New Emerging Issues about Guidance and Counselling in an Accreditation of Prior and Experiential Learning Process

The aim of this research is to examine special features of guidance and counselling roles in a process of accreditation of prior and experiential learning (APEL). More specifically, we have two main goals: to identify any possible distinctive feature of guidance and counselling provided during a skills-oriented APEL procedure; and to highlight any skills that actors involved in the guidance process may need to develop. In order to collect the data, we used semi-structured interviews with a sample of twenty APEL guidance counsellors who had all been involved in APEL guidance and counselling in the higher education sector in a Business School setting in France. The results of the research underline three central issues: (i) the distinctive nature of APEL guidance and counselling compared to other guidance and counselling on offer in higher education, (ii) a specificity arising on the one hand, from the focus of the analysis – the professional and personal experience of the APEL candidate – and, on the other hand, from the skills-oriented benchmark and the objectives of diplomas awarded by the Business Schools, (iii) similarities to coaching evident in the description of some of the skills needed for this type of guidance and counselling. We then analyse the specific nature of the APEL process, which entails self-examination and self-analysis and we discuss the fact that the core skills required for APEL guidance and counselling could be similar, in various aspects to thos