Group Career Coaching – A Critical Pedagogical Approach

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Group Career Coaching – A Critical Pedagogical

Approach

Susan Meldrum

To cite this article: Susan Meldrum (2021): Group Career Coaching – A Critical Pedagogical

Approach, The Journal for Specialists in Group Work, DOI: 10.1080/01933922.2021.1929619

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Group Career Coaching – A Critical Pedagogical Approach

Susan Meldrum

Edinburgh Napier University

ABSTRACT

The eld of career development has been focused on one-to-one

practice but recent years have seen a growth in the need for alter-

native approaches that are more eective at challenging inequality.

Collective group-based models have been identied as addressing this

need but little attention has been paid to developing group coaching

in the literature. The collective career coaching approach, which is

underpinned by a critical pedagogical theoretical base, is introduced

in this article and it is proposed that this model is able to contribute

toward steering the focus of career guidance practice toward the

advancement of social justice.

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received September 24, 2019

Accepted March 2, 2020

KEYWORDS

Group career coaching;

collective career coaching;

career counseling; critical

pedagogy

Introduction

Career guidance, counseling and coaching practice over the years has predominantly been

delivered on a one-to-one basis and focused on the development of practitioner-client relation-

ship to facilitate growth at an individual level. Although group practice has often run in parallel

to one-to-one interventions, little attention has been paid to it in the career development

literature and it is often seen as a support activity (DiFabio & Maree, 2012; Lehman et al.,

2015; Meldrum, 2017; Thomsen, 2012; Westergaard, 2013). Attempts to move group work to

the forefront of practice have often been met with resistance and skepticism and promoted by

policy makers as an eﬃciency saving rather than an innovation to practice.

However, an emerging interest in group career guidance is now becoming evident in the ﬁeld

to challenge not so much the resource heavy nature of the one-to-one interventions but the

collective empowerment and social justice potential of group work (Hooley & Sultana, 2016;

Thomsen, 2012). Peoples’ life chances are not equal and the personal agency approach which

one-to-one models of practice rely on does not easily address the inequality of opportunity,

multiple barriers and oppression which diﬀerent social groups face (Hooley & Sultana, 2016;

Irving & Malik, 2004; Watts, 2015). In addition there is a concern that one-to-one approaches

perpetuate an unintentional outcome of career guidance as serving individuals to passively

accept the status quo rather than empowering learners to challenge and address power

imbalances and inequalities (Bengtsson, 2018; Hooley et al., 2017; Irving, 2018).

This article will introduce a group approach which uses a coaching structure under-

pinned with a critical pedagogy theoretical base. Critical pedagogy as an approach will be

shown as having the potential to act as a vehicle to help groups contextualize their learning

into the wider community and socio-economic perspectives (Blustein, 1987). Such an

CONTACT Susan Meldrum [email protected] School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University,

Sighthill Campus, 9 Sighthill Court, Edinburgh, EH11 4BN.

THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK

https://doi.org/10.1080/01933922.2021.1929619

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided

the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

approach will see the career practitioner taking on the role of a community worker or

facilitator rather than an expert. The group will be guided toward the collection of mean-

ingful interactions in order to make sense of their place in the world before changing it

(Hooley et al., 2018). It will be shown how such an approach has the potential to act as

a model of practice to steer the focus of career guidance practice toward collective empow-

erment and the advancement of social justice.

Making a Case for a Group Critical Pedagogical Approach

Critical pedagogy is a philosophy, social movement, educational approach and a praxis

which has developed from applied concepts from critical theory and education. It is

grounded in a critical theory epistemology or worldview which proposes that, in contrast

to traditional theory which focuses on understanding and making meaning of society, there

should instead be a focus on critiquing and changing society as a whole.

Critical theory attempts to challenge how knowledge is acquired, the deep-seated

assumptions in society, power domination and the accepting of the status quo in order to

gain a fuller picture of how the world operates before oﬀering solutions for change

(Thompson, 2017).

Critical pedagogy has been progressed in the educational ﬁeld from the ideas and teachings of

Freire (1970) in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He rejects what he calls the “banking model” of

teaching in which the content of the learning (or the knowledge) is absolute, static and

predictable. This knowledge is “deposited” or passed on to the learners by the teacher. The

learners are in eﬀect “empty vessels” who, over the course of their studies, have their “containers”

ﬁlled with this knowledge. The learners are often expected to passively accept the validity and

relevance of this knowledge to their life with little opportunity to question. The acquisition of

knowledge is the primary goal in such learning and the more knowledge the students gain, the

better the teaching is viewed. This leads to communities of learners and, he argues, societies of

learners being stuck in continuous cycles of learning which lacks adequate opportunities to

challenge its validity. This in turn perpetuates oppression and inequalities and diminishes

chances for change and emancipation.

