Career guidance from the viewpoint of school counselors and career guidance programme proposal

The master's thesis deals with the issue of vocational orientation and its importance in the elementary school. The primary providers of vocational orientation in the elementary school are the school counselors and that is why their view is exposed in the present work. Due to the current social situation, the term "vocational guidance" has been renamed. The more appropriate term now is career orientation. As a result, the theoretical part of the herewith master's thesis highlights the background, which actually led to the above mentioned renaming, and at the same time it introduces a critical analysis of this concept. The use of the concept of career orientation in the elementary school should be thoroughly thought through and more focus should be given on the empowering students. This can be achieved only through the consistent implementation of the vocational guidance activity, which I also investigated with the help of the qualitative research. Based on the results of interviews carried out with six school counselors, I was then able to conduct research on the implementation of vocational guidance in the elementary school. The key findings of the interviews, in close connection with the theoretical work, represent the basis on which a career guidance program is in fact designed, which consequently aims to empower students. This is precisely the key contribution of the conducted research, as the proposed model of the program includes data obtained from the primary vocational guidance providers and is thus designed from bottom to top. The proposed model of the program could thus contribute to greater efficiency of the implementation of the vocational guidance activity, as it contains a precise preparation and work plan. In addition, the participating consultants or professional guidance providers expressed the desire for a more consistent implementation of the activities when it comes to vocational guidance. The fact is that the current school system focuses too much attention on the instrumental part of the education, where the "preparation for life" content literally runs out of time. A considerable amount of attention is devoted to this content in the program's proposal, since the proposed activities support the individuals' personal, social and emotional development, whereby, not only professional, but also life-choices could be easily dealt with. Since social pedagogues can be employed in the workplace of a school counselor, the knowledge found in this field is highly important for our profession as well. At the same time, social pedagogues are aware of the significance of the importance of recognizing the individual strengths in order to successfully cope with different life situations. Therefore, we are suitable for both designing and implementing such activities