Supporting school career education with an online community.

This thesis is an analysis of a participatory action research project, involving several interventions with school students in a series of iterative stages, exploring ways to take school student career education out of the confines of the schools themselves and into the wider community; to introduce person-centeredness as a core value in career education; and to explore the effectiveness of using online social and community networks to support career education generally. A software probe was developed consisting of a series of career education web pages linked to asynchronous online discussion. In the final data gathering trial, 40 people (including 30 school students from two Edinburgh schools and 10 adult ‘community’ participants) contributed to a six-week career education programme involving cycles of face-to-face classroom work followed by pseudonymous, asynchronous, online discussion between the school students and the community participants. The data analysis shows that despite the open and relatively unconstrained format of the discussion, topics normally covered in mainstream career education classes were covered spontaneously by the participants. In addition, however, discussion ranged more widely, taking a more holistic perspective in some cases and following the personal interests and issues of concern of the participants (such as balancing occupational and family concerns). The participants went further, problematising many of the discourses of conventional career education and explicitly challenging received wisdom about the value of early occupational choice and the rational decision-making process. The conventional career education curriculum was both extended and contested. There is analysis of the benefits of pseudonymity, the role of the adult contributors, the online forum, and the experience of the student participants. Ultimately, the thesis raises questions about the humanist values underpinning career education (such as person-centeredness, holism, and emancipation), arguing that Career Education and Guidance can be about value creation as much as the transmission of dominant values.