Freire proposed that learning instead should be seen as a largely political act with social justice

aims and that the pursuit of knowledge as the primary goal should be rejected. This shift in focus

toward empowerment and social change is achieved by a process of what Freire terms as an

“awakening of critical consciousness”. He proposed a co-operative practitioner-student educa-

tive model which involves engaging learners in an active process of “collective dialogue, reﬂection

and action in order to learn to perceive social, political and economic contradictions and to take

action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire, 1970, p. 60). According to Young (2004)

there are ﬁve “faces” or types of oppression, namely exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness,

violence and cultural imperialism. Diﬀerent groups may face one, several or all types of oppres-

sion at any one time or over the lifespan.

Theoretical approaches based on critical pedagogical perspectives and developed by leading

scholars in the ﬁeld (such as Giroux, 2011; McLaren, 2006; Simon, 1992; Hooks, 2003; Chomsky,

2010) have been prevalent for a number of years in a range of disciplines including teaching,

adult education, social work and counseling. Models have been adapted from such theoretical

perspectives which aim to steer learning toward the pursuit of social justice. Such models of

2 S. MELDRUM

practice, usually in groups, often involve a psychosocial process where practitioners take on the

role of a facilitator rather than an expert in order to empower learners.

This has not been mirrored to the same extent in the ﬁeld of career guidance and

development practice. This is despite the literature making a call for approaches which address

the concern that people’s life, learning and work opportunities are aﬀected by wider cultural

and community inﬂuences and power struggles. Or, as Hooley and Sultana (2016, p. 2) put it,

approaches which are “socially transformative and emancipatory rather than reproductive

and oppressive”.

To make a claim that career guidance policy, research and practice has not been rooted

with social justice aims would be erroneous though. Since the origins of the ﬁeld over

a hundred years ago, a tradition of social justice has prevailed (Irving & Malik, 2004).

However, in the changing landscape of neo-liberalism and “boundaryless” careers (Arthur

& Rousseau, 1996), this is becoming an increasingly diﬃcult intent to fulﬁl. According to

Hooley and Sultana “If career guidance is to formulate a meaningful response to social

injustice it needs to draw on diverse theoretical traditions and stimulate new forms of

practice” (Hooley & Sultana, 2016, p. 2).

In terms of drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives there has been some progress

made over the last few years in the career guidance literature. Critical pedagogy itself has

been considered by a range of academics including Da Silva et al. (2016), Olle (2018),

Sultana (2014, 2017) and Blustein et al. (2005). Da Silvia, Paiva and Ribeiro challenge

traditional one-to-one career guidance, counseling and coaching theories and practices

and instead consider alterative group approaches which are able to nurture the building

up of collective relationships. The career practitioner takes on the role of a “communal

worker”, intermediary or facilitator rather than an expert and guides the learners toward

the collection of a “web of meaningful interactions” in order to make sense of their place

in the world before changing it. The interventions are intended to be psychosocial in

nature and there is a focus on the peer support and social bonds that can be built up

during the process.

Less attention has been paid to how such theoretical models could be applied to practice

and guidance practitioners are often reluctant to face the diﬃcult task of attempting to

incorporate such theory and techniques into every day guidance interactions. As the

emancipatory practices explored above are often group-based practices, it could be argued

that the focus on one-to-one delivery in the career guidance sector could be a possible

reason for this. In other words practitioners may ﬁnd it diﬃcult to apply such models to

their practice as they ﬁt better with group work practice.

This is ampliﬁed by the lack of literature relating to group work in the ﬁeld of career

guidance literature. Group work is, in eﬀect, under researched and under developed and

a lack of attention has been paid to developing models of practice (DiFabio & Maree, 2012;

Meldrum, 2017; Oﬀer, 2001; Thomsen, 2012; Westergaard, 2013). This has in practice led to

career guidance in groups being predominately focused on the passive provision of infor-

mation and the sharing of knowledge rather oﬀering a space for an active, empowering co-

learning approach which group work should foster.

