Sustainable Career Development
Throughout Working Life
- Policy Issues and Insights -
The APEC Forumon Human Resources Development
Chiba, Japan
14th - 16th, November, 2007
Dr. Ji- Yeon Lee
KRIVET
Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training
Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
Career Development
Sustainable Career Development
2. THE NEED FOR SUSTAINABLE CAREER DEVELOPMENT
The Need for Sustainable Career Development
Career Resilience and Sustainable Career Development
3.CHANGING CAREER EXPECTATIONS, LIFE VIEWS, AND ENVIRONMENT
Changing Career Expectations
Changing Life Views
Changing Environment
4. CAREER GUIDANCE SYSTEM IN KOREA
Career Guidance in Schools
Career Guidance in Colleges and Universities
Career Guidance in Public Employment Services
Career Guidance in Community-based service
5. POLICY ISSUES FOR SUSTAIONABLE CAREER DEVELOPMENT THROUGHOUT WORKING LIFE
Strong co-operation between education and employment
Consolidating Career Development Guidelines
Strengthening Career Guidance facilitator’s Professionalism
Meeting the career guidance needs of All
6. POLICY INSIGHT FOR SUSTAINABLE CAREERDEVELOPMENT FOR WORKING LIFE
Strategic leadership by exercising in co-operation with other stakeholders
Setting career development competencies within in new technology and globalizations
Establishing a Lifelong Guidance System
Strengthening Career Development Support System for All in Life Stage
List of Tables
<Table–1> Advancement Rate and Wage Differentials by Educational Level
List of Figures
<Figure-1> Labor Participation Rate and Unemployment Rate by Sex
<Figure-2> Career Education Model across Life-Span
1. Introduction
Most career development efforts are directed to occupational preparation in response to technological advances, new management process, and the changing economy. However, other workplace characteristics have career implications as well –characteristics such as the changing conditions of employment, alternative work arrangements, and aging population. Career development in the education and training of youth and adults must move to new levels to keep up with theses workplace developments. Career management skills such as creative thinking and problem solving may have a new focus as workers strive to navigate through new and uncharted employment practices for their sustainable career development throughout working life.
Career Development
“A career is the sequence of positions, jobs, and occupations that a person occupies and pursues during the course of a life of preparing to work, working, and retiring from work”
(Super, 1990)
“Career development is the unfolding of capabilities and requirements in the course of a person’s interaction with environments of various kinds(home, school, play, work) across the life span”
(Dawis, 1996)
IT IS CRUCIAL TO MAKE CLEARA DEFINITION OF “CAREER DEVELOPMENT” before unfolding this article. To summarize a number of definitions of “career” or “career development”, career is a subset of work characterized by volition, pay, and hierarchical and thematic relationships among various jobs over the course of the life-span. Thus, career development means working out of a purposeful life with relation to what they do in all aspects of one’s life. It has significance when today’s definition is compared with old notion of career development, “choosing a vocation”. It contains more widening range of period, contents, and agency for individuals. Due to increasing concerns of career development and integratingperspectives in one’s life, sustainable career development has to be highlighted.
Sustainable Career Development
The term ‘sustainability’ is also open to many different interpretations. Generally, however, it refers to the ability to ensure that we are able to meet ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). The concept of sustainability proposes a balance between biophysical, economic, social and political systems (Fien 2001). To achieve sustainability, governments, the community and individuals need to change attitudes and behaviours to look beyond a purely economic agenda, and accept that the environment does not have limitless resources.
Education has been nominated as a key agent for change in this process, with education for sustainability growing in prominence both nationally and internationally. Within the education sector, career education and career guidance has a central role to play in changing the way we as individuals approach work and life, by providing the skills to think and act with a wider vision of sustainable development in mind.
