A report of the European Commission (Watts, 1994) identifies some difficulties in
carrying out school and professional choice education activities, regarding the role of the
teacher (who must be animator and coordinator of a dynamic learning process) and no
grading. It is recommended to prepare thoroughly, similarly to counsellor teachers, in
order to carry out more efficient activities.
In Counselling and guidance in Romania the following approaches are promoted:
- the autonomous model, considering counselling and guidance independent
processes, exterior to the educational system (especially applied to the field
of work for adult counselling); - the dynamic model, including counselling and guidance in the school
curriculum (especially applied to counselling young people in initial
education and training).
Thus, Counselling and guidance activities carried out in specialized institutions such as:
Centres and Offices of Psycho-pedagogical Assistance in pre-university education, or
Centres of Information and Counselling in higher education complete each other and
co-exist with activities specific for the curricular area Counselling and guidance (2005).
The approach Activating vocational and personal development (ADVP) represents the
theoretical base for a series of models and methods for guidance education, currently
used in France. They are called Education of choice (Education des choix) and Path to
Doing (Chemin faisant), and will be presented below. ADVP was created in the 1970 by a
group of Canadian academics: Pelletier, Noiseux, Bujold, based on the ideas of Super –
development psychology, Guilford – cognitive psychology, and Rogers – humanist
psychology.
The arguments for ADVP are (Guichard, Huteau, 2001):
- the phenomenon of professional mobility, that is the disappearance of some
trades and the appearance of others, the changes in the nature and conditions
of numerous professional activities; - the differences between the existing aptitudes and assessed by means of
psychological tests, and those required by certain professions; - replacing the image of the passive and reactive subject, in the psycho-
technical theory by the active and autonomous subject, promoted by the
cognitive psychology (Piaget) and humanist psychology (Rogers); - changing the school context, by extending the number of years in compulsory
education, and the emergence of the need to prepare from early on the
decisions regarding the study or professions;