Lehman et al. (2015) discuss group work in the careers ﬁeld as potentially being able to

oﬀer the opportunity to raise critical consciousness and change attitudes. This could be

possible by the facilitator oﬀering a space for the individuals to share problems with the rest

of the group, the fostering of co-operation rather than competition within the group and the

THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK 3

encouragement of the group to take collective responsibility to make decisions, raise issues

and address change. Groups in eﬀect would have the potential to facilitate the exploration

and construction of their collective career stories and contextualize this into wider com-

munity and socio-economic perspectives (Blustein, 1987).

The collective career coaching approach will now be considered as model of practice

which, it will be argued, has the potential to ﬁll a gap in transformative group-based practice

models in the ﬁeld. It will consider whether it has the potential to act as a model of practice

to empower groups of learners to collectively challenge power imbalances and inequalities.

It will further propose that it can contribute toward steering the focus of career guidance

practice toward the advancement of social justice.

The Collective Career Coaching Model

The collective career coaching model, which has been adapted from the Group Integrative

Narrative Approach (Meldrum, 2017) was developed by the author over a number of years

based on observations, research, reﬂections and practice made initially as a guidance

practitioner and later as an educator and researcher in the ﬁeld of career guidance and

development. The model is illustrated in Figure 1.

The model, grounded in critical theory, is a psychoeducational group approach (Corey,

1981) which has the aim of transforming the career development and life options of the

group. It is underpinned by a critical pedagogical learning base (Freire, 1970) and Systems

Theory Framework (Patton & McMahon, 1999). It uses a counseling and coaching structure

based on a number of models such a person centered counseling (Rogers, 1961), life design

career counseling (Savickas, 2012), career guidance (Kidd, 2006) and career coaching

(Whitmore, 2002; Yates, 2014). It is therefore an integrative approach (Westwood &

Ewasiw, 2011) which, although in their infancy within the ﬁelds of career development

group work, is commonplace in the wider ﬁeld of group counseling. The collective career

coaching model is explained in more detail below.

Figure 1. The collective career coaching model.

4 S. MELDRUM

At the heart of the model in Figure 1, the wide range of factors illustrated are interrelated and

connected and are based on the micro, meso and macro factors of the Systems Theory

Framework (Patton & McMahon, 1999). Traditionally, there has been a predominant focus on

factors which aﬀect career development at the individual level such as values, interests and

education and matching these factors to particular job or industrial roles or ﬁelds. Such

approaches are based on person-environment ﬁt career development theories, such as Holland

(1985) and they continue to signiﬁcantly inﬂuence career guidance practice. However, the wider

inﬂuence of social factors made at the community level such as family, peer groups and

neighborhoods, workplace cultures, geographical location (such as urban or rural environment)

on career development have been considered by Law (1981), Hodkinson (1997), and Roberts

(1977) considers the wider still macro level inﬂuences such as socio-economic and political

factors, which have the potential to both develop and also limit future options and pathways. The

Systems Theory Framework (STF) brings such factors together as an “interrelated and correlated

system which is dynamic and recursive” (McMahon & Patton, 2016).

The STF is a constructivist model of career development which considers such micro,

meso and macro factors being inﬂuenced by past, present and future knowledge, experi-

ences, events and emotions. A constructivist philosophical viewpoint sees this process as

dynamic and developed over time through the building up of patterns, connections and

threads to form broader themes to make sense or “meaning”’ of the world. The STF

considers such patterns and themes as being recursive in nature and constantly challenged,

broken down and rebuilt through ongoing chance events, interactions with others and

adapting to circumstances out with one’s control.

The constructivist philosophical standpoint of the STF theory appears to diﬀer from the

critical theory basis of the collective career coaching approach. The goal of interventions is to

facilitate the growth and development of the group members in a constructivist approach and

relies on the personal agency or autonomy of the group participants to achieve this aim. A critical

pedagogical approach, grounded in critical theory, has the primary goal of challenging the status

quo to address power imbalances and inequalities in order to facilitate growth. A constructivist

approach would stop short of this aim but this does not mean that the two approaches contradict

each other or that they could not run in parallel with each other.

This has been attempted in the career guidance literature by Da Silva et al. (2016),

discussed earlier, who consider South American epistemologies (which includes a critical

pedagogical approach) reviewed through the lens of constructivist perspectives as being able

to address social injustice in order to facilitate growth.

This can be applied to the Collective Career Coaching Approach by exploring the wide

range of micro, meso and macro STF factors from a constructivist perspective. This

approach oﬀers space for the group to support each other through the building up mean-

ingful exchanges in order to construct and deconstruct stories and shared experiences. This

would enable the group to form patterns, connections and threads between their stories and

in turn identify themes in order to re-author or retell diﬀerent stories to facilitate growth.

