ISSN 0798 1015
ISSN 0798 1015
Vol. 39 (Number 52) Year 2018. Page 1
Karina Veniaminovna VASILYEVA 1; Olga Andreevna SVESHNIKOVA 2; Sergey Grigorievich ZELGIN 3; Ekaterina Vasilyevna OSOKINA 4; Rimma Shoidorzhievna BOLOTOVA 5; Kira Alexandrovna BOLOTINA 6
Received: 06/06/2018 • Approved: 08/10/2018 • Published 28/12/2018
ABSTRACT: The presented article poses the problem of harmonization (consideration, coordination) of different views on career-oriented work, which reflects different understandings of life and career success, and also about the path to success. |
RESUMEN: El artículo presentado plantea el problema de la armonización (consideración, coordinación) de diferentes puntos de vista sobre el trabajo orientado a la carrera, que refleja diferentes entendimientos de la vida y el éxito profesional, y también sobre el camino hacia el éxito. |
To date, there is no unified understanding of the essence of career guidance work. If we turn to the history of practical psychology and vocational guidance, the views on the matter changed from assistance in finding employment on the basis of testing to the creation of psychological and pedagogical conditions for the person`s development in professional and personal self-determination (Balatsky, 2015; Klimov, 1996; Mikhailov, 1977; Pryazhnikov, 2014; Pryazhnikov and Sergeev 2015; Ukke, 1990). At the same time, it is possible to single out a general tendency in the development of ideas about career-guidance related to the need for a longer and more thorough preparation of the individual for self-determination under the conditions of freedom (Pryazhnikov and Sergeev 2015, p. 39-43). In particular, the more real freedom in society (the availability of attractive and accessible alternatives to career choice), the more in demand the system of training a person for effective action under conditions of freedom. For example, referring to the history of Russia, the greatest flourishing of career guidance was associated with a certain increase in freedoms (in the 1920s, during Khrushchev's "thaw" and Gorbachev's "perestroika" ...), and vice versa, under the rule of Stalin scientific career guidance was almost under the ban (Pryazhnikov and Sergeev 2015, p. 30-39). At present, there is a slight increase in real freedoms, and, accordingly, vocational guidance is reviving, although there are some problems.
There are different theories and approaches in the career guidance itself, which in their turn also tend to change (Klimova, et al., 2015, p. 204-239). Also, vocational guidance practice is differently understood, depending not only on the theoretical preferences of the professional consultants, but also on administrative and management instructions, especially with regard to public schools and psychological centers. At the same time, an interesting pattern is observed: the theory of vocational guidance is usually better developed than the vocational guidance practice, which is often explained by the strong limitations of the professional advisors with pragmatically elementary requests from clients and various "customers."
Thus, we can talk about some "career-oriented pluralism". We are more inclined to see a positive meaning in this "pluralism" reflecting the direction of career guidance for development through comparing different approaches, analyzing them and underlining more effective and promising ones. In this respect, the development of the theory and practice of vocational guidance is possible only through mutual enrichment and exchange of experience (not only positive and negative one as caution against possible mistakes). And this implies not only getting to know other experiences, but also a culturally (productively) organized exchange and discussions with the holders of alternative views.
In the meantime, some destructive moments of such inconsistency in the understanding of vocational guidance should be noted: 1) disregard of valuable experience in other approaches, emphasizing the successes only of their views (especially against the background of competition between scientists and practitioners for financial and administrative support); 2) the aggravation of the situation for potential clients (schoolchildren and their parents) in choosing career counseling centers and specific consultants in solving their career issues; 3) the aggravation of the allocation of priorities for career-oriented issues in school, city, region and the whole country against the background of insufficiently clear objectives of personnel policy and career guidance at more global managerial levels and etc.
Conditionally, it is possible to single out the following main aspects of vocational guidance, which reflect views on life and career success, and also on the path to this success.
