Career project. Counselling and vocational identity construction

My research project focused on topics regarding work and school counselling in the theoretical framework of vocational identity development in late adolescence and first adulthood. As known, Italian students have to make vocational choices during the transition from one level of education to another or from education to work. Those choices are difficult and demanding, more than in the past because today’s job market is weak and not inclusive especially for young people. Those vocational choices single out personal instances and motivations that, from one hand they regard future self-projection, from another hand they are the products of one’s personal history. Thus, they are strictly linked to capacity of synthesis that regards the resolution of identity crisis (Erikson, 1950; 1968), amounting to one of the main developmental tasks of high school students at the end of their educational path and young people in transition from one level of education to another and/or from school to work. However, several studies showed that in this phase of transition most Italian students are still in a moratorium and/or diffusion phase, given that they have not elaborated yet a definition of their own identity (delay syndrome, Livi Bacci, 2008). Despite this, the Italian educational system asks them to design their future educational and work paths, first of all deciding whether to continue their studies or not and in which direction. Starting from considerations touched upon, the present research project aimed to design and to implement a model of educational and vocational intervention, inspired by life designing counselling (Savickas, 2011) developed on the base of Italian context peculiarities and delay syndrome typical of Italian students. According with life designing guidelines, the model takes into account life trajectories that form the backdrop of career development. In order to aim the general goal described above, the research is articulated in secondary goals needed to the model implementation. The research is articulated in four studies, related to one other, elaborated to contribute to the finalising of career counselling/intervention model. Each contribution is respectively aimed to explore: a) vocational identity statuses (Porfeli et al., 2011) of Italian high school students attending their last years of school. In addition, the study analysed, variables as work-learn trajectories and early work experiences during education within vocational identity development; b) career development and meaning making processes. Through a narrative approach and a psychosocial point of view, similarities and differences between two different samples of people in transition (high school students attending their last two years of school and university students attending their first university year) from a large city of the South of Italy and from a village in the East-South of England were analysed; c) Career development and meaning making processes, of Italian high school students at two different periods of their transition. This analysis is always through a narrative approach but in longitudinal terms. Then, d) it was designed, implemented and experimented a pilot career counselling/intervention, in order to complete the picture of Italian school and university students’ situation about career development and choices. This was designed and implemented starting from literature regarding mainly the career construction and life design and on the base of first study results, the implementation of a career narrative approach and contextual factors related to job market, finding work opportunities, and national statistical analysis. Starting from findings of studies and pilot career counselling/intervention, a career counselling/intervention model for high school students was designed.