This is taken a stage further through the lens of a critical pedagogical learning theory. As

illustrated in the outside ring of the Collective Career Coaching Approach in Figure 1, after

identifying goals for the session, the facilitator would guide the group to identify a range of

barriers, inequalities or oppression they have encountered as a group as they tell their stories.

Rather than accept or adapt to the oppression that a constructivist approach would unintention-

ally encourage, using a critical pedagogical approach, the facilitator would instead encourage the

THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK 5

group to develop their level of critical consciousness. In other words the group would be given

space to identify, challenge and critique oppression through diﬀerent activities and group

discussions.

During the next two stages the group would be encouraged to reﬂect on themes arising from

the discussions to actively and collectively empower the group to take action to address change.

There is no ﬁnal stage of the model and it is proposed that it can teach the group to be engaged in

a continuous, endless cycle of learning. The learning, which would involve cycles of collective

discussion, reﬂection and action is, in eﬀect, intended to build up and awaken the learners to

social, political and economic inconsistencies in order to enable them to take collective action

against oppression throughout their lifespan (Freire, 1970).

The structure of the collective career coaching approach is illustrated in the middle circle of

the diagram in Figure 1. It draws on a number of models from career guidance (Kidd, 2006),

coaching (Whitmore, 2002; Yates, 2014) and group guidance (Westergaard, 2009). The use of

person-centered counseling techniques (Rogers, 1961) including the building of a counseling

relationship and narrative counseling (Savickas, 2012) are implicit within the model. As can be

seen, it is steered around four stages – vision, activities, steps and transformation. The structure

of the model can be used for both the planning and the delivery of the group work.

The group approach is psychoeducational in delivery style (Corey, 1981) which diﬀers from

both group counseling (which is unstructured and involves little pre-prepared planning) and

traditional classroom or lecture style teaching (which is more structured). Psychoeducational

groups are instead semi-structured, involve some planning before the group work takes place

and have fairly speciﬁc, but ﬂuid goals. There is a common purpose or goal that brings the group

together and learners are given ample room to be actively engaged in the learning process

throughout. It is able to therefore combine the beneﬁts of group guidance (such as peer support

and group learning) with counseling and coaching approach beneﬁts (high quality interpersonal

and social interactions) which are usually only possible with one-to-one interactions (Meldrum,

2017; Westergaard, 2013). Psychoeducational group work in the context of career development

for the purpose of collectively empowering learners can be suited to all age populations.

As mentioned earlier, such group work models, although in their infancy in the ﬁeld of

career development, have been commonplace in the wider ﬁeld of group counseling for

a number of years. In addition such relational models are also beginning to be practiced in

a range of related educational and career development ﬁelds which up until now have relied

on almost exclusive use of one-to-one models of practice. An example of this is group

mentoring being recently developed in career mentoring in the science, technology, engi-

neering, medicine and mathematics (STEMM) ﬁeld (The National Academies of Sciences,

Engineering and Medicine, 2019).

The Collective Career Coaching Approach presented above may have some limitations in

terms of its theoretical base and its application to practice. Using critical pedagogy to challenge

power imbalances and inequalities could be uncomfortable and create tensions between career

practitioners, organizations and policy makers. Secondly, working in a group may not be suitable

for all and some participants could gain more beneﬁt from a group situation than others

(Meldrum, 2017; Westergaard, 2013). This could create a challenge for the practitioner and

highlights the need for training in the use of the model. Thirdly, although the model has been

used extensively in practice, taught to students undertaking career development training and

developed through action research, it has not been extensively empirically tested. It would

therefore beneﬁt from further evaluative studies.

6 S. MELDRUM

Nevertheless, despite these limitations it has been argued that the model has the potential

to oﬀer space for learners to build up a collection of meaningful interactions in order to

make sense of their place in the world before changing it. This in turn may empower

learners to collectively challenge inequality and oppression and further still have the

potential to act as a model of practice to steer the focus of career guidance practice toward

the advancement of social justice.

Two illustrations of how the collective career coaching model can be applied to every day

practice will now be explored in the following case studies.

Case Study One – Short-Term Intensive Support

The author as both a career practitioner and a researcher conducted an action research pilot

study (Meldrum, 2017) involving the delivery of group career coaching with two separate

groups of senior students aged 16 and 17 in two secondary schools in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Each group took part in two one-hour sessions as part of this study and the groups were

a mix of male and females and of mixed academic achievement levels. All of the students

were due to leave school over the next year but were feeling very anxious and had a common

concern of being uncertain and undecided as to their future career or study pathways.

