Between Counselling and Teaching

Project lead
Prof. Dr. Gerald Sailmann

Project duration
December 2021 – November 2024

Cooperation partner
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Seifried (University of Mannheim)

Berufsorientierung (BO) (career orientation) is a task of the National Employment Agency which it carries out with schools of general education. It is about pupils being encouraged to discover their interests and skills, and making information on professional education and development opportunities available to them. Such events are, however, different in certain aspects from classic counselling sessions. Generally, they are not aimed at individuals but at larger groups, especially at school classes. For this reason, the Employment Agency sessions normally take place locally, i.e. in school classrooms, however, this is also possible in career information centres (BIZ) or at training or education fairs.

At BO events, it is about professional counselling situations which focus on the transition from school to an apprenticeship or to a place at university; methodologically, however, it is about working with groups in a way that is relevant to teaching. Little is known, however, on the research side about this kind of event "Between counselling and teaching". Specific teaching principles are not available either - the focus lies more on the typical methods used in teaching in schools. There is little connection to the aims of the events - whether it be in terms of occupational profiles, regional labour and training markets as well as application processes, or awareness of their own interests, strengths and weaknesses and options in terms of school and profession which are open to them. In contrast to classic classroom teaching, the role of counsellors and their relationship to learners is far less clearly defined.

The aforementioned research project is dedicated to this topic. The focus lies on career orientation as an element of university teaching, i.e. it is about the planning, execution and reflection of BO events on the part of the HdBA students. Previous BO events are first analysed in terms of the module "Arbeiten in Gruppen" (Working in groups) to discover more about its goals, its focus in terms of content and its methodological approaches. Didactical concepts for such events are then further developed. The findings are then fed into university teaching to further support the future counsellors' BO skills in their degree programmes.