Traditionally, it is the aspect which is paid most attention to (Klimov, 1996; Tolochek, 2017; Chistyakova and Rodichev, 2014). It is important for us that every person has got his own ideas about the future professional life and ways of achieving success. These conceptions themselves can change during life, and then we can talk about the development of the future subject of labor and professional self-determination (Klimov, 1996, p. 330-337; Pryazhnikov and Sergeev, 2015, p. 156-160). In the early stages of personality development, a person is still fairly ingenuous and plans his prospects more in a romantic and gaming style, as he grows up, his plans and prospects become more realistic and pragmatic, losing romance to a large extent ... Accordingly, in the early stages of development, a person needs psychological and pedagogical assistance and support, and then he becomes more independent. Moreover, the formation of a person's willingness to independently and consciously solve his life and career tasks is a super-goal of skillfully organized vocational counseling, only in this case one can speak of a person as a formed agent of self-determination. But, unfortunately, with elementary career guidance a person may not be formed as a right agent of self-determination, or his intentions and skills of self-determination can be socially doubtful, for example, when he builds his personal success on the sufferings of other people (Berg, 1998, p. 5-6; Pryazhnikov and Sergeev, 2015, p. 180-198). Therefore, it is simply not enough to take into account the career intentions of the individual: it is still necessary to adjust his development as an agent of self-determination and as a future citizen of the country ... Besides, it is impossible to exclude the cases when the choices and reasons of a particular client (a self-determining person) can be so perfect that some psychologists have to learn from them though they are themselves psychological counselors, and sometimes even psychotherapists call such cases an "event" for themselves and for their development. Thus, even mutual enrichment is possible in relationships with some clients.
It must be admitted that the concept of career and life success at the level of certain socio-professional, ethnic and regional groups of society has not been sufficiently studied. Although in social psychology (especially foreign) much attention is paid to the peculiarities and patterns of "mass consciousness" (Mills, 1959; Moskovichi, 1996; Fromm, 1990), but as applied to modern Russian conditions, this issue still needs to be understood (Pryazhnikov, 2000; 2016). In the context of multicultural Russian society, this problem becomes quite important, since it involves the consideration of regional and national-ethnic characteristics of professional and personal self-determination. We note that there is a possible conflict not only between psychologists and their clients, but also between a self-determining person and his closest associates. For example, when a person identifying himself with a certain ethnic group and culture refuses to follow the established traditions of building a happy life and seeks to do it somehow in his own way or in accordance with other traditions ... Adequate harmonization of the person's ideas and behavior and his significant environment often becomes the first priority problem, especially in the face of the expanding freedoms of society.
We have already noted a great variety of theories and approaches in professional self-determination and psychology of personal development. At the same time, one can speak of the development of a "theory of career guidance", often understood as a scientific justification for practice, and the development of its methodology, understood as a special reflection, understanding of achievements, mistakes and prospects for the development of this direction, which has been called as "professional orientation" increasingly frequently (Pryazhnikov and Sergeev, 2015). Scientists somehow try to highlight the general principles of the scientific approach; common sense and everyday psychology are often guided to solve vocational guidance problems at the level of a concrete self-determining personality, public consciousness, and sometimes at the level of psychologists-practitioners. We must admit that such everyday experience is quite useful. Thus, even here constructive cooperation and harmonization of ideas about career success and ways to it are possible.
Often, professional counselors face a difficult task, which involves consideration, coordination and harmonization of different views on career counseling. They have to take into account the expectations of their customers, as it has already been noted, but the requests on their part may be imperfect. And then professional consultants have to devote a lot of energy to psychological education of their clients. Also, the professional counselors have to take into consideration the expectations, and sometimes the instructions of their leaders (in schools, psychological centers), and we must admit that these guidelines are not always reasonable. In these cases, psychologists-practitioners have to either dedicatedly carry out such instructions, or somehow hide their true attitudes in the work, or make some compromises, although sometimes it is possible to "psychologically enlighten" some of their leaders (Pryazhnikov and Sergeev, 2015, p. 205-208). There also may be inconsistencies in the views between professional counselors and practitioners engaged in vocational guidance, which also implies (ideally) mutual enrichment and harmonization of positions. It was said above that, in general, vocational guidance theory is developed better than career guidance practice. But it happens if favorable prerequisites are created (organizational, financial, moral ...) for the development of scientific theories and methodology. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dubious trends in the domestic science the present day, complicating its development (Balatsky, 2014; Balatsky, 2015; Popkov and Zhirnov, 2009), and professional orientation is not an exception. For instance, there is still no solid scientific center in the country where career counseling issues would be studied, although in the 1990s, there was the Institute for Professional Self-Determination of Youth at the Russian Academy of Education, where one of the authors of this article was even the head of laboratory of professional diagnostics and professional counseling department.
Globally, it is possible to identify the basic contradiction between the self-determining personality and the surrounding world (society, community, state). A person tries to understand the world around him and find a worthy place in it, and the world in the person of various power structures, as well as in the person of the leaders of various social institutions and organizations, tries to somehow treat a particular person, either helping him to self-determine or complicating a career for him, or simply ignoring it. To somehow harmonize the relationship between the individual and the world around him, there are various “intermediates”, beginning with family and priests in former times, and ending with various consultants in the modern world. As it has already been noted, the more complex and free the concrete society, the more important this "mediation".
