What should I do with my life? This is a question that I am sure many have pondered several times. Career and guidance counsellors are the professionals that help people with reflecting this question and navigating their study choices, career paths and life courses. But as the ecosocial crises of our times are causing upheaval in all sectors of society, also career and guidance counsellors face the need to rethink our practice. Luckily, we can do this together.
November in all its glory welcomed career and guidance professionals from all around the world to the annual conference of International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance (IAEVG) in Jyväskylä. The days were filled with interesting presentations and discussion, but the magic of sharing and meeting really peaked in the dialogue workshop that I had the pleasure to host with Anne Valkeapää from Finnish National Agency for Education.
Normally in conferences like these many give a paper presentation or present a poster, where they tell about their research and then others usually have some minutes to comment and ask questions. When we started to think about how to approach the topic of career and guidance counselling (CGC) for sustainable futures, the task seemed overwhelming: what can we say about this? What knowledge do we have to pass on to others? Are we good enough experts on this topic at all? Soon we realised that more than a presentation we need time and space to stop and think about these complex questions together, to build shared understanding and find better questions. That is why we decided to host a Timeout dialogue.
The Timeout Foundation has done a remarkable job of helping people to build and maintain shared spaces for thinking. The ready made materials, especially easy-to-understand ground rules and conversation cards to support facilitation gave us confidence to try out this new approach. Add in the coaching and support from the staff of the foundation and our job as facilitators was like a walk in the park.
Of course the vast majority of credit from the magic created goes to our amazing participants, who were willing to leave their name tags and professional masks by the door and explore these complex issues as humans and as a part of the larger web of life. By going on first name bases during the whole discussion, starting with shared memories inspired by the candy we shared and taking the time to be fully present, we were able to embrace the uncertainty together: no individual has to have all the answers. Instead we took the time to explore together questions such as what feels important in relation to guidance for sustainable futures and what is left unsaid.
Central part of a dialogue is that you don’t have to reach consensus. When leaving the room our thoughts were still as wonderfully diverse as at the beginning of the dialogue. But not the same. Many participants praised the opportunity to truly engage into a meaningful and honest discussion. They shared that it would be great to have more of these kinds of spaces free from the pressures of efficiency and finding the right solutions, simply focused on understanding one another and the world better and cultivating our thoughts. Looking from the outside someone might say that not much was achieved, because we created more new questions than answers. And still something shifted, changed, something hopeful got created and we found joy, beauty and resilience in the diversity of thought.
On behalf of everyone involved I would like to thank Timeout Foundation for the support in making this possible. And I would like to very much encourage everyone to take the leap of fate and dive into the exploration of thinking in dialogue. What you lack in control, you’ll receive tenfold in expanding your thoughts.
Written by: Sara Peltola, University Teacher, PhD researcher
