Careers Services: Engaging ‘disengaged’ young people in multicultural contexts Thematic Seminar...

Careers Services: Engaging ‘disengaged’ young people in

multicultural contexts

Thematic Seminar

IAEVG International Conference, University of Jyvaskyla

June 2009

Authors and papers

• Gideon Arulmani: Cultural Preparedness: A framework for career counsellingDirector, The Promise Foundation, Bangalore, India.

• Mariyam Nazima:Yes...Because I Can!” Case Study from the Republic of Maldives

President, Labour Tribunal, Republic of Maldives.

• Hazel Reid:The Narrative Approach to career guidance in an uncertain world.

Director, Centre for Career & Personal Development, Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

Presentation Plan

• Part 1: Gideon Arulmani, across the

internet from India.

• Part 2: Hazel Reid, direct interaction.

In the event that the video link fails (!),

Hazel will take over and make her presentation.

Part 1:Cultural Preparedness:

A framework for career counselling

Until recently...

Prosperity was achieved by engaging with work ina specifically defined, socially approved manner:

• Educational qualifications• Job applications• Recruitment procedures• Job responsibilities• Performance appraisals • Promotions

• Stability• Durability• Long term

• Qualifications• Persistence• Personal Responsibility

…what are they saying today?• I don’t want to be like my mum. Thinks she’s liberated. Works so hard.

But she’s dead when she gets home. Irritable. Not fun anymore. I would find her life boring. But it’s my life. 14 year old girl, Portsmouth (UK).

• Everything is changing. I don’t know if what I study will be relevant to the job market. It is better just to wait and see. 18 year old girl, Hanoi (Vietnam).

• There are high paying jobs available in the BPO sector for which you must know only how to speak English. So that’s what I’m going to do… and I will stop going to college.18 year old boy, Bangalore, India.

• …one job…for a LIFE time… no way!16 year old boy, Portsmouth (UK).

• When my family immigrated to Australia, we were promised jobs. It’s ‘their’ responsibility to support us... Anyways there’s always the dole. 19 year old girl, Melbourne, Australia.

“Commitment…that’s so not me”

• What else is there?• What’s around the corner?• Hang loose.• Wait and see.• I must get a prestigious job• It’s their responsibility.• We’re free to change.

The Multicultural context

• Work today occurs within a context that is populated by individuals from varied cultural, socio-economic and religious backgrounds.

• Patterns of immigration over many decades and the forces globalisation over the recent past have led to multicultural societies becoming a strongly present reality today.

• Young people in multicultural contexts are often under the influence of multiple social and cultural factors when they begin to consider career development.

• What is often expressed as ‘boredom’ could reflect their disengagement from ‘prescribed’ modes of career development.


There is a higher likelihood of counsellor and counseleecoming from differing cultural backgrounds, eachinfluenced and guided by their own beliefs and ways ofliving.

• Individualism – collectivism: Career decision-making could reflect strong community orientations with a preference for co-operative decision-making

• A ‘respectable’ career: The attitudes of prestige, social status can be carried over from ‘home’

• Transmission of attitudes: Career beliefs could be passed on from one generation to another


• It is essential in that counsellors areparticularly sensitive to cultural factors(their own as well, as those of theirclients), that could influence the careercounselling process.

• It is here that I would like to introduce the notion of cultural preparedness.

Excerpt from case notes

This was an interaction with a young woman working as a CallCentre Agent in one of the most well known Business ProcessOutsourcing (BPO) companies in Bangalore (an Indian city that hasbecome well known for its computer industry).

She came from a traditional Indian middle class home and hadGrown up in an urban environment. She was 24 years old and heldA bachelor’s degree in commerce. She had enrolled for a master’sdegree but had discontinued the course in favour of taking up thisjob.

Here are excerpts from my first (and only) session with her.


Client:• Some my friends have come to you for help to leave their job as call

centre operators. But I don’t want to leave. I am happy with the job. I earn well. I want to know how to come up in this job and reach the top in this job.

Counsellor:• How have you done at your job so far?

Client:• Average. I should have risen higher by now, but I am more or less

where I started. That’s why I have come to you.

Counsellor:• Tell me more...

Client: • The performance appraisal that my company did said that my mother

tongue influence is still high. Also sometimes, I get irritated with the caller.


Counsellor: • When you get irritated what happens?

Client:• My supervisor says that the tone of my voice changes and shows my

irritation.

Counsellor:• What makes you irritated?

Client:• I don’t like answering only to people’s complaints. The whole time I have

to listen to someone from another country and listen to their problems and complaints.