But even the role of a professional counselor psychologist may prove to be rather modest if a system of vocational guidance with the population has not been created. The key point is that this system must be managed. By and large, the quality of any management depends on how the main resource of any organization (and any society) is used, it is people. A problem for any leader is the situation when there are active and talented people in the given social system (organizations) (and always there are!), but it is not clear what they are busy with, i.e. they do not use their potential for the development of system. This allows us to put forward a paradoxical thesis that any leader is primarily a career-oriented professional, whose main task is to create conditions for the identification, upbringing, education, employment and fair promotion of such active and talented people. Moreover, the more complex the system, the greater the role this organizational and managerial aspect plays. It should be noted that this has long been recognized in respectable organizations, where all personnel work (or "personnel management" or "human resource management" in large organizations) has long become an essential condition for the competitiveness of this organization (Morgunov, 2011; Pryazhnikov, 2012). It should be also noted that career guidance work with schoolchildren is being developed in many large organizations (Rosatom, Sberbank and even Rosnano), and it worked in the 1970s and 1980s at large defense enterprises in the USSR, i.e. positive experience is just being revived. Unfortunately, the necessity to create a coordinating center at the state level has not been realized yet, except for certain management structures at the level of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives and Rosmolodezh. In France, for example, it is coordinated at the level of the interdepartmental National Bureau of Information on Education and Profession - ONISEP, which has representative offices in all departments, universities and colleges (Pavlova, 2007, p. 15). In the Soviet era, this work was supervised at the interdepartmental level, in the State Committee for Labour of the USSR (Apostolov, 2011). The problem is not to have those managerial mistakes that there were in the Soviet era, for example, reporting on indications that are clearly detached from real life (the percentage of pupils who applied to the Suvorov schools, the percentage of high school students who continued their studies at the vocational school on the profile of the EIP, USSR etc.).
Expectations of employers in relation to school leavers, colleges and universities in general are elementary. Commonly, these expectations involve a ready-made specialist with such qualities as "purposefulness", "ambitiousness", "creative orientation", etc. Unfortunately, many employers often do not intend to invest in the development of their applicants and want to get a ready-made employee. Although, even E.A. Klimov said that "the final professionalism is formed in the work itself" (Klimov, 1990, p. 69). Nevertheless, we must also consider such primitive expectations of employers, especially since high-ranking officials also call for this, stating that universities should, first of all, be guided by manufacture requirements and specific employers. Sometimes the consideration of such requests involves a frank concession to the employer, especially when both scientists and professional counselors are highly dependent on financial support for such leadership. But sometimes some mutual concessions are possible, based on the rapprochement (harmonization) of the positions of all those who provide career-oriented work and professional selection.
And yet, not only specific employers (top managers, owners of organizations) determine the overall development of the Russian economy, considering that there are often no well-founded plans for long-term (strategic) development against the background of short-term profit priorities in many organizations. If the professional counselors (human resource managers, coaches) or learned professionals are forced to work on the orders of specific employers, they are often limited in accessing the cultural and historical processes taking place in the country, focusing more on specific pragmatic tasks. Being free in determining their priorities, scientists and practitioners simply have to work, on the whole, and contribute to the development of human and labor resources at the level of the whole society, and help concrete people to find a worthy place in the economical and social life of the country. Coordination (harmonization) of various positions of practitioners, scientists and managers, employers and the self-determining personality are also expected. We do not even rule out the possibility for such a more global view of their work and those consultants and scientists who work in the rigid framework of many treaties and grants, when they could try to combine the solution of narrowly focused tasks with tasks (super-tasks) of development of our entire society (Klimov, 1996; Pryazhnikov, 2012).
In particular, against the background of the lack of a coherent goal of personnel policy, we propose the following understanding of the meaning of professional orientation work: the creation of psychological, pedagogical (and organizational, financial, etc.) conditions for the development of full-fledged citizens of the country who not only formally have a passport but also strive to realize their potential for the benefit of the whole society. We note that this ambition can be repeatedly specified, for example, to bring maximum benefit to society, one must take care of one's health, education and motivation. If a concrete person cannot achieve all this independently, then he needs help, which implies a systematic and integrated work.