2. The Need for Sustainable Career Development
The need for sustainable career development
THE WORKPLACE IS RAPIDLY TRANSFORMING with diversity of the world. There are widespread assertions that the international restructuring of the workplace has changed every aspect of work such as decreasing security, longevity of jobs, increasing the importance of adaptability, skills, and teamwork (Gysbers et al., 2003). Many research evidencesidentified several factors influencing the emerging trends of workplace as follows.
- The pervasive effects of advanced information, communication and technology
- The change of relationships and social psychology of work
- Widening international global economic competition
- Changing employment forms: the decrease of permanent job
- Emerging new concepts of career development
- The increase of average educational requirements in employment
- The increased significance of “Knowledge Worker”
- The context of lifelong education
- Changing demographic patterns in workplace
- Changing concept from career “maturity” to career “adaptability”
- To “employability security” from “employment security”
Additionally, these changes of workplace also cause a number of reported psychological problems, such as, anxiety from ambiguous career path, and low job stability, and frustration due to a role conflict at home and work.In addition company downsizing, early retirement, and the growing use of contingent employment has led some people to fear that full-time employment will not be available to them.These negative experiences of employees make sure of increasing needs for sustainable career development throughout working life.
In sum, the dramatic changes in various aspects of job context, such as, the enhancement of technology, the changes of politic, economy, demographics, and globalization, make workers more embarrassed. More workers are required to alertly cope with a new situation than before, which means they have to participate ina series of obtaining new information, transferring their skills to other areas and even equipping flexible attitude. At this point, the sustainable career development is deserved to be emphasized. It would enable to cope with variable circumstance and promote individualcareer development throughout their whole life.
Career Resilience and Sustainable Career development
The concept of “career resilience” has several implications for sustainable development. To summarize a few definitions of the concept, one is “the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, even when the circumstances are discouraging or disruptive”, and another is “the result or outcome of being career self-reliant” In sum, career resilience refers to individual career development – developing the knowledge and skills required to make a visible and personally motivated contribution to the organization and its customers (Collad et al, 1996).
To achieve successful career development with career resilience, above all, flexible attitude has to be equipped. Teamwork, effective communication, adaptability to change, positive attitudes, continuous learning, self-confidence, willingness to take risks, and a commitment to personal excellence are all characteristics identified in career resilience (Bettina, 1996). It enables to adapt effectively to new-emerging job circumstance for one’s sustainable career development.
Individuals need to prepare themselves for redefined career paths that require resilience and an ability to be self-reliant. They must continually update their skills, looking ahead to the future and to market trends as well as to the current demands of the workplace (Collard et al, 1996). They must have a plan for “enhancing their performance and long-term employability”(Waterman, Waterman, and Collard, 1994). In these contexts, career resilience would be a concept, presenting effective ways to adapt new circumstances, for sustainable career development.
3. Changing Career Expectations, Life Views,and Environment
Changing Career Expectations
Economic and cultural changes in the workplaceare creating frustrations for many workers. The patterns of employment are also changing, and more corporations and employers do not guarantee the security and longevity of jobs any more. Employment with forms of part-time/temporary jobs is increasing, and more workers suffer from anxiety causing from not having a persistent identity as a worker and an individual. Thus, workers in new forms of employment are recognizing the necessityof readjusting their career expectations as a means of fulfilling for their work and love –as two essentials for healthy and mature adulthood viewedby Freud (Merram and Clark, 1991).
Changing Life Views
Many people usually have a linear view of life, andput their desiresparalleled on the linear life. Those people see life as a process steadily going upward through hard work and perseverance, and subconsciously or consciously believe that good works and deeds will lead to success and happiness. This way ofeasygoing thinking makes people not prepared for unexpected events that interfere with their life plans.
The cyclical view of life suggests that there is a time appropriate for everything–patterns are repeated but each has a unique meaning at different times. A cyclical view of adult life promotes self-renewal. It is characterized as follows (Hudson, 1991).
- It portrays life as a complex, pluralistic, varied flow, with ongoing cycles in nature, societies, and people.
- It assumes that life is “developed” through a cycle of changes and continuity rather than in progressive, straight lines.