Counsellor: • Were you aware that this is what the job was about, when you applied for

the job?

Client:• Yes. And I want to learn how to do better at this job.


Counsellor: • The most important requirements of your present job seem to bring out the

worst side of your personality.

Client: • If a job doesn’t fit, the person must be changed. That’s why I am here. You

are a psychologist. You know how to change my personality to suit my job requirement. Anyway why are you asking me so many questions? I thought you had answers, not questions.

Counsellor:• Changing a person’s personality is difficult and most often not necessary.

Do you think your irritability would reduce if you went for a different kind of job?

Client:• I can’t leave this job. I can’t quit. If you can’t help me change my

personality, then I will go to some other expert.


Counsellor:• Do you know of any one who can do that?

Client:• Yes! There are many experts. I know an astrologer who can do that.

Our own family priest I am sure can help me. I thought since you are a behavioural scientist you would know best.

Counsellor:• I can only help you learn to help yourself. I do believe that you can learn

to help yourself. What this means is that I am willing to work with you, but you are the one who is really at the centre of our interactions. Think about what I have said and let me know if you would like to continue.


The session ended on this note.

The client did not return.

As a part of routine follow up the client was contacted by telephoneabout a month after the session.

She reported that she had indeed visited her astrologer. He, throughhis divinations had found that she was unsuited for the job that sheheld! He had advised her to look for another job!

My client took his advice, found employment as a receptionist in ahotel and was now quite happy!

A theoretical construct

Cultural Preparedness


Necessary and sufficient conditions?

• Methods of counselling that emerged in the West were created by members of this culture in response to needs expressed from within this culture.

• Developed by a people, for a people with certain orientations.

• The creators of the service as well as the consumers of the service were culturally prepared in a similar manner to offer and partake of the service.

• They share a similar vocabulary of values and cherish a particular approach to life.

• At a very fundamental level, the counsellor and counselee, in the West, share a cultural heritage that has prepared them over a period of time to engage with each other in a mutually compatible manner.


Necessary and sufficient conditions?

• Against this background of cultural preparedness, conditions could be created for a particular approach to counselling that were necessary and sufficient for that context.

• The key point to be noted is that the same conditions may be neither necessary nor sufficient for a people who have different cultural heritage.

• A counselling approach that is empirical and individualistic in its

orientation, for example, may not find resonance amongst a people whose culture has prepared them over the ages to approach their existence in an intuitive, experiential and community oriented manner.


Questions of relevance

• The counsellor in this interaction did not seem to match the client’s assumptions of what ‘counselling’ meant . Nor was the counsellor culturally prepared to meet the client’s expectations.

• The counsellor’s version of counselling belonged to a cultural framework that did not match the manner in which the client’s culture had prepared her to seek help.

• While I was ‘client centred’ and ‘unconditional’ in my practice, I had not exhibited these necessary and sufficient conditions in my actual conception of the totality of this individual.

• She was embedded in a culture that was different from the culture that had spawned the form of counselling I was trained to administer.

• I could (and did) of course say that the ‘suitability’ of this client was low for counselling… and soothed my smarting self-esteem that she would choose an astrologer over me!



• What I failed to consider was the possibility that it was in fact the suitability of my form of counselling that was low for her.

• It also dawned upon me that my client did in fact receive ‘counselling’ from her astrologer.

• This form of counselling did not have its cultural orientation in the tenets of Western psychology. It was rooted in Indian tradition – a tradition of which both the counsellor (astrologer) and counselee were a part.

• In other words the ‘counsellor’ in this situation delivered a form of counselling for which the young lady was culturally prepared.



• Could the counsellor have been more effective in this situation?

• Would it have been possible to establish a counselling relationship with this young person on her terms, rather than on the terms dictated by the school of counselling to which the counsellor was committed?

Two approaches to service delivery

This debate has occurred between two positions.

Universalism Particularism

Service Delivery

The universalist view• Universal common ground, shared across cultures.

• All-embracing principles that describe as wide a range of observations as possible.

• Theories of social science have searched for a deep structure, from which human social life emanates (E.g. Marxism, Freudian psychoanalytic theory, behaviourism and Parsonian functionalism).

• The attempt is at generalization rather than focusing on specific characteristics.

• The approach lends itself to data generation and analysis based on which nomothetic trends and commonalities can be understood.

Service Delivery

The particularist view• Rests on the assumption that human experience is

mediated not only by universal structures, but by particular cultural characteristics as well.

