Educational & vocational guidance is an increasingly important element of lifelong learning. Over the course of their working lives, individuals must navigate multiple transitions, e.g. from school to vocational training or employment; these transitions are accompanied by insecurities such as unemployment & precarious employment conditions. Guidance can play a decisive role in the major decisions that individuals have to make throughout their lives. The current training provision for guidance practitioners in Europe is, however, still very diverse. Training for guidance practitioners may be mandatory or optional, and can range from short uncertified courses to master’s degrees. A similarly diverse picture emerges if one regards teaching methods and course content.

Adequately trained career guidance practitioners are a prerequisite for making high quality guidance service provision a reality for every European citizen. The challenge is therefore to identify and develop the skills and competences which guidance practitioners need in order to serve target groups with a great distance from the labour market. Training methods are required which cross national boundaries and can be implemented in diverse cultural settings.

This project, GOOD GUIDANCE STORIES+, represents a thematic continuation of the GUIDE project which ran from 2011 to 2013. The focus of this project is to develop case study training modules for guidance practitioners that are based on the case studies derived in the GUIDE project. These training modules will be integrated into the training systems of the participating countries in order to prepare local guidance practitioners for the specific challenges associated with guiding low-skilled people. Guidance specifically geared at low-skilled people, here defined as youths or adults that lack basic educational attainment, have no or low vocational qualifications, and possibly are lacking in/have poor basic skills, can improve their participation in society and the labour market, for example through the attainment of better qualification. The case study method allows the distillation of real-world experiences into training modules for the further practical training of guidance practitioners.

The main objectives of this project are therefore:

1. The development of case study training modules for guidance practitioners who work with low-skilled people. These will be based on six already existing case studies and teaching notes from the GUIDE project, as well as two further case studies in France and the UK, which will be developed in the course of the GOOD GUIDANCE STORIES+ project.
2. Regular and sustainable use of the developed case study training modules and the associated learning and teaching materials in the training systems for guidance practitioners of the participating countries (DE, IE, FR, IT, AT, UK).
3. Inter-European knowledge transfer regarding the effective and real-world guidance of low-skilled people.

Our European partners are:

• Ballymun Job Centre Co-Op (Ireland)
• CIOFS-FP (Italy)
• Eurocircle (France)
• Lawaetz-Stiftung (Germany)
• MetropolisNet (European network)
• Rinova Limited (England)
• ZSI Zentrum für soziale Innovation e.V. (Austria)