CAREER_COUNSELLING_EN

Perspectives

Criteria

Theoreticians Practitioners

Finalities Professional guidance is a means to

“reach a higher level of social

justice’’.

Students will be selected equitably,

function of their aptitudes.

Ppragmatic position, which states that

guidance must be in accordance with

the educational offer.

Methods An accurate analysis of activities in

order to identify the necessary

aptitudes as a premise for the creation

of psychological tests.

Conversation and observation will be

used to identify the client’s aptitudes,

and then, these will be correlated with

the requirements of certain professions.

Conclusions Ideas are based on psychological

researches, which will gain amplitude

after the world war II.

Practice is dominantly empirical and in

the 1930s ideas proposed by

theoreticians were first applied.

Edouard Toulouse laid the grounds of the psycho-technical current in France, and Henri
Piéron, Jean Maurice Lahy, and Henri Laugier contributed to the creation of aptitude
evaluation tests. In addition many professional monographies were published starting
from the needed aptitudes for success.

The psycho-technical model is based on the following statements:

• individuals can be characterized through their stable aptitudes;


• each profession has certain requirements;


• individuals are capable of rational decisions (with counsellor’s support) and
  of choosing professions that match their aptitudes;


• professional success is secure when there is an optimal correlation between
  the person’s aptitudes and the requirements of the profession.

The “trait and factor” model was first systematically described by Franck Parsons (1909).
From this notion sprang numerous reflections and research in the psychology of guidance,
alongside with the very development of counselling services.

Paterson and Wiliamson (Minnesota, SUA) initiated a series of vocational guidance
programmes addressed to secondary school graduates, university students, unemployed,
and military. Psychological tests were created that are still in use, and also professional
monographies. The first Dictionary of professions was published in 1939.

In Romania there is a tradition regarding the psycho-technical movement and the
psychological examination. In the Psycho-technical Institutes and Laboratories,
established in the 1930s, guidance professionals were trained, studies and scientific
research published, psychological evaluation methods and tools developed. In addition,
the Professional Guidance Offices were founded, subordinated from a methodological
point of view to the Institutes, and they were meant to do psychological and medical