• The focus is on culturally learned perspectives that are unique to a particular culture.

• It is emphasised that beliefs and activities should be interpreted in terms of one’s own culture.

• The principle of ethnocentrism: "one’s own group is the center of everything," against which other groups are judged.

• The approach provides detailed and comprehensive descriptions of particular situations.

Service Delivery Implications

The universalists:

Could foster dominance by the more powerful majority culture at the expense of minority cultures

Could homogenise and destroy diversity

Could miss the trees for the forest

The particularists:

Could result in ever-expanding constituent groups that perceive themselves as being, different, special, disenfranchised …

Could be left finally with nothing more than individual differences

Could miss the forest for the trees

Culture sensitive careers services

Need a conceptual framework that

recognizes:

• culture-particular

characteristics

• culture-universal

characteristics

That distinguish one from the other

That unite and offer bridges between differences

Case Study 1:Employment Skills Training Project

Mariyam, Nazima.President, Labour Tribunal, Republic of Maldives

Analysis of the Maldivian social cognitive environmentrevealed consistent patterns of commonality and specificityalong career beliefs.

CAREER BELIEF THEME

PATTERNS OF SPECIFICITY

PATTERNS OF COMMONALITY

Control and self-direction:

• “It is the government's

responsibility.”

• “My father will do it for

me.”

Negation of personal responsibility

Persistence: • “It’s too hard for me.”

• “I would rather be

unemployed.”

Giving up in the face of barriers

Saying NO rather than YES to personal engagement

with work and career development

Proficiency: “I want to go to college.”

“I want a practical course.”

High emphasis on acquiring education

Development of a programme

• Searched within social cognitive environment both for common principles as well as specificities.

• Mapped specificities and particularities on to the broader matrix of commonalities.

• Developed a careers programme that used universalist principles to address culture specific, felt needs.

The social marketing campaign

Slogan

Youth Employment Services

YES!

YES! BECAUSE I CAN

“Yes” Career Counselling Programme

The social marketing campaign

Logo and Slogan

Universalist approach; acultural

Universalist principles interpreted

into a specific cultural context

Harnessing diversity

Some evidence(Arulmani, G & Abdulla, A 2007)*

Glassian Effect Sizes indicating the impact of career guidance oncareer beliefs

* Capturing the ripples: Addressing the sustainability of the impact of social marketing. Social Marketing Quarterly

1.85

7.55

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Career Guidance only Yes Career Guidance

Eff

ect

Siz

e

Acultural approach

Blended commonalities

with specificities

Case Study 2:The Promise Foundation, India:

Career guidance and livelihood planning project

Analysis of social cognitive environment revealed the

following key social cognitions pertaining to work:

- Work is an integral part of life

- Work is an extension of life

- Work is related to life stages

Jiva

“Life” in most Indian languages

The Jiva FrameworkThe Jiva ‘spiral’! The Jiva Career Spiral

Mental ‘tick’ marks! The Jiva Tick mark

The changing and the unchanged. Changing and unchanged

Green and blue! Green and Blue!

Principle 1:The Jiva Career Spiral

• A non linear approach to career development

Tendrils and galaxies... both expand and develop as spirals

Principle 2:The Jiva Tick Mark: Career and the labour market

• Personal potentials and labour market cycles.

Win some... Lose some?

Principle 3:Green and Blue: In tune with the environment

• Career and the environment

Hand crafted Malaysian Industrial fishingfishing tool… one fish at a time!

Principle 4:The changing and the unchanged

• A career develops in finding the balance between what changes and what does not change.

• Personal interests for example, are liable to change while aptitudes

are deeper traits and therefore are more stable.

Similar tasks but changing complexities

Principle 5:Give in order to get

• the counselling interaction could be a teaching-learning experience both for the client as well as the counsellor.

• Career counselling then becomes a ‘give’ and ‘get’ partnership between counsellor and counselee.

Test and Tell Learn from each other

Culture sensitive careers services

Need a conceptual framework that

recognizes:

• culture-particular

characteristics

• culture-universal

characteristics

That distinguish one from the other

That unite and offer bridges between differences

Conclusion

“Established models, associated with

outcome-driven thinking based on lists of

personality traits and job factors, or ideas

based on linear development through

education to a lifetime career, may be useful

for some but are unlikely to engage all

young people.”

Reid, 2008.

Thank you!

Any comments?!

Over to Hazel Reid!

Careers Services: Engaging ‘disengaged’ young people in multicultural contexts Thematic Seminar...

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