The Vision of the groups were agreed and negotiated between-group members and the

career practitioner/ group facilitator at the ﬁrst meeting. Both groups collectively discussed

their issues and priorities and were keen to develop a strategy to deal with their pressing

career decision-making concerns and to overcome the intense feeling of having a severe lack

of control over their future. The group identiﬁed as being oppressed due to the power-

lessness that they faced over their future.

The groups then took part in Activities which had the purpose of developing the group’s

level of critical consciousness through the exploration of the STF micro, meso and macro

factors at the heart of the model. The group beneﬁted from the psychosocial support process

to draw out common themes of decision-making anxiety, lack of conﬁdence, lack of a voice

and pressures to make decisions from family, friends and the school. The facilitator helped

the groups question the helplessness they felt when facing their future and the emphasis

they placed on blaming themselves for their lack of progress. The focus was turned instead

to the collective power of the group to address change.

Activities were continued in the second session and explored with the use of narrative

questioning techniques (Savickas, 2012) to help each other build narratives and ﬁnd patterns

emerge between a range of experiences and interactions. An example of this involved the group

members helping another student who enjoyed “building things and learning how things

worked” to explore engineering as an option. The participant later commented -

I would never have thought about computing or engineering or something like that, I would

not go into that detail but it was cool and for someone who didn’t know what they wanted to

do . . . it was well interesting as I was able to know what other people were like. The group

makes people think about career paths that they hadn’t thought about. (Meldrum, 2017, p. 36)

The groups were encouraged to co-operatively work together to co-action plan rather than

work individually toward their goals or Steps. The learners were involved in collectively

researching others career and/ or educational course goals. This had the dual purpose of

THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK 7

widening the horizons of the learners as well as developing the process of building their

collective career management skills.

At the Transition stage the learners were encouraged to consider the wider collective

empowerment goals of the group. The group worked together to arrange to contact

employers and organize work experience opportunities for each other. In addition, with

the support of the career practitioner, the group members approached the school leadership

team to negotiate embedding this collective career coaching model into the guidance

support services within the school.

In summary the Collective Career Coaching Approach in the above case study was

eﬀective at helping groups of young people overcome the sense of powerlessness they felt

when facing their future. The approach, in just two sessions, was able to use a critical

pedagogical psychoeducational support process to empower the groups to take collective

action to address change. This learning process has the potential to be enhanced and

embedded throughout the learner’s lifespan with a longer term engagement with the

process. This is explored further in case study two.

Case Study Two – Long-Term Programme of Interventions

A career development practitioner working for an economic development charity in an

economically disadvantaged area of south west of Scotland brought together 10 unem-

ployed local residents of the area. All were adults aged between twenty-ﬁve and ﬁfty, were

unemployed for over 2 years and faced multiple barriers to employment. These barriers

varied from person to person but always included long-term poverty, isolation and lack of

support networks. Some were also facing or overcoming long-term health issues, lack of

childcare, drug or alcohol issues or domestic abuse.

An initial group session with the career development practitioner (who acted as the group

facilitator) identiﬁed that the group members had the common goal of being committed to ﬁnd

work but wanted to address and overcome the discrimination they faced when prospective

employers learned of their area of residence. The group was able to name the oppression as

marginalization. Many of the group expressed an interest in working in the retail sector and had

repeatedly applied to work in the local supermarket without success. The group agreed that they

would meet up for an hour on a twice weekly basis to address these issues and ﬁnd suitable

employment, ideally in retail, within a 2-month period. This represented the Vision stage of the

Collective Career Coaching model in Figure 1.

This was followed by the Activity stage of the model and involved the facilitator working

through a series of learning activities with the group over the course of a few weeks to

“awaken” the group’s critical consciousness. In other words, the group was ﬁrstly given

space to collectively discuss the barriers, issues, power imbalances and oppression that

limited their ability to progress in a greater amount of depth. Secondly, using visual

representations of the wide range of micro, meso and macro factors from STF (Patton &

McMahon, 1999) the group took part in a series of activities to consider how such factors

have aﬀected their lack of progress over the years. Thirdly the facilitator helped the group

discuss how much control the group had of inﬂuencing such factors at an individual and at

a collective level and consider how to break the cycle of helplessness that they felt. Finally

the group were able to work together to collectively consider strategies to challenge and

overcome such power imbalances and inequality.