- It portrays human systems as flexible, interactive, and resilient, permitting continuous adaptations.
- It considers continuous learning to be essential to the constant improvement of adult competence.
The cyclical view has a suggestion that adults discard outmoded habits, and then, learn new ways to live effectively coping with changing circumstance. It recognizes that “adults need not the only knowledge and training to make the changing external world work but self-knowledge and training to make the internal world effective”(Hudson, 1991) Workers have been touched by significant life events related with jobs, family, and health and established a life structure only to move toward a new life structure. It is in transition from one life structure to another that many get lost.
Changing Environment
Aging of Population
Aging of the population is the most salient feature observed in Korea’s population structure. Currently, Koreahas become an ‘aging society’according to UN criteria, and the percentage of over 65 reached 8.7% in 2004. Korea is expected to become an ‘aged society’ in 2019.It is remarkable that it takes only 19 years in Korea compared to 24 years in Japan, 40 years in Germany, and 47 years in the U.K.Even though such a rapid rate of population aging in Korea, there is a negative attitudes and stereotypes toward older workers. Ageism denies older workers equal opportunity and equitable treatment and appears to be a serious issue in the workplace. Among the barriers faced by older workers the following is most significant: managerial biases that they are too costly, too inflexible, and too difficult to train resulting in a lack of access to training that would enable them to maintain their productivity and value, in other words, sustainable career development.
Growing Female Labor Participation
According to <Figure 1>, the labor participation rate for females has rapidly surged from 37% in 1963 to 49.8% in 2004. This figure is in contrast with the labor participation rate for males, which dropped from 78.4% in 1963 to 74.8% in 2004. As a result, the gap between labor participation rates by sex drastically narrowed from 41.4%p in 1963 to 25.0%p in 2004. Though the labor participation rate for females has increased in a relatively short period, the figure is still lower than those of OECD countries like the U.S. (59.5%), U.K. (55.6%) and Sweden (60.4%).
After the 1990s, as the number of females with high school or better educational background increased, the gender segregation of occupations gradually faded and the scope of female participation widened. Female labor participation entered a new phase, resulting from the increase in skilled female workforce with higher educational attainments and the female-friendly change in industry structure caused by the rapid growth of IT and the service industry.
<Figure -1> Labor Participation Rate and Unemployment Rate by Sex
Source: Korea National Statistical Office, Annual Report on the Economically ActivePopulation Survey, various years.
Expanding Higher Education
According to <Table 1>, the advancement rate of high school graduates to college has surged from 27.2% in 1980 to 89.8% in 2004. Since the 1980s, Korea has maintained a policy of expanding higher education opportunities for high school graduates. Regulations restricting the establishment of two- and four-year colleges have been relaxed, and existing institutions are allowed to increase their student enrollment. Consequently, in Korea, college education has become popularized among the youth, and the general educational level of the population has rapidly increased. In this sense, higher education must play a vital role to support student’s sustainable career development by responding to new technology and globalization and providing life-long learning environment to all.
<Table -1> Advancement Rate and Wage Differentials by Educational Level
(Unit: %)
Year / Advancement rate / Wage differentialsElementary
→middle / Middle
→high / High
→college / Middle school graduates / High school graduates / College graduates & above
1980 / 95.8 / 84.5 / 27.2 / 78.5 / 100.0 / 202.7
1985 / 99.2 / 90.7 / 36.4 / 81.8 / 100.0 / 198.4
1990 / 99.8 / 95.7 / 33.2 / 89.3 / 100.0 / 165.0
1995 / 99.9 / 98.5 / 51.4 / 92.5 / 100.0 / 142.0
2000 / 99.9 / 99.6 / 68.0 / 91.3 / 100.0 / 150.1
2003 / 99.9 / 99.7 / 79.7 / 84.2 / 100.0 / 151.7
Nnotes : 1) Wwage differential by educationallevel means relative wage index calculated under the assumption that the average monthly wage of male high school graduates equals 100.
