining in the selected advanced education. However, if we don?t know the factors involved in the described fact, it's difficult to design an appropriate intervention strategy. Then, in order to take acknowledge about the specific issues of visually impaired young people who complete high school, we chose a special school for this disability and some students who will join this project