8 S. MELDRUM

In the Steps stage of the model the group identiﬁed that they would speak to management in

the local supermarket to consider how they could address change. This involved the facilitator

and two members of the group arranging a meeting with the human resource department in the

supermarket to address concerns. During this meeting supermarket management discussed their

recruitment practices and agreed that they had low numbers of people applying, being successful

at interview and subsequently sustaining work from the local area. Management also raised

concerns relating to poorly completed application forms and, at the interview stage, local

applicants had a tendency to display poor evidence of the required base line customer service

skills. Both parties were keen to address these issues and the supermarket was keen to employ

local people. Management agreed to work with the economic development charity to develop

a strategy with a view to oﬀering each of the group members a job interview.

The career development practitioner subsequently wrote a brieﬁng paper to management

within the economic development charity, asking that the group be given the opportunity to

take part in a short course to develop their customer service skills. The career development

practitioner also agreed to work with the group to develop job interview skills. The manage-

ment agreed to this proposal and identiﬁed a local college to provide the customer service

training. A written agreement was taken to the supermarket who consented in writing to

interview group members who completed both the customer service and interview training. In

addition the supermarket looked at reviewing their recruitment and training practices. This

included more inclusive interview techniques and the oﬀer of a two week extended period of

customer service training, with one-to-one mentor support to improve the retention levels.

The Transition stage of the collective career coaching model was reached after a 3-month

period of support involving further group career coaching, interview skills and customer

support training. At this time, nine of the participants were oﬀered a job interview with the

supermarket and ﬁve were successful in securing employment. A further three were subse-

quently successful in securing a job a short time later with another local supermarket.

Additional group career coaching sessions continued for a further 6 months to support the

employees with their ongoing development. The employees expressed the same concerns with

ﬁnding and sustaining work as before, such as child care issues aﬀecting attendance and health

issues having an impact on the hours of work. However, through the support and collaboration

with their peers and the career development practitioner, they were able to work through these

issues and subsequently felt less marginalized. One member of the group took on the role of the

liaison member between the new employees and the management and negotiated ﬂexible work

patterns as well as assisting in the recruitment of a further group of local residents.

In summary the collective career coaching model in the above case study was delivered to

a group of marginalized long-term unemployed adults in an economically disadvantaged

community and was eﬀective at helping the group break the cycle of oppression that they

faced in ﬁnding work. The process, over a long-term period of interventions, was able to build

up and awaken the group to social, political and economic barriers and inequalities and take

collective action to overcome the oppression. This learning process has the potential to

continue to inﬂuence the group’s career development opportunities throughout their lifespan.

Conclusion and Implications for Practice

It has been argued within this article that traditional one-to-one approaches to practice in

the career development sector unintentionally reenforce continuous cycles of inequality by

THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK 9

relying on the personal agency of individuals rather than the collective voice of groups.

Alternative approaches to the long-term focus on one-to-one interventions were therefore

called for and were seen to have the potential to steer practice away from personal growth

and development outcomes toward group empowerment and social justice aims.

Despite a growing movement within the sector to support alternative group-based

approaches, there remains to be a gap in practice-based models to support career develop-

ment practitioners in every day practice. The collective career coaching approach was

introduced as a practice-based model and was illustrated through case studies. The model

was able to apply a pedagogical theoretical base to oﬀer the potential to empower groups of

learners to collectively challenge power imbalances and inequalities and in turn contribute

to the ongoing development of social justice aims.

Going forward, there is a need within the sector to continue to support and develop such

collective approaches to practice at a research, practitioner and policy level. At the research

level there is a need for robust evaluations of such models to oﬀer strong empirical evidence

of their eﬀectiveness. Such models continue to be taught during initial career development

training programs and there is a need for practitioners to continue to put this learning into

practice. At the policy level it is important to have ongoing dialog with policy makers to

support and develop such ongoing and developing practices.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues at Edinburgh Napier University, particularly Peter Robertson and

Sheena Travis for their words of support and for encouraging me to write this article. I would also like to

thank past and current students undertaking the Post Graduate Diploma in Career Guidance and

Development who were involved in the research, training and development of the collective career

coaching model.

Finally I would like to thank my husband, Andrew, for his ongoing patience and support and for

proof reading the article.

Notes on Contributor

Susan Meldrum is Programme Leader and Lecturer in Career Guidance and Development in the

School of Applied Sciences at Edinburgh Napier University.

ORCID

Susan Meldrum http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5643-1681

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