2) advancement Advancement rate = (number of advanced graduates/number of total graduates)×100.
Source : 1)Korea National Statistical Office, Annual Report on the Economically Active PopulationSurvey,various years.
2)Ministry of Education & HRD, Statistical Yearbook of Education,various years.
4. Career Guidance Systemin Korea
Career education and career guidance has a central role to play in changing the way that individuals approach work and life, by providing the skills to think and act with a wider vision of sustainable development in mind. Career education and career guidance has generally focused on helping people understand the relationship between education and work and acquire employability skills. Therefore, looking at the reality of career guidance system in Korea suggests the issues and insights for policy applications in sustainable career development throughout working life
Career Guidance in Schools
The ministry of education and human resource development has the responsibility of career education and career guidance. The school system comprises twelve years of school, followed by six years of primary school, three years of middle school, and three years of senior high school. There is a national curriculum, but some decisions about the detailed content of the curriculum have been devolved to the 16 provinces and to individual schools. The first educational decisions with major career implications are made at the end of junior high school, around the age of 15. Of students in senior high school, nearly two-thirds are in academic ‘general high schools’, and the remainder in vocational/technical high schools. Most of the former aim at college entrance; it is also now much more possible than in the past for students to go to college from the vocational/technical schools. The pressure for entrance to prestigious colleges means that many parents supplement school provision with private tuition for their children.
The main guidance specialist in schools is the school counselor, who is a qualified teacher with (usually) some additional specialist training. Their role covers not only educational and career guidance but also dealing with personal and behavioral issues: the emphasis appears to be shifting from the latter to the former. Across the 4,820 junior and senior high schools, there are only 185 school counselors devoting two-thirds or more of their time to this role; other schools usually have one or perhaps more counselors with a smaller amount of time – perhaps a few hours per week – for this work.
Most career guidance delivery in schools, however, is provided by the homeroom teachers. Almost all subject teachers also act as homeroom teachers for a group of students, seeing them for a short period (perhaps ten minutes) at the beginning and end of each day, largely for registration purposes. They also have a variety of other duties in relation to their group, which can include administrative, disciplinary and guidance tasks. The role of the school counselor is to supply the homeroom teachers with information and support, and to see students who require specialist help.
In practice, the content of most guidance is focused around college entrance, and particularly decisions about which colleges and field of study to apply for. Such guidance is informed largely by school marks and aptitude/interest test results, and appears in general to pay little or no attention to clarifying longer-term career aspirations.
Career education is currently being introduced into the school curriculum. The 7th School Curriculum (the latest version of the national curriculum framework, which is revised every five years) permits ‘The Employment and Career’ as an elective ‘extra-curricular’ subject for two hours per week for one semester (i.e. a total of 68 hours), both in junior and senior high school.
There is little opportunity for most school students to experience the world of work. Vocational courses in senior high schools are legally obliged to include work experience, commonly in the form of a ‘2 + 1’ pattern in which some or all of the final year is spent on appropriate work-based training. Some difficulties are experienced in securing adequate placements for such programs, and this appears to consume most of whatever resources and energies are available for school-industry co-operation. Certainly there are very few exploratory work-experience programs for vocational education students prior to choosing their vocational field, or for general education students. Elementary and junior high schools may organize ‘career days’ or ‘career weeks’ which include work visits. Schools sometimes also have careers talks from parents, alumni, local business people or career experts. In addition, senior high schools are required to encourage all students to undertake community work during school vacations: this is given credit by colleges for entrance purposes (largely on the grounds that it indicates the possession of social and moral values) and may provide an opportunity for some work experience in the social-service sector. In 2007, the ministry of education and human resource development announced the “Job experience day” in every May of third weeks. The purpose of job experience day is to give opportunity to students for real experience of the world of work. The Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET) is developing guidelines and manual for ‘work-based career guidance’ to support each schools job experience day.