In considering various aspects of career guidance, options for consideration, coordination and harmonization of opposing views have already been briefly described. Below, generalized versions of such harmonization will be presented. In doing so, we separate the "internal" and "external" harmonization. "Internal" harmonization is more aimed at reconciling different views between representatives of this aspect (between scientists, managers, or different positions of a particular self-determining person, etc.). "External" harmonization is aimed at convergence of people`s positions representing different aspects (between a self-determining person and a consultant, between scientists and psychologists practitioners, between professional advisors and managers, etc.).
There are variants of "internal" harmonization of career guidance (between representatives of different views within each aspect: 1) the development of a culture of discussion based on the desire to see the positive things in other views and readiness to recognize their mistakes; 2) increase in the number of formal and informal meetings (forums, conferences, roundtables) between representatives of a particular school, direction, approach; 3) increasing the psychological competence of a particular person (scientist, practitioner, manager, client) as the basis for constructive cooperation with bearers of other views; 4) development of readiness for "internal dialogue" for each representative of this aspect, which presupposes the ability to correctly, scientifically reasonably argue with oneself; 5) creation and actual functioning of the Association of Professional orientation specialists at the federal and regional levels.
Variants of "external" harmonization of career guidance (between representatives of consolidated views representing different aspects are: 1) invitation of representatives of various aspects of career guidance to important meetings (sittings, conferences, round tables), for example, invitation of scientists, professional consultants, customers to the meetings of HR managers; 2) development of a culture of collective discussions of personnel issues, when using of various incorrect methods in discussions (act of dishonesty, incomplete information, reference to authorities, moral and emotional pressure on the opponent) will be unacceptable; 3) development of a culture of "internal dialogue", which presupposes readiness to take the standpoint of one's opponent and argue with oneself; 4) creation of an interdepartmental coordinating council (bureau, center) in vocational guidance, with the participation of representatives of science, practical training, organizations, educational institutions, various management structures, etc.; 5) gradual psychological education of all possible partners in vocational guidance, especially representatives of the top management of regions and the country. The experience of the development of vocational guidance shows that it is a serious support of the government to develop career guidance and it is an important condition for the development of the economy and the social sphere of society (Pryazhnikov and Sergeev, 2015, p. 39).
The problem of harmonization (consideration, coordination) of different views on career-oriented work, which reflects different perceptions of life and career success, and also the ways to success are stated in the presented article. We conditionally called it as "career-oriented pluralism". Many efforts of different specialists are still aimed at harmonization of their actions, hence our essential idea is to propose the main variants of such coordination both in terms of "internal" (within each aspect) and "external" (between representatives of different aspects) harmonization. We believe that ignoring the problem of harmonization of various aspects can lead to imitation of a large but unintentional activity, and in the worst case, can discredit all career guidance (as an inefficient and even "stupid" direction).
The authors are considering the main aspects of vocational guidance: the position of a self-determining personality, the different positions of psychologists, professional advisors, the different positions of methodologists and scientists in professional orientation, views on career and life success at the level of public consciousness (different social and professional groups), different positions of managers on personnel policy (management of personnel, human resources management), different expectations from career guidance from employers, as well as consideration of career guidance in the context of cultural and historical development of society. On the basis of the analysis of possible points of inconsistency of different positions, generalized variants of harmonizing the position of people representing different aspects are proposed. In this case, the variants of harmonization are identified for "internal" harmonization (within each aspect) and "external" harmonization (between representatives of different aspects). Also, the relevance of the proposed options of harmonization and their role in the overall socio-economic development of the country is indicated. In addition, efforts aimed at finding common positions can really become a basis not only for the development of each scientific or scientifically practical direction, but also for creating a system of career-oriented work at the level of large organizations, cities, regions and the whole country.
The authors of the article are deeply grateful to Nikolay S. Pryazhnikov, Doctor of Education, Professor of the Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Professor of Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation for invaluable consultations and acquired scientific and research experience in the process of preparing the scientific article.
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1. Mytishchi branch Bauman Moscow State Technical University, 141005, Moscow oblast, Mytischi, 1-ja Institutskaja St., 1, E-mail: carina34@yandex.ru
2. Engineering Academy, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklay Street, 6. E-mail: Sw.wl@mail.ru
3. "Pochuyev, Zelgin and Partners" Bar, 109240, Russia, Moscow, 2-nd Floor, 2-y Kotelnichesky per. 3. E-mail: sergeizel@inbox.ru
4. Shadrin State Pedagogical University, 641870, Russia, Shadrinsk, Kurgan oblast, Karl Libknekht Street, 3. E-mail: osokinaek@mail.ru
5. Engineering Academy, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklay Street, 6. E-mail: ammirbol@mail.ru
6. Engineering Academy, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklay Street, 6. E-mail: